Both may well run out of a key liquid; oil for Pakistan and water for Australia, specifically Victoria.

Pakistan may plunge into the worst imaginable energy crisis as virtually all their refineries are teetering on the verge of financial default and may close down operations as you read this; all the oil refineries of the country – currently working on a negative gross revenue margin and with their borrowing limits already exhausted – are likely to shut down within the next two weeks following their expected default to retire the existing L/Cs to import crude oil.

The shutdown would mean no oil supplies for thermal power generation plants and the picture turns outright dark.

NGF (National Generators Forum) has warned Victorian power supplies could be under threat unless the big dry breaks, Latrobe Valley’s coal-fired power stations in eastern Victoria supply 85 per cent of the state’s power, but need 140 billion litres of water each year to operate.

In my guide to energy efficient house design (2001) I made the observation that two liquid ‘golds’ would ‘run out’ and Victoria is at the leading edge (given its population density per head of population).

Victorians of late have been suffering heat not previously recorded as the weather patterns – brought about by climate change – bite and rainfall diminishes and the population grows.

Less electricity generated and financial commitments will result in price hikes. Political lack of comprehension surfaced when Minister for The Bleeding Obvious – Deputy Premier Rob Hulls – said the Government was doing all it could to safeguard the state’s electricity supply, but ‘we can’t make it rain, obviously; we all hope it rains, but as a Government we can’t make it rain, but we’re certainly in discussions with power companies over supplies’.

Peak Population has occurred and corporate government is largely – through lack of intelligence and forward planning – to blame.  Increased immigration exasperates the problems.

In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis then plan to use their oil wealth to import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people.

The Saudis are unique in being so wholly dependent on irrigation. But other, far larger, grain producers such as India and China are facing irrigation water losses and could face grain production declines……

India’s water balance notes that 15 percent of its grain harvest is produced by overpumping. In human terms, 175 million Indians are being fed with grain produced from wells that will be going dry.

The comparable number for China is 130 million. Among the many other countries facing harvest reductions from groundwater depletion are Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen.

Australia’s Murray Darling river system is – for all intents and purposes – dead and what was once the fruit and vegetable basket of Australia is now a net importer of foods including fruit and vegggies.

With the Australian population hitting 22 million, it is exactly that.

While not having access to local data (given budgetary and political constraints placed on the CSIRO, Weather Bureau and DPI by the various political parties in controlling the public’s access to this information), we can reasonably suggest that there is a parallel in the USA, leaving aside that they are in the northern hemisphere.

In the Southeast Drought Study (in the USA), various sources tie water shortage to population, not global warming. The drought that gripped the Southeast (of America) from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming researchers have concluded; they say severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns [http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/pub/seager/Seager_etal_SE_2009.pdf] in an issue of The Journal of Climate. Census figures show that in Georgia alone the population rose to 9.54 million in 2007 from 6.48 million in 1990 (a 46% growth).

Given the Bligh government’s fixation on dams, its worthwhile knowing that in 1990, the Queensland population hit 2 million (it took 36 years to double from I million) and in 2008, we hit almost 4.3 million, a growth of 115%, so America’s and Queensland’s Southeast population growth is the problem.

Bligh and her partner restricted their procreation in children, however, despite their assumed intelligence, they seem unable to join the dots that just as their house, household budget and other constraints put a ceiling on their immediate population, so too should Queensland be considered.

In the American study of data from weather instruments, computer models and measurements of tree rings, which reflect yearly rainfall, their conclusion was this drought is pretty normal and typical by standards of what has happened in the region over the century. Similar droughts unfolded over the last thousand years, the researchers wrote. Regardless of climate change, they added, similar weather patterns can be expected regularly in the future, with similar results.

As any such affected region’s temperature may rise – leading to more rain – evaporation will likewise increase. The Wivenhoe Dam had an evaporation rate calculated at some 1.74 metres per annum not long after its commission (the dam was built more as a flood mitigation initiative). However, building dams to mitigate drought effects in areas where population is rising, is a misnomer, particularly when these dams are always build on waterways where – over the millennia – topsoils have gathered.

Bligh and any government following them had better start the damming of every river to meet the needs of an ever increasing population; if it took 36 years for the population of Qld to double (1954 – 1990) and then double again in 16 years (1990 to 2008), then at this rate, the State’s population will be somewhere in the vicinity of 9 million by 2016; as you can well imagine, there will be harsh water restrictions, poorer air quality and human density and traffic congestion hard to imagine …

Well I don’t know about you, but putting chemicals on your own hair, injecting your own face with Botox maybe OK because as – Anna says – adults can make their own decisions, but what if most people don’t want fluoride in their drinking water?

Now she is doing about face (not that you can see it, must be the Botox) and promising to write a letter of apology to north Brisbane residents (the old Pine Rivers area) for a poisonous chemical 40 times higher than the ‘recommended’ level being injected into their water.

So who recommends the ‘acceptable’ level .. the chemical companies who don’t want litigation, that’s who.

But first, Anna Bligh knows full well the majority of Queenslanders didn’t want fluroidtaion of the water supply and the reason is simple, it is poison.

The malfunction ‘we learned of’ occurred two weeks ago but authorities say it did not pose a health risk; the fluoride system should have shut down automatically but continued to operate for a time pumping a concentration of fluoride through the pipes servicing the Warner and Brendale areas.

Understanding why has it been labled as the worst Australian fluroide accident, its important to know what an overdose is and who and how it affects; people particularly at risk include Diabetics, Kidney impaired, people with chemical sensitivity or hypersensitivity to fluoride; even exposure to fluoride at 1mg/L can drastically reduce lung function in some people and most importantly infants; the huge dose of fluoride can permanently damaged children’s developing teeth, but the damage (dental fluorosis), will not be seen until  their teeth erupt from the gums.  But if you are suffering from diarrhoea, just look at the bright side, you may be passing a lot of the fluoride rather than having it stored in your bones.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said: “I want to assure all residents of this area that this was an isolated incident and the chance of any health side effects are extremely remote; the advice is that no more than 30 milligrams per litre during that three hour period would have reached the water supplied to household taps; any adverse health effects are very unlikely and would be limited – at the most – to very mild gastroenteritis which would have been temporary and have no long-term health consequences’.

Although Dr Jeannette Young may be the Queensland Chief Health Officer, with over 22 years in administration and following government and hospital administrators’ direction the majority of her working life, her call is hardly credible.

The Premier has previously received documented medical evidence that fluoridation is an unethical mass medication via a poison that insidiously accumulates within the body with 99% of retained fluoride being stored in bones.

Yet the ‘authorities’ (as they collectively run for cover) claim only about 4,000 homes received water containing 30mg/l fluoride, 40 times higher than the 0.8 mg/L Qld Health advised (in Nov 2008).

Now consider that a lethal dose is approximately 28 mg per kilogram of body mass and yet water tested showed 30 mg/L fluoride ion, equivalent to 120 fluoride tablets per litre of water, or 30 fluoride tablets per 250 ml glass, yet the Premier has denied that there was even a health risk; I’d like to see Anna quaff that down even on a hot day.

So whether there was one accident or now ‘maybe’ three major malfunctions (with one injector continuing to inject much more fluoride into the water than it was supposed to), combined with failures of the automatic inline monitoring and automatic failsafe shutdown system and despite fluoride levels being able to be measured in seconds with ion selective electrodes, it was not until 12 days after the accident that SEQ Water received test results showing the extremely high fluoride levels !

For reassurance, the Premier Anna Bligh said ‘I want to assure everyone that our water is safe (sic) but it’s critical my government is as honest as possible’   Pardon, ‘honest as possible’, does that mean little white lies to protect us or them?

Lawyer Mark O’Connor (Bennett and Philp Lawyers), revealed the following clause while demanding that the Queensland Government should pay for medical tests for Brisbane residents affected by the fluoride bungle ‘introducing fluoride to Queensland’s water supply contained a clause banning legal action for compensation if problems should arise.

The Premier uttered some logical last words ‘maybe there are some long term lessons for us here, not only in relation to fluoride but other water quality issues’.

Greens spokesperson (Tim Morris MP) said ‘it is a disgraceful day when the Health Minister stands up for those who have been concealing herbicide detections in Hobart’s drinking water, and queried why these detections are being hidden from the people consuming the water if, as the Minister asserts, the herbicide detections ‘present no risk to public health’.

Mr Morris also said when water contamination events occur, the contamination level of the water changes throughout the event and nobody can deduce the peak level of contamination from a single sample.

‘No person can say how much herbicide has been present in Hobart’s drinking water prior to these tests revealing contamination, because no-one knows whether the sample was taken at the beginning, the middle, or the end of the contamination event’ said Mr Morris. ‘how can our Health Minister say that there is no risk to human health when the authorities involved, including her colleague Water Minister David Llewellyn, appear to have actively concealed the contamination of Hobart’s water from the people of Hobart?

If it’s not a problem, why are they hiding it ?’

He went on to say ‘the Health Minister’s focus on cancer alone is also ridiculous and illogical; concerns have been raised about a wide range of adverse health effects other than cancer that are caused by exposure to Triazine chemicals, including disruption of the human endocrine system, damaging genetic changes in human cells, and the chemical castration of frogs; this event was only revealed because of questioning by the Tasmanian Greens in the Parliament, and we will continue to pursue the Bartlett Government on this matter until we see a ban on the Triazine group of herbicides’.

How can this claim be made? Simple: every capital city and most provincial cities and townships are all struggling to supply water not only to homes and businesses, but more importantly to the farmers who put the food on out table, also struggling, despite severe flooding in many parts of Australia over the last 12 months, water is still scarce.

However, despite these water shortages plus a growing number of unemployed, head spruiker for AIG (Australian Industry Group) chief exec Heather Ridout has the hide to suggest cutting immigration could stifle future economic growth; particularly skilled labour; that immigration boosts domestic living standards and government revenues’.

Surely corporate profitability / greed shouldn’t dictate immigration numbers, but big lunches and the lazy millions of $’s in donations to election campaigns suggest otherwise.

It may be billed as a major drop in immigration, but from the charts on the ABC news it appears to be a drop from an *extra* 135,500 people every year to only an extra 115,000 a year, which doesn’t sound like a big enough drop. The main problem with congested cities is over-population, yet immigrants largely stay within 50 – 100km from a states capital city.

In 10 years – not counting babies – that equates to another 1.1 million people trying to live in over congested cities, that really brings more pressure on our Aussie way of life as well as overseas problems brought to our shores.  There are lessons everywhere around the world on over-population and the economic as well as environmental costs.

Mexico plans to tackle a chronic shortage of clean water is to build an $800 million purification plant just for its capital city of 20 million inhabitants, where over-population has depleted what was one of the world’s largest supplies of fresh water; aquifers and waterways including the Colorado River in the U.S. has had farmers drawn down on this resource as each compete with water-intensive industries such as mining. Latin America’s second- largest, has failed to keep pace and its water supplies per inhabitant have dropped by more than 75 percent since 1950.

Paradoxically – as Paris water is not safe to drink – the international World Water Forum triennial conference is run by the Marseille, France-based World Water Council, to bring together officials from environmental groups, governments, academia and water agencies for a week of debate on solutions to water issues.

[One wonders how long it will take for Australian capital cities to collect storm-water run off, but don’t expect any corporations to do it, they will wait until public funds are used, and then recommend that rather than government instrumentalities running water utilities, they be sold to corporations who will pay a nominal fee and then co-incidentally hire much of the existing staff while board members will be made up of senior bureaucrats (previously incompetent to run the authority) and politicians willing to give advice on a subject matter they were previously only conversant with while sipping for a glass]

Two-thirds of the world will face water shortages by 2025, according to a forecast by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, of Gland, Switzerland. “There’s a growing awareness that the world is using a lot of water, but we are not even close to really dealing with water scarcity and security,” said Sergey Moroz, a water-policy expert at the World Wildlife Fund of Washington.

These same corporations saw the Peak Oil writing on the wall and created the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, GAT’s, Free Trade Agreements and the privatization of water and seeds and a growing list of other species.

In Stockholm, Lars Thunell (a senior official of a World Bank-affiliated organisation -  Washington based – International Finance Corporation) said ‘it’s the spectre of a food, fuel and water crisis, I believe we are at a tipping point, because the scarcity of water poses a threat to the food supply just when the agricultural sector is stepping up production in response to riots over food prices, growing hunger, and rising malnutrition.

The growing demand for water is outpacing as the world’s current population of over 6.0 billion is expected to rise to about 9.0 billion by 2050, with more than 60 percent living in mega cities. He went on to say ‘since water consumption goes up where there is development and improved lifestyles, we can expect even greater demands on fresh water; the most water-intensive sector, agriculture, is expanding and industrialisation and energy production are further driving demand’.

The conference, which was attended by over 2,400 water experts and government officials, ended with an ominous warning: that water and sanitation are not far behind the food, energy and climate crises. Summing up the weeklong proceedings, the Stockholm International Water Institute said that slow progress on sanitation will cause the world to badly fail the U.N.’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the same time, weak policy, poor management, increasing waste and exploding water demands will push the planet towards the tipping point of a global water crisis.

According to U.N. estimates a little less than one billion people worldwide still don’t have access to clean drinking water while over 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation. The MDGs aim at a 50 percent reduction both in the number of people without drinking water and without basic sanitation. The deadline has been set at 2015. But most of the world’s poorer nations are likely to miss the deadline.

Colin Chartres, director general of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said the causes of water scarcity are essentially identical to those of the food crisis. ‘there are serious and extremely worrying factors that indicate that water supplies are close to exhaustion in some countries’ he said. He pointed out that current estimates indicate the world will not have enough water to feed itself in 40 years time, “by when the current food crisis may turn into a perpetual crisis’.  Chartres said he and his water science colleagues have raised a warning flag that significant investments in both research and development and water infrastructure development are needed, “if dire consequences are to be avoided.”

IFC’s Thunell said providing clean water and sanitation services are not only business opportunities but also opportunities to improve lives. He said investors see an opportunity in the 450-billion-dollar global water sector, where stocks are performing strongly worldwide.  Private firms also regard water supply as a business risk and are tackling it as an integral part of their risk-management strategy.

Patti Lynn (campaigns director of Corporate Accountability International), has a different take on the role of the private sector. She said ‘the crisis stems from a confluence of problems, but perhaps no contributing factor is more insidious and correctable than the privatisation of the resource; when people’s access to clean drinking water is reliant on the profit interests of a handful of transnationals, all of us pay a premium and because of this many of the world’s poor go thirsty’; she went on to say ‘the World Bank needs to stop making water privatisation a condition for their loans, if the Bank is truly interested in alleviating poverty, its conditions should take a longer view; keeping water under local, public and democratic control is the most just way to insure the greatest degree of water access for the greatest number of people’ Lynn added.