Now, climate change presents a new threat by causing the supply and distribution of water to change over the coming decades and centuries. Ancient civilizations were repeatedly forced to deal with the threat of diminishing water supply. More than any other resource, with the exception of food, water is crucial for human survival. 3.4 million people die each year from a preventable water-related disease.4100 children under five die each day from a preventable water-related illness.3.7 miles walked each day by women and children.220 million hours each day are spent collecting water.2.5 billion without adequate sanitation.Nearly 1 billion people are living without accessible water.Here are direct facts from that site that convey the magnitude of the current global water emergency. Visit, and you will find an impressive array of information and programs. ![]() Now, enter Matt Damon and Gary White, who have co-founded, an organization dedicated to developing and delivering solutions to the global water crisis. Bill and Melinda Gates in global health, Warren Buffett in reproductive health and food, the Jolie-Pitts in community development, and the Katrina recovery effort. There is a new generation of super-rich, highly influential people who are starting to invest massive amounts of money and influence in truly important causes. ![]() So, in this module, we'll learn a lot about how water behaves on the surface of the planet, what is going to happen in the future with climate change, and the choices communities are going to face with dwindling water resources. Such tough decisions have already been made in places around the world such as Australia, where devastating droughts over the last two decades have led rivers to virtually reverse course, and communities have had to make very tough decisions about how they manage their water resources. are going to have to make really tough decisions as to how they manage their water resources. But if we go out to the western part of the U.S., climate change forecasts predict that the region will become a lot drier, and communities out west in the U.S. We'll never have a problem with access to drinking water in this part of the world. ![]() The other part about being on the east coast of the United States is we're in a lush region, and climate change here is forecasted to make this region maybe a little bit more lush and a little bit higher rainfall in the future. This stream behind me is a tributary to the Chesapeake, and ultimately this water ends up in the Chesapeake Bay, and if I can't drink this water here in rural Pennsylvania, can you imagine what it's like by the time this water gets to the Chesapeake? It would definitely be a bad decision to drink the water flowing into the Chesapeake Bay today. There are factories around, there's farms around, and this water is probably not quite good enough to drink. But I’m not quite so sure about that today. And if I were here a hundred years ago, I would have readily taken a sample of this water and drunk it. Today, I'm standing in a stream near Lemont, Pennsylvania. Today, there are more than a billion people living without access to clean drinking water and that's really hard for us to imagine on the east coast of the United States, where there is water everywhere.
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