Water, water…
Thursday, 27 September 2007
Seems like our future, maybe the future of life “as we know it” on this planet, is wrapped up in water. Gotta have water.
Gotta have air, too, but it seems that we can survive long enough to reproduce when we live with polluted air. For example, consider smokers, who deliberately inhale highly polluted air (although other airborne contaminants are more dangerous than the typical modern US ciggy), and modern urban China. No lack of reproductive success with either of those populations.
Food, well, yup, that’s a necessity. But we get our food primarily from agribusiness. And agriculture is without a doubt dependent on water, so our food sources depend on water. too.
By water, I don’t mean simply potable water, or rainfall, or even groundwater. But the big, capital W water: that is, water from anywhere.
If I decided to go into the legal profession, I’d specialize in legal issues associated with water. It ties into human rights, civil rights, group vs individual rights, ownership, distribution control, the whole shebang.
I’m thinking, in fact, that the folks who are specialists in other resources (petroleum products, scarce metals and minerals) are already working to corner markets and build in legal loopholes to give Them advantages in the economics of water. I also figure that The Angler and his ilk have been getting laws changed to help those folks, and that we’ll only find that out sometime in the mist-free future….
At first glance, I was mystified today when I examined our water/sewer bill and discovered we pay over twice as much for sewage (based on how much water we consume, so the volumes are—assumed to be—the same) than for water. But then I figured, I suppose it costs more to make sure sewage doesn’t contaminate, tada!, water, than it does simply to deliver clean water to my house.
Next topic to ponder: how better to use graywater (more on this in the southwest than these parts: examples from Arizona and New Mexico), a practice promoted in a leaflet included with our water/sewer bill. Someone who goes to the trouble of toting their shower water out to plants was lauded. We use our dish water on outdoor plants, but the shower water goes down the drain (for now). As I understood it (maybe this is now incorrect: note to self, check on this), we couldn’t directly pipe our graywater into the yard, but we can carry it out there. Some people use graywater (sometimes greywater) for flushing, and I guess that may not be a violation.
Rather twisted logic there, no?
So, would the agribusiness water demand drop if we consumed significantly less grain (takes lots of water to grow and process) replacing it with non-starchy vegetables (as diet specialists recommend would improve our health)?—veggies sold only minimally processed?