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December 2, 2008 7:24:32 AM CST

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Shortages

"Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink ; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink." - Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The world is experiencing shortages of some of its most plentiful (water and trash) and rarest items (helium and isotopes). Some places are even short on women. Are we condemned to a future of permanent shortages? Or is the glass just half full at the moment?

Stories

Stories 1 - 20 of 46

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  • November 2008

    • US Dominance 'Fading Fast' as Global Upheaval Looms

      Times (UK)  |  Nov 21, 08 2:15 AM CST

      US Dominance 'Fading Fast' as Global Upheaval Looms

      (Newser) - US intelligence agencies believe the next 20 years will be the twilight of America's global dominance, the Times of London reports. A report from the National Intelligence Council paints a bleak future of an increasingly unstable world in which new powers and alliances emerge as competition for dwindling resources heats up—along with the planet. More »

  • October 2008

    • UK Press Grinds Starbucks for Wasting Water

      Seattle Post-Intelligencer  |  Oct 10, 08 11:50 AM CDT

      UK Press Grinds Starbucks for Wasting Water

      (Newser) - Starbucks is abuzz as it tests new methods of spoon-cleaning, a reaction to a UK tabloid's report that the caffeine titan wastes 6.2 million gallons of water daily, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports. Every store leaves a tap running constantly, the Sun said; Starbucks confirmed the claim, explaining that the water was part of a “dipper well” system that sanitizes utensils. More »

  • July 2008

    • Manhole Cover Thieves Hit Streets of Philadelphia

      New York Times  |  Jul 23, 08 8:47 AM CDT

      Manhole Cover Thieves Hit Streets of Philadelphia

      (Newser) - These days you have to watch your step in Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love is suffering from an epidemic of manhole-cover theft, as rising scrap metal prices have led to a 2,500% increase in stolen covers and grates. Thieves are selling the covers for $5 to $10 at junkyards, reports the New York Times, and some streets now have so many orange cones marking off danger zones that they look like a slalom course. More »

  • June 2008

    • Next Resource in Crisis: Water

      Yale Environment 360  |  Jun 4, 08 4:30 PM CDT

      Next Resource in Crisis: Water

      (Newser) - While economists and world leaders fret about the global food crisis, there is another emergency that is just as urgent: the shortage of water, writes British scientist Fred Pearce in Yale Environment 360. No longer is water "a cheap and unlimited resource," and with two-thirds of water extracted from nature used to irrigate crops, a scarcity could trigger terrible famines. More »

  • May 2008

    • US Rations Silver Dollars as Investors Scoop Them Up

      Wall Street Journal  |  May 23, 08 9:31 AM CDT

      US Rations Silver Dollars as Investors Scoop Them Up

      (Newser) - Investors and coin collectors are hopping mad at the US Mint for placing quotas on purchasing silver dollars, the Wall Street Journal reports. The price of silver has more than doubled in the last three years, and investors looking to cash in on the boom—and avoid the stock and real estate markets—are snapping up this year's "silver eagles" much faster than the mint can make them.  More »

    • Emergency H20 Flows Into Parched Barcelona

      Guardian (UK)  |  May 14, 08 8:36 AM CDT

      Emergency H20 Flows Into Parched Barcelona

      (Newser) - Barcelona is having to ship in emergency supplies of drinking water as Spain suffers its worst drought since records began 60 years ago, the Guardian reports. The first shipment of 5 million gallons arrived yesterday and dozens more are scheduled. The city's reservoirs are down to a quarter of capacity with the summer heat weeks away. Water-starved agricultural regions nearby charge that the government denied their request for water for political reasons. More »

    • Sculpture Thieves Seek Scrap Metal

      Wall Street Journal  |  May 1, 08 4:39 PM CDT

      Sculpture Thieves Seek Scrap Metal

      (Newser) - A wave of sculpture thefts has little to do with the pieces’ artistic merit: Police believe they’ve been stolen for their valuable copper content, the Wall Street Journal reports. In the past 18 months, three public artworks displayed in Brea, Calif., have disappeared—and the trend is appearing across the country, pushing some artists to consider dropping bronze as a medium. More »

  • February 2008

    • Paulson Wants to Toss Pennies

      Associated Press  |  Feb 29, 08 4:15 PM CST

      Paulson Wants to Toss Pennies

      (Newser) - Henry Paulson sees little point in pennies and would stop their production if he could, the AP reports. “The penny is worth less than any other currency,” the Treasury Secretary said today in a radio interview. But a sea change in change isn't imminent: Paulson says he has bigger challenges to tackle in the last year of the administration. More »

    • Lake Mead May Vanish by 2021

      LiveScience  |  Feb 13, 08 3:24 AM CST

      Lake Mead May Vanish by 2021

      (Newser) - Lake Mead, the giant man-made lake behind the Hoover Dam and a major source of water for millions of people, is rapidly drying up, reports Live Science. A new study predicts a  50% chance the lake will be too low to produce hydroelectric power by 2017, and a 50% chance that it will vanish by 2021. More »

    • Climate Change May Trigger Crop Failures

      National Geographic  |  Feb 3, 08 9:21 AM CST

      Climate Change May Trigger Crop Failures

      (Newser) - Climate change could cause severe food shortages in South Asia and southern Africa, two of the poorest regions in the world, by 2030, National Geographic reports. "We were surprised by how much, and how soon, these regions could suffer if we don't adapt," said one of the study's authors. Decreased yields could pump up costs in the global food market as well. More »

  • December 2007

    • By Any Means Necessary: Buying a Wii

      Washington Post  |  Dec 8, 07 12:26 PM CST

      By Any Means Necessary: Buying a Wii

      (Newser) - The holiday-season shortage of Nintendo’s Wii console is fostering some creative  shopping strategies, shared on a number of websites devoted to tracking down the device, the Washington Post reports. One advises Wii hopefuls not to ask store employees when the next shipment will arrive—instead, ask when the last one came in: "This is a question they can actually answer and gets the conversation going." More »

    • Isotope Shortage Delays Medical Tests

      Associated Press  |  Dec 8, 07 10:21 AM CST

      Isotope Shortage Delays Medical Tests

      (Newser) - Shortages of a radioactive substance are endangering thousands of medical tests in hospitals across the US and Canada, the AP reports. The development is the result of a longer-than-anticipated shutdown of a nuclear reactor in Canada, the main supplier in North America. Technetium-99 is injected into patients to check for a variety of serious conditions, including cancer and heart disease. More »

    • Nintendo's Wii Shortage Is Good Business Strategy

      Wall Street Journal  |  Dec 7, 07 7:00 PM CST

      Nintendo's Wii Shortage Is Good Business Strategy

      (Newser) - Nintendo’s Wii is proving hard to find in the holiday rush, a phenomenon the Wall Street Journal says is indicative of the Japanese company’s cautious culture—but also good business sense. Nintendo is cautious for a reason: it saw its fortunes rise with the original NES and SNES consoles, only to fall when Sony’s Playstation and Microsoft’s xBox cornered the market. More »

    • As Demand Balloons, Helium is in Short Supply

      Wall Street Journal  |  Dec 5, 07

      The technology explosion is sucking up helium supplies at dizzying rates. U.S. helium demand is up more than 80% in the past two decades, and is growing at more than 20% annually in developing regions such as Asia. "We've not seen the supply and demand at this imbalance in the past. We're running on the edge of the supply-demand curve," says Jane Hoffman, global helium director for Praxair Inc.

    • New Orleans Hit by Acute Rental Shortage

      New York Times  |  Dec 2, 07

      More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is suffering from an acute shortage of housing that has nearly doubled the cost of rental units in the city, threatening the recovery of the region and the well-being of many residents who decided to return against the odds. Before the storm, more than half of the city%u2019s population rented housing. Yet official attention to help revive the shattered rental home and apartment market has been scant. In some core middle- and lower-income areas, blighted dwellings stretch for blocks on end, and the city has been slow to come up with ideas...

    • Few Priests? Papal Visit Seen as Help

      New York Times  |  Dec 2, 07

      To understand the charge that comes from a papal visit, look no further than Dan Tuite, a 24-year-old seminarian from Staten Island. He was 12 in 1995, the last time a pope %u2014 teasingly called %u201Cthe big boss%u201D by one professor, the Rev. Gerard F. Rafferty %u2014 visited the archdiocese. Mr. Tuite glimpsed the white speck that was John Paul II from the back of the multitudes at Central Park and felt %u201Cthe church%u2019s greatness in his physical presence.%u201D %u201CThat stirred my vocation,%u201D he said. %u201CIt%u2019s because of a pope I%u2019m here, really.%u201D People here...

  • November 2007