You are cordially invited to:

Global Choke Point: Exploring the Water Energy
Confrontations in China and the United States

Thursday, May 10, 2012 ♦ 9:30 to 11:30 AM
Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse
University of Washington-Seattle
4045 University Way NE (41st Street) 

Introductory remarks will be provided by Dean Sandra Archibald, University of Washington

Confirmed participants Include:
Jennifer L. Turner ♦ China Environment Forum, The Wilson Center
Stevan Harrell ♦  University of Washington
Brett Walton ♦  Circle of Blue

            RSVP by e-mailing Lisa Keitges at lisa.keitges@wilsoncenter.org. 

China’s soaring economy, fueled by an unyielding appetite for coal, is threatened by the country's steadily diminishing freshwater reserves. Next to agriculture, China's coal mining, processing, combustion, and coal-to-chemicals industries consume more water than any other industrial, municipal, or commercial sector. China’s coal boom is forcing China into a choke point; one where limited and polluted water supplies could constrain energy development, endanger food production, and stymie economic growth. The United States faces similar water-energy confrontations—millions of gallons of water are taken from ranchers to develop the deep oil and gas shale reserves of the west and there are battles between Georgia and Florida over diminishing drinking water reserves. 

Over the past 18 months, Circle of Blue and the Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum have explored the extensive water circulatory system and vast energy production musculature that makes China and the United States go, and what could also contribute to making both nations falter. The new findings, presented in rich narratives, data, imagery and graphics, provide compelling evidence of a potentially ruinous confrontation between growth, water, food, and fuel that is readily visible in both countries and virtually certain to grow more dire over the next decade. Global Choke Point, though, is not necessarily a narrative of doom and gloom. The presentations at this event will highlight the oft-overlooked energy-water-food choke points confronting the United States and China and opportunities for collaboration to address them.

Click here for more information on the Wilson Center's China Environment Program, the Evans School of Public Affairs, and Circle of Blue.

Co-sponsored by the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington &
The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars