The words “Water Infrastructure Investments” are getting increased play as buzzwords among environmentalists, public health experts and economic development advocates. Rising interest in the high costs – environmental and other – associated with bottled water’s growing popularity have further boosted interest in the subject.

There are critical points of overlap and synergy between global warming problems, energy “solutions” and clean, safe water issues.  Mounting public concern and urgency among policy makers about global warming do not guarantee policy outcomes that match the steps consensus science tells us are necessary to avert the worst impacts of global warming. For one thing, global warming’s impacts on water quality and quantity are not being fully considered in the current policy debate.

Global warming is fundamentally about water. The atmosphere changes and water translates those changes to land and all life on earth. Global warming changes the balance of water geographically and we get floods, drought or more subtle changes in between.