In an unconventional solution to Cape Town鈥檚 water crisis, a marine salvage expert is suggesting towing a giant iceberg to the city and melting it down as drinking water.
In drought since 2015, Cape Town was due to reach Day Zero about now, the point at which the city鈥檚 taps would be turned off, forcing locals to queue for water at guarded standpoints. For now, this doomsday scenario .
But Nick Sloane, who led the refloating of Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia in 2014, says that Antarctic icebergs could soon quench the city鈥檚 thirst.
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, Sloane鈥檚 scheme would cost $130 million and could provide 150 million litres of water each day for a year, meeting 30 per cent of the city鈥檚 needs. A meeting to promote the idea is imminent.
This may appear to be a welcome fix to an impending catastrophe. But far from being a novel proposition, it is simply the latest incarnation of an inane idea that refuses to die.
Moving icebergs
The notion. One author in 1825, for example, wrote about moving icebergs into the Southern Ocean 鈥渇or the purpose of equalising the temperature of the earth鈥�.
In the 1950s, the idea re-emerged, having captured the imagination of oceanographer John Isaacs, then at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California.
In , Isaacs suggested towing an 8-billion-tonne iceberg to San Clemente Island 鈥� 120 kilometres west of San Diego 鈥� in just 200 days, providing the drought-prone city with a source of freshwater.
Since then, scientists have used the technical feasibility of lugging a 30-million-tonne iceberg from Newfoundland to the Canary Islands, though it would take five months and cost $10 million. And only last year, an Abu Dhabi firm as a way of alleviating water shortages in the United Arab Emirates.
Oil companies have even developed and use the technology for shifting smaller icebergs that are endangering rigs in frozen seas.
Short-term fix
Despite all the noise, no one has actually hauled an iceberg across an ocean. But there is every reason to believe that Sloane鈥檚 proposal could work technically.
The problem is there is almost no reason to endorse it. At best, it is an expensive short-term fix for a problem that requires a much more considered approach, potentially diverting attention away from the kind of water use changes that are really required. At worse, it could wreak , risking marine ecosystems and increasing pollution from shipping.
This probably won鈥檛 be the last time the idea surfaces. Cape Town has escaped being the first major metropolis to run out of water for now, but it is still at risk. By 2050, global water demand will be . By that stage, around will be in permanent drought, if greenhouse gas emissions go unchecked.
The reason Cape Town deferred Day Zero is because of its willingness to adapt. Since 2015, the city has halved its water use to just over 500 million litres a day. Its 4 million residents were told to use , compared with a global average of 185 litres. Agriculture, in particular, has been hard hit.
If Cape Town鈥檚 drought continues, the city must consider , drilling more aquifers and possibly desalinating seawater. But it is only by conserving water that Cape Town can both avoid an impending catastrophe and show the rest of the world how it is done. Icebergs are a quick fix in a world that needs long-term thinking.
