I was reading this news article from Australia's Sydney Morning Herald just now and was a little taken back by the idea presented. Basically, two small towns outside of a state capital are going to have water driven to them daily because the drought in that area has gotten so bad.

Now maybe I'm harsh and economically stupid, but if a town is at the stage where it needs water driven to it to combat the effects of drought, isn't the town pretty much on its last legs? I can't imagine we could establish water courier services to many towns without a great cost to the state/federal budget. Also, using carbon-fuelled vehicles to do the ferrying seems a tad idiotic seeing as how there's a general consensus that the over use of fossil fuels has caused this problem in the first place (I'm undecided on this, Aboriginal records insofar as they exist - word of mouth, cave paintings, etc - have told of long droughts just as the one we're facing now. It could be a cycle we're going through of it could be climate change, I dunno).

If the drought continues to worsen I wouldn't be too shocked to see smaller communities completely shutting down through lack of water.

Anyway, what's happening in the rest of the world? I hear a lot about the drought here and the occasional big disaster elsewhere, but are there any major climate change trends going on globally (other than global warming, I know about that).

We have the Amazon river basin. We win.

(Or, get bombarded and invaded Iraq-style. One or the other.)

This may be a stupid question, but does any draining from the Amazon actually go on?

Cities in the region take their water from the rivers and underground water system. I suppose there are bottled water companies there as well, although I'm not really sure. I don't believe, however, that much water taken from the Amazon actually leaves it; with the exception of boutique bottle water (Perrier, say) moving water very far isn't really cost-effective.

Droughts tend to make it cost-effective, or at least profitable, in the short term. I think if a city can sustain itself economically whilst importing water, it's far from being on its last legs.

In the short-term I agree, but as the towns that need this kind of service grow the cost increases, not to mention the fact that courier water from place to another just diminishes supplies elsewhere.

In the Southwestern US, Northern Mexico, and Western South America's (Chile, and Peru) Atacama desert, water ferrying and shipping is common place. Sparkletts actually got its start in California shipping water from mountain springs to LA, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, and other major communities down here. (Now the San Fransisco and LA Aqueducts do that mostly, and Sparkletts has converted to being a source of bottled water.)