Volume 50, Number 14 · September 25, 2003
Our Thirsty Future
By Bill McKibben
Water Wars: Drought, Flood, Folly, and the Politics of Thirst
by Diane Raines Ward
Riverhead, 280 pp., $24.95
Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Fresh Waters
by Robert Glennon
Island Press, 314 pp., $25.00
Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stressand a Civilization in Trouble
by Lester R. Brown
Norton, 304 pp., $27.95; $15.95 (paper)
In March, twenty-four thousand delegates from around the world gathered in Kyoto for the World Water Forum. 'Our discussions will have far more effect on humankind for the twenty-first century than...any other political problem of the day,' said William Cosgrove, vice-president of the World Water Council. The United Nations reported that it had identified three hundred potential 'zones' in which there is now 'water conflict.' Indeed, some development workers have insisted for the last two decades that water is becoming the planet's most precious substance—'wet gold'—and that the next round of regional wars will be fought over rivers and aquifers.
Review, 3836 words
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