Technology

to give you an idea of the level of efficiency we're aiming for desalination with the latest tech rn, this paper from 2020* is saying that these news techs are shooting for under 3 Kwh/m^3^ power usage. so we would need a bare minimum 158x reduction in power usage just to match the most experimental of desalination techs. Now, it doesnt need to get quite this low to match desalination because of the problem with dealing with all the waste products from desalinating waste water, but it still means we need to get pretty close to that. so, what could be done to make this practical? a leap in tech akin to the level of progress we've seen in semiconductors, which seems very unlikely to me at this point in time. so, we will needs at bare minimum, 2 or 3 decades, if not centuries (if it's possible at all) to match that.

*I admit this is just one paper I found in like 10 seconds of searching, but this matches with other stuff I've read about desalination vs de-humidification in the past. still, maybe we'll all be super surprised and there's some secret to easily drawing water out of the atmosphere that we're all missing and we'll discover and it will usher in a new age of easily accessible fresh water.