Writing on the Energy Bulletin blog on March 4th, Richard Heinberg lays out the likely effects of the industrial growth economy on water supplies: depletion.
And the effects of this will be the severe curtailment of economic growth. According to Heinberg:
“By itself, water scarcity is not likely to be an immediate limiting factor for economic growth for the U.S., at least for the next couple of decades. But it is already a serious problem in many other nations, including much of Africa and most of the Arab world. And water scarcity subtly tightens all the other constraints we are discussing”