To the Last Drop: Canada and the World's Water Crisis

It’s not that any single fact in Michael Keating’s book will be new to readers but that pulled together in his literate, non-strident presentation they come close to being terrifying. Maybe even close enough to get us to do something about the situation — which is precisely Keating’s goal.

The book falls into three sections. The first several chapters show why our Canadian sense of a luxuriant and endless water-supply is flawed. They look at how the water we do have is being polluted and what pollution is doing to fish, wildlife, and people.

The second section looks outside Canada’s borders, where water has been virtually mined out of existence. Underground aquifers, formed slowly over hundreds of thousands of years, and the great rivers demarcating the continent have been drained for industrial, municipal, and irrigation uses. Furthermore, a “greenhouse effect” caused by the Industrial Revolution’s massive consumption of fossil fuels is expected to raise worldwide temperatures and create areas of desentification in the American midwest. This will generate an even more desperate search for water. Because Canada appears to have lots of water, schemes are already being hatched to divert our northward flowing rivers to the south to replenish the drained reservoirs of the United States and Mexico. Decisions on these issues will be made not “someday,” but in the next decade, and Keating raises daunting concerns about the political and ecological effects of such diversions.

Finally, Keating suggests actions that individuals can take to conserve this most essential of our non-renewable resources. Unfortunately, he doesn’t offer ideas for broader policies that would help to push lethargic governments into co-operative moves to protect the future of our water supply.