Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America - Softcover

Wood, Chris

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1551928140 ISBN 13: 9781551928142

Publisher: Raincoast Book Dist Ltd, 2008

Synopsis

Makes predictions about an imminent water-shortage crisis in North America, exploring the ways in which communities have the potential to be devastated by both droughts and floods, in an account that also makes recommendations for preventing the crisis. Original.

About this title

Review

Veteran journalist Chris Wood declares war on North America's blasé attitude toward the environment in general and water in particular. The battle he wages in his awesome, terrifying Dry Spring (awesome for its depth of research, terrifying for what it portends) is positively ferocious. Wood lobs facts like grenades, and he hits his target--our collective conscience and fear of a very grim future--every time. But much more than a clinical recitation of data, Dry Spring is Wood's impassioned plea for action. Even gas company lobbyists and Fox News anchors are hard-pressed to refute his evidence. And while many of these stats have appeared elsewhere, Wood succeeds in aggregating and connecting the dots between local phenomena and larger planetary changes. Not since Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth has the Earth had such a persuasive advocate. --Kim Hughes

Review

"Wood is neither tree-hugging ideologue nor free-market evangelist, and his reportage is voluminous and plainspoken... Despite its alarmist title, Dry Spring also takes the stuffing out of wild-eyed Canadian 'aqua-nationalists,' who reflexively scream that the sky is falling at the mere mention of selling some of our vast stores of fresh water to the U.S... What Wood does well is connect some of the scientific and environmental dots that we may otherwise see as isolated news stories about floods or storms or droughts or crop failures or forest fires. They may seem like random events now, but they won’t after you’ve read this book." -- The Quill & Quire, April 2008 (starred review)

"Wood, a journalist and former editor at Maclean's magazine, provides an engaging introduction into the ecology and economy of North America's water supply now and in the near future... Dry Spring is a rebuttal to the arguments of hypernationalist Canadians such as Maude Barlow and her ilk who stand on guard to zealously protect our water from Uncle Sam.

They argue against the commodification of water. Wood counters that solving many of our water woes will require exactly that, and that much of the rhetoric about NAFTA and water exports is in fact propaganda." -- The Winnipeg Free Press, April 13, 2008

"[I]t's refreshing that Wood, breaking the custom of environmental books, doesn't lay it on too thick. He takes us to where runaway fires, drought, hurricanes and floods provide stark testimony to the speed of climate change, but he is too good a writer to flay the reader with endless horror stories... Would someone now please organize a nationally televised debate between Wood and Barlow?" -- Report on Business Magazine, April 2008

"[Wood]compiles strong evidence that we have stretched natural water systems to the limit and, in many cases, are already creating environmental deficits by damming rivers, draining aquifers and depleting ground waters to meet people's wants. We North Americans are the planet's gluttons, using nearly seven times as much water per person than the frugal Danes... To address this mess of our own making, Wood argues convincingly for using the tools of the market. If water were priced to represent its real environmental cost, we would use it more sparingly and trigger entrepreneurial creativity to help us use it more efficiently." -- The Vancouver Sun, April 12, 2008

Edition details

• Publisher: Raincoast Book Dist Ltd
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1551928140
• ISBN 13: 9781551928142
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 383