The Future of Water Get out of the shower already! May 7th, 2008 E-mail to a friend
When I was a little kid, I’d let the water run like it was going out of
style. This pained my conscientious, compost-happy parents, who would
barge into the bathroom and turn the faucet off with dramatic
exasperation. I wasn’t trying to be wasteful. It was just one of those
strange, psychosomatic habits that, in hindsight, smacks not
necessarily of apathy but of a fantasy of limitlessness.
At
some point in the early nineties, my father, an Awakening Consumer long
before it was fashionable, outfitted all of the bathrooms in our house
with low-flow showerheads. These were ingenious little contraptions
that turned my wonderfully hedonistic rainstorm into a vapid drizzle.
My father was delighted with his efficiency. I was tortured by memories
of the good life.
I have to be honest—embarrassingly honest—even
right now, even amidst seeing images of drought in Somalia and reading
about the water crisis shattering middle-class life in India, I still
have a tough time seeing water as a luxury. I’ll chalk it up to human
nature. You see, there’s nothing mysterious or sexy about water. It’s
always there for me when I need it; I turn on a faucet and it pours its
heart out to me. And so, ever drawn to the unavailable, I lose
interest. But for more than 1.1 billion people worldwide who lack
access to clean water, those two hydrogens and one oxygen are
effectively playing hard to get.
In typical capitalist fashion,
the market has romanticized water, making us believe that it’s about
more than just hydration, creating a myth of sorts. Take FIJI, which is
essentially the Gisele Bundchen of bottled waters. Intoxicatingly
exotic—its proposition of “artesian” redefined what we expect from
water—FIJI is ubiquitous enough to fool us into believing that it’s the
girl next door, but good ecological sense says that this water is a
no-no. As for efforts from the likes of Ethos, H to O (Help to Others)
and Belu to redeem the evil of bottled water consumption with the
goodness of global clean water charities, it’s a nice idea, but all
that bottling and shipping just perpetuates climate change, and as the
world gets warmer the thirsty get thirstier.
In the future,
water-rich countries will capitalize on thirst and the world will be
wooed by a new buzzword: hydropolitics. It’s already happening. Just a
couple of weeks ago, Barcelona made moves to import water from France.
Turkey, Syria and Iraq have long disputed control of the
Tigris-Euphrates water basin. India and Pakistan are continually at
odds over the Indus River. China controversially diverted parts of the
Yangtze River northwards, to quench the overdrawn Yellow River.
Tajikistan’s interest in creating dams to sell hydroelectric power
jeopardizes water flow to Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.
Will we see Brazil, Canada and Russia selling water to Yemen? Or, quite
possibly, trading it for oil?
The chase has only just begun. By
2025, two thirds of the world’s population will face water shortages.
Consider the fact that, each year, the planet has 77 million more
mouths to feed; then consider the fact that it takes a liter of water
to produce just one calorie of food, and things start to look pretty
desperate.
Unfortunately, we can’t escape the basic
physiological need for water—our bodies will literally dry up without
it—and so, unlike the energy crisis, there’s no such thing as
alternative sources. There are, however, some alternative approaches,
including grey water systems, which if used for toilet flushing can
result in a 30% reduction in water use for the average household;
rainwater harvesting, which, while it’s a mandatory requirement for all
new construction in Bermuda, is actually restricted in Colorado as it’s
argued that capturing rainwater is technically “stealing” from the
communal watershed; and desalination, which is actually greater in
theory (hey, there’s no shortage of salt water on earth, so let’s just
take the salt out—okay!) than it is in practice, as it requires massive
amounts of energy and creates industrial waste. One of the more
interesting concepts is waterbag technology, the large-scale transport
of fresh water hinging upon a simple physical truth: fresh water floats
in salt water. The “Spragg Bag” waterbag uses a patented zipper to
connect waterbags as if they were railroad cars. The water train? Maybe
it’s coming.
But none of these are solutions. And the reality is
that there isn’t any immediate or clear solution—not when the problem
is rooted in insurmountable, finite numbers. It’s simple math: there
are too many of us, and not enough water to go around.
So what’s a human to do? What’s an Awakening Consumer to do?
Perhaps
the answer to the future is a return to the past. There was a time when
primal needs weren’t compromised by convenience or desire, and survival
itself was swoon-worthy. It may sound radical, but I think there’s
something appealing about the idea of life as we know it—our beautiful,
self-important, charmed lifestyle—becoming extinct. Real allure lies in
the promise of just being.
Sources: World Bank, World Health Organization, Reuters, Storming Media
by Lauren Mann
Lauren is an Account Director and writer for Green Team USA.
