The Quiet Questioner

Have you ever been looking around at the myriad of problems confronting humankind and possible solutions to those attendant difficulties?

Personally, I like the solutions that tend to answer more than one difficulty.  For example, how often do we hear about either too much water somewhere or too little water  in a different place?  As a country, we had a similar problem with electricity when that particular helpmate came online.  Our solution, an electrical grid which took the extra power  generated in one place and put the power in a place which was dark.

Couldn't we do something similar with water, a water grid?  With some artful pumping and judicial thinking, we could reduce  some flooding and at the the same time rehydrate the depleted water-tables in any overpumped farming or pasture areas.  At the same time, we would be constructing a hydrogen infrastructure, an item some have said we are lacking for hydrogen (an additional option to eliminate our present dependence on gasoline).   Add to that, all the pumping would require power; thereby necessitating a large demand of power plants (wind, solar, nuclear).  How much manpower would  be required to implement a water grid with all the attendant subsystems, especially in a time when unemployment is at an all time high? 

We could even start desalination plants along the coast.  Although someone might think a method such as that was overkill,  ask a few Californians about how such a system could reduce smog.  We could dump the salt back into the ocean helping with the influx of fresh water from glacial melt.  Also, such plants could help precipitate particulates from a Mt. St. Helen's event (personally I hope such a use would not be necessary, but it might be nice to have as a back-up).

This all results from one suitable solution, coupled with some simple brainstorming.  How many more solutions to other problems are out there which might be  contemplated and/or tried.

I put the question to you, quietly.