Optimism has nowt to do with it, a team of international scientists have done something useful instead of just talking.
They've created a plant that runs off nothing but seawater and sun in South Australia, in a desert no less.
They grow 15,000 tonnes of tomatoes with no soil, using an ingenious system that uses the left over seawater from desalinisation. An amazing system that uses every ounce of energy to produce fresh water and food.
Now the Middle East, Israel has combated the water problem, they are prosperous. The rest of the Middle East, no water, war, war, war, with a side helping of war. Give them enough water, they'll be too busy farming to fight each other.
Africa, the warlords control the water holes.... remove the issue of water holes, no more problem.
Water is the issue I agree, but get Zuckerberg or someone like him to redirect their finances towards these desalination plants... the world will be a very different place. Pipelines of water travelling the globe and all of a sudden we have a productive human race rather than 2/3 of us starving, dying of thirst or killing each other for resources.
This is why I get so angry with the false science being manufactured over global warming, the science is flawed. The data is being manipulated to match computer models, instead of the computer models producing data to work with. Future generations will likely laugh at us, or cry that science has been so corrupted and the real profit, the profit for mankind, is overlooked for a problem that does not exist.
Worst case scenario, if global warming is real, surely somewhere to make fresh water would be helpful, somewhere to get food, also helpful. The science behind these plants needs to be exploited quickly and efficiently so the poorest can prosper. A few billion spent on this will be a whole lot better than a few billion spent on daft projects thought up by corrupt politicians.
I also have intelligent solutions to the world's energy crisis and a method to recycle existing nuclear waste that gives us thermal energy, but unfortunately I'm not a scientist, why would anyone be interested?