Lakes : going.. going.. gone

Water like energy will be a defining issue for the next half a century. Lakes are disappearing on every continent and for the same reasons: excessive diversion of water from rivers and over pumping of aquifers.

Disappearing Lakes
River flows are reduced and water tables are falling from over extraction. Lakes are shrinking and in some cases disappearing. Some of the world’s best known lakes - Lake Chad in Central Africa, the Aral Sea in Central Asia, and the Sea of Galilee are shrinking and disappearing...

“walking on the Sea of Galilee is a feat a mere mortal can accomplish,”

Of all the shrinking lakes and inland seas, none has gotten as much attention as the Aral Sea. Ports are now abandoned and look like the ghost mining towns of the American West.

Each day the wind lifts thousands of tons of sand and salt from the dry seabed, polluting the regions for miles around.

The disappearance of lakes is perhaps most pronounced in China. China’s Qinhai province, through which the Yellow River’s main stream flows, there were once 4,077 lakes. Over the last 20 years, more than half have disappeared. The situation is far worse in Hebei Province, which surrounds Beijing. With water tables falling throughout this region, Hebei has lost 969 of its 1,052 lakes.

Lake Chapala, Mexico's largest, is the primary source of water for Guadalajara, which is home to 4 million people. Expanding irrigation in the region has reduced water volume in the lake by 80 percent.


There is no Box

current US policy promotes waste while prices do not reflect true costs. When Elizabeth Kolbert, a writer for the New Yorker, asked energy guru Amory Lovins about thinking outside the box, Lovins responded: "There is no box".Were running out of options and there is really no alternative.. No one knows exactly how many lakes have disappeared over the last half-century, but we do know that thousands of them now exist only on old maps.