USGS puts this chart up for kids, but adults can learn something too. From space Earth looks like a blue marble because of its vast oceans that make up 96+% of water on Earth. But the tiny amount of freshwater available (blue silver, left bar) is what supports life, and not even all of that is available to drink (right bar) Earth's perilous web of life, totally dependent on water, is facing yet another crisis. Recently water experts meeting in Bonn warned that 4.5 billion people are living within 50 kms of an impaired water resource meaning the source is running out or is polluted. The scientists fault governments for treating water as an endlessly available resource to be exploited continuously. The Colorado River is a world-class example. It is over appropriated the extent that it no longer reaches the Gulf of California, its last drops evaporating in the Sonoran Desert. 210 million Americans live within 10 miles of an impaired water source and that number is expected to increase. Polanski's Chinatown,while a scintillating tribute to film noir,also packs a subplot concerning the value of scarce water in the American southwest, and is loosely based on the massive 1913 water grab by the City of the Angels from Owens Valley farmers. Today, the city pumps a staggering 30 billion gallons a year out of the valley via the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Owens Lake is now an alkali dust bowl which dried up in 1926. View the video, "Water in the Anthropocene" which depicts the global impace of humans on the global water cycle.