6/13/13

6/13/13, 11:00pm, The Beijing Center

Today in class we talked about China’s water. 71% of the planet is water, 97% of which is seawater. Less than 1% of the freshwater is accessible. The rest of the freshwater on the planet is in glaciers, ice caps, and deep ground water. China tried to melt glaciers using coal ash, but it’s extremely unsustainable. The water cycle cleans water in the air because when water evaporates, it leaves slat behind. So by evaporating, salt water turns into fresh water, but it picks up pollutants when it turns into rain on it’s way back down. This is why rainwater is not usually safe to drink. China has a huge issue because there is not only water pollution, but scarcity as well with a huge regional imbalance. Southern China has 80% of the country’s water, but the north produces 66% of agricultural yields with 46% of the population. China has 640 major cities and 300 of them have water shortages. We also looked at how lakes are shrinking. It’s so sad to see and I’m sure it’s happened all over the world.