From the time we’re old enough to go to school, we learn that 70% of the Earth’s surface is covered by water, and that a similar percentage of the human body is made up of water, too. So it makes sense that any threat to the world’s supply of good old H2O is a very serious threat indeed.

Englishman Fred Pearce, a veteran journalist, former news editor at New Scientist, and author of The Dammed, an acclaimed book about the dangers of damming the world’s rivers, is a writer who takes the threat of contamination, over-consumption, evaporation, and general lack of respect for the world’s water supply – and in particular its rivers – very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that he claims that the “world water crisis” of the book’s title is as much a threat to the way we live as the much more publicized global oil crisis.

In When the Rivers Run Dry, Pearce examines these dangers by travelling the globe, looking at how humans of every persuasion, in their need to continually fuel their own pursuits with endless amounts of water, are in danger of running out of the very stuff we need so badly.

Although Pearce takes the global view, Canada does receive considerable attention in When the Rivers Run Dry. In addition to the foreword by David Suzuki, the book contains a comprehensive early chapter devoted to the Canadian North – what Pearce calls “one of the great water towers of the planet.” He explores the subject of how Canada has come to be one of the world’s leading per-capita consumers of water while at the same time Canadians “go crazy at the idea of letting one drop of their water go south to lubricate the lives of Americans.”

As is the case with all of his writing in this book, no matter what the social or geographic context, Pearce’s material on Canada is trenchant, intelligently humorous, and filled with concise research and powerful facts. When the Rivers Run Dry avoids being merely one environmentalist’s complaint. Any reader interested in non-fiction as it is meant to be written – via top-notch research presented with an expert journalist’s flair – will enjoy this look at a pressing global concern.