Water and Energy
Energy plays a major role in the Canadian economy and the Canadian way of living. The rigorous climate, an energy-intensive industrial base, relatively low energy prices, a low population density and large distances between population as well as the high
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Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg GmbH
Asit K. Biswas (Ed.)
Water Resources ofNorthAmerica with 66 Figures and 41 Tables
Springer
PROFESSOR ASIT
K.
BISWAS
Avenida Manantial Griente 27 Los Clubes, Atizapan Estado de Mexico, 52958, Mexico Email: [email protected]
cover photo: © Bryan P. Bernart
ISBN 978-3-642-05550-8 ISBN 978-3-662-10868-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-10868-0 Cataloging-in- Publication Data Biswas, Asit K. W ater resources of North America I Asit K. Biswas. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ). l.
Water resources development-North America. 2. Water-supply-North AmericaManagement. I. Tide.
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Preface
Leonardo da Vinci, the eminent Renaissance scholar and philosopher said, "water is the driver of nature". Many may have considered it to be an overstatement in the past, but at the beginning of the third millennium, no sane individual would disagree with Leonardo's view. Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource for most of the world's citizens. The current trends indicate that the overall situation is likely to deteriorate further, at least for the next two decades, unless the water profession eschews its existing "business as usual" practices, which can only allow incremental changes to occur. Somewhat surprisingly, the water profession as a whole neither realised nor appreciated the gravity of the global water situation as late as 1990, even though a few serious scholars have been pointing out the increasing criticality of the situation from around 1982. For example, the seriousness of the crisis was not a major issue, either at the International Conference on
