Will the World's Oceans Be Our Next Drinking Tap?

Stephen Hawking is no dummy. That much has been established.

Yet in 2006, when the acclaimed scientist told an audience of mostly university students and professors in China that he was "very worried about global warming" and that Earth "might end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulfuric acid,'' the dystopian prediction nevertheless dropped off the cultural radar after a few short weeks. Which, of course, is a sad commentary on the state of our minds, distracted as they are by horserace punditry possessed with the 2008 election, athletes on HGH, or the latest meltdown of pop tarts like Britney Spears and Amy Winehouse. After all, some might argue, the thought of our verdant Earth metamorphosing into the environmental nightmare that is Venus, whose oceans evaporated millions of years ago, is beyond sci-fi, a transformation so stunning and apocalyptic that it cannot be comprehended, much less be true.

But Hawking is not alone, especially among activists and scientists who have been keeping a sharp eye on our planet's precarious water situation. And that includes Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water as well as the founder of the Blue Planet Project and the national chairperson of the advocacy group Council of Canadians.

"I fear that the global water crisis will destroy all life on earth if we do not deal with it soon," she confessed.

Wenonah Hauter, executive director of D.C.-based nongovernmental organization and consumer group Food and Water Watch, took pains to moderate Hawking's more dramatic statement but nevertheless agreed. "We are facing a time of great water scarcity and unpredictable climate change," she added. "It's time for us to take action to protect our planet."

But who are we protecting the planet from, when it comes to water scarcity? The answer, as always, is ourselves. But how to do that is the subject of great debate and controversy, especially as permanent droughts take hold in Australia, America and beyond, causing shortages, famines, social unrest and more. With declining rainfall and snowpack because of global warming, many countries have turned to desalination of the oceans for their water supplies. The process seems simple enough: Over 70 percent of the planet is covered in oceans, so take the salt out of the water and watch the tanks fill up.

And sure enough, desalination plants are popping up all over the world. The British utility Severn Trent, one of 10 water privatization entities in the United Kingdom, is building one for the Maravia Country Club Estates in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico.

El Paso, Texas, cut the ribbon in August 2007 on the largest inland desalination plant in the world, which mostly benefited the city's Fort Bliss army outpost, which is expanding to accommodate the nation's already depleted military forces. A joint Israeli venture is building a plant for drought-stricken Australia, and Bahrain, awash in oil income and undergoing a construction boom also sweeping other countries in the Middle East, is fielding offers for a massive plant to cope with its rising water needs. India is commissioning General Electric to study the possibility, and the list goes on. "A number of private companies are proposing more than two dozen ocean desalination plants for the coast of California alone," added Hauter. "Most of these proposed plants are near the last remaining open-space corridors where the lack of water has limited development."

In other words, the entire world is gearing up for greater desalination plant construction in the years to come, but it's not just because everyone is getting very thirsty. Rather, it is because there are buckets of money to be made. But whether progress and salvation follows is another question entirely.