Another view of the clean water panel at the Foresight Conference, from Michael Kanellos of CNET News.com: “What’s the biggest hazard for the future? Global warming? Oil shortages?
“A small, but growing number of people think that a looming shortage of drinking water constitutes a much larger crisis. Water consumption is doubling every twenty years, but the supply isn’t growing at the same rate, according to Kevin McGovern, chairman of venture firm McGovern Capital, quoting U.N. statistics.
” ‘We have a crisis,’ he said at the Foresight Nanotechnology Conference taking place in Burlingame, Calif. this week.
“Many of the world’s health problems are already apparent. ‘About half of the world’s hospital beds in the world are occupied by people with water borne diseases,’ he said. Three billion people in the world don’t have easy access to a toilet and thousands of kids die a day from water-related complications.” See the whole thing.—Christine
