An Urgent Leap from Coal to Renewable Energy Needed to Ease Global Water Shortage
By: Donna Lisenby
A Greenpeace study, The Great Water Grab, released today showing that the coal industry is responsible for deepening the global water crisis, has prompted calls for an urgent leap from coal to renewable energy by global water advocacy network Waterkeeper Alliance.
The urgent call follows a scientific study published in the December issue of the journal Science that reported humanity may have crossed an unsustainable threshold in the global use of fresh water and a report by NASA in February, that revealed 4 billion people are at risk due to a global depletion in ground-water resources.
Donna Lisenby, Clean & Safe Energy Campaign Manager at Waterkeeper Alliance, stated:
“The Greenpeace study shows that the global coal industry uses enough water to meet the most basic needs of 1.2 billion people every year. In addition, Waterkeeper Alliance has documented coal mines and coal fired power plants polluting billions of gallons of water with toxic waste. Such reckless misuse of a precious resource that sustains all life is clearly unacceptable.
With plans afoot to increase global coal fired energy production by as much as 70 percent, largely in areas of existing water stress, a global catastrophe is unfolding for billions of people.
Faced with an increasing population and a deepening water crisis, compounded by climate change, keeping coal in the ground and halting plans to construct new coal-fired plants is critical to maintaining the world as we know it .
We simply cannot allow the number one contributor to climate change to squander the world’s most precious natural resource in order to mine, sell and burn the world’s most diabolical commodity.
Waterkeeper Alliance calls on world leaders to protect water resources by phasing out coal and transitioning to a low carbon economy.”