With all the money and more importantly wasted time spent trying to persuade people who live near lakes, rivers, seas and oceans to use less water and to track how much water they use
They could have spent that money and more importantly time developing more treatment plants to clean more water before releasing it into the water source such as a lake, river or ocean and to clean more water before bringing it to water users
They could have made technology to separate salt from water
By "made" I meant they could have built more technology to separate salt from water instead of they could have invented more technology to separate salt from water
They could have built at least twice as many facilities to separate salt from water with the media budget they spent to tell people to reduce water consumption
Like the Saudis used their huge oil surplus for essentially free energy to run their complexes and are still finding it to be a tough deal economically. Then you gotta get filters and dispose of the waste too
Telling people to reduce usage uses less in-demand resources (and campaigns instead of heavy industries) and could help
It costs a lot of energy to maintain the CNN, MSNBC and Fox News TV stations and to employ all their staff and to provide care and shelter for so many government employees
Time and energy that could be better spent cleaning water
We could draft hippies and force them to work at water treatment plants to really clean the environment as punishment for environmental protests
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-07/israel-hannibal-directive-kidnap-hamas-gaza-hostages-idf/104224430
Singapore is all RO but that's for wastewater, not ocean water. Filters on filters on filters
Look at the Gulf States or Singapore