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Every time man uses water, it sets off a widening effect that has consequences few people understand. But we can no longer afford to ignore our impact on water supplies. We must accept the new reality and adapt (适应). The good news is that water is renewable: Humans may pollute it, overuse it, or allow it to evaporate (蒸发) into the hot sky, but we cannot destroy water. The challenge is to learn how to manage the earth’s limited supply more efficiently and sustainably. The bad news is that people usually resist change until a crisis is underway. In the 1930s, Americans ignored warnings about drought and poor farming practices until the Dust Bowl drove 2.5 million people off the Great Plains. For decades, more warnings about water pollution were ignored, until the Cuyahoga River, polluted from industrial waste buildup, caught fire in 1969. Even in the first decade of this century, Americans still continued to ignore warnings that they were polluting and draining important supplies such as the Colorado River, the Everglades, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, and the Sacramento Delta. Today, water scarcity, population growth, and environmental damage have combined to force the kind of awareness that the United States has not seen in forty years. In the 1970s, the American environmental movement forced the passage of the Clean Water Act and the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency. Thus began a remarkable period of collective action when Americans, for the first time, agreed on the need to protect the nation’s water supply. Nearly half a century after the Clean Water Act was signed in 1972, America and the world face a second significant period in which our actions, and inactions, will have serious consequences for water supplies for years to come. There are plenty of suggestions, and sharp disagreements, over how to respond. One camp favors building up water supplies by increasing the nation’s reservoirs (水库), canals, and pipelines. Another group favors a new water ethic (伦理) built on the opposite approach: conserving existing water supplies and limiting new demand through efficient technologies, strict control, price incentives (激励), and broad public education.
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