Early Climate Change Victim: Andes Water

FRANK BAJAK, Associated Press Writer
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071123/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/warming_world_andes_water_1

Twice a day, Elena Quispe draws water from a spigot on the dusty fringe of this city, fills three grimy plastic containers and pushes them in a rickety wheelbarrow to the adobe home she shares with her husband and eight children.

But the water supply is in peril. El Alto and its sister city of La Paz, the world's highest capital, depend on glaciers for at least a third of their water — more than any other urban sprawl. And those glaciers are rapidly melting because of global warming.

Informed of the threat, Quispe, a 37-year-old Aymara Indian, shows alarm on her weathered face. "Where are we going to get water? Without water how can we live?"

Scientists predict that all the glaciers in the tropical Andes will disappear by mid-century. The implications are dire not just for La Paz-El Alto but also for Quito, Ecuador, and Bogota, Colombia. More than 11 million people now live in the burgeoning cities, and El Alto alone is expanding at 5 percent a year.

always just buy bottled water if the taps run dry, right?

:sarcasm:

They should just squish their babies....

when he suggested the Irish eat their babies - people impacted by the climate crisis should do that to recycle the water content and the nutritious muscle and organ meat.

:sarcasm:

Okay, even just typing that made me :puke: and :cry:

Next time I will have to be a bit more obscure in my literal references to weed out those that might wish to hijack my plagarized humor and present it as their own.

slow down enough to realize what you meant by "squish." I didn't mean to steal your thunder and I didn't - very few people have read the thread.