Mais um extraordinário artigo do Jim Puplava, agora sobre esse bem essencial que é a ÁGUA.
("Pequena" Introdução)
-------------------------------------------
Blue Gold
There are many things in life that we take for granted. We expect to turn on a switch and the lights to go on. When we turn on the faucet we expect water to flow. Whenever we are hungry we expect the grocery shelves to be stocked and we expect to be able to fill our tank with gas whenever it needs filling. These things we take for granted are life’s necessities. Our lives need food, water, and energy to function. We expect them to be there and we give them very little thought until we have difficulty getting them. Occasionally, Mother Nature reminds us just how precious these natural resources are. Standing in line to fill your tank after a storm has shut down energy production in the Gulf of Mexico, walking into a grocery store to find stock shelves empty ahead of a hurricane, or securing water rights for farm land or a city in the midst of a drought are subtle reminders of just how precious these resources have become.
For the last two decades the U.S. and the rest of the world have invested very little to develop and secure these necessities that are so casually taken for granted. From energy, water, and base metals, to forests and farmland have all been ignored by the financial markets. Bull markets run in cycles lasting 20-25 years. They are the product of supply and demand imbalances. The declining prices that accompany bear markets lead to a scarcity of new investment. Capacity shrinks, the industry consolidates and new investment dries up leading to decline. In the last two decades no new refineries have been built, very little has been spent on building new pipelines or power plants, building new mines, developing new cocoa or sugar plantations, or developing water infrastructures. Productive equipment in these areas has gone into disrepair, deteriorated or has been cannibalized, scrapped, or shut down. The mining and energy industry is suffering from a shortage of qualified geologists and engineers. Who wanted to go to college and study geology when there were fortunes to be made on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley? The natural resource industry is suffering from a dearth of qualified personnel.
As a result of this lack of investment we face shortages in several key commodities. The balance between supply and demand is out of whack again and it will take more than a decade to fix it. Inventory levels of major commodities are down across the board. Gold and silver are running multi-decade deficits, oil and gas are getting harder to find and water tables around the globe are dropping dramatically. We seldom think about these necessities unless prices suddenly spike. While energy and the sky high price of oil and gas has captured headlines, water will shortly move front and center as the cost of procuring it becomes more difficult and our existing water infrastructure breaks down. As we begin this new century a global water crisis could threaten the security, stability and the environmental sustainability of the developed and developing world. The looming water crisis will affect all nations. Without an adequate supply of clean fresh water human development is stifled.
The fact that this crisis is upon us is made clear by recent headlines from floods in Bangladesh and eastern Europe, the water drawdown in the western United States, to the hundreds killed by Nile fever. According to a recent UN report 25,000 people are still dying from malnutrition every day and 6,000 people, mainly children under the age of five, are dying from water related diseases.[1] The problem is the world’s population is getting larger and with it water withdrawals are increasing with it. Water stress will increase significantly in 60% of the world, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America according to the UN.
The crisis in water centers around three factors. They are listed below:
Water scarcity
Water quality
Water-related disasters
To understand the water crisis one needs to understand the water cycle. Water is a renewable resource within certain limits. The variability of water is one of the essential characteristics of this natural resource. The unpredictability and variability of water resource flows requires management.
---------------------------
O texto em toda a sua extensão e com ilustrações, pode ser lido através deste link: Blue Gold
O Clubeinvest.com informa que nenhuma da informação
aqui facultada deverá ser entendida como conselho ou recomendação
de qualquer tipo de transacção ou investimento.
