Whot? No beer?? Dont be daft man, we gotta keep the amber fluid flowing!
Whilst everybody is talking about the shortage of potable water for human consumption, nobody seems to show an interest in how water is being wasted. if there is a water shortage then blame it on the ordinary, you and me, consumer who is accused of being wasteful.
What about Industry and the huge waste of water there? To take an example: oil refineries. How many of these simply dump the fresh water they use, now contaminated, instead of recycling the water? If the actions of the local refinery, which according to a recent report uses 2 BILLION liters of fresh water per year (whilst the rest of us are on water restrictions), is any indication once the water has been through the system once it is simply dumped in the ocean.
Yet these refineries generate an enormous amount of heat that could and should be used for desalination purposes.
Why are we faced with water shortages? Because our politicians have been too lazy, too stupid, too intent on privatising everything to ensure that essential life-necessary resources are adequately available.
You think that big business is squeezing the maximum amount of dollars out of the community through high petrol prices? hah, wait till they make a concerted move in a take-over of water resources (in some countries this has already happened) and see how they'll squeeze us then. We are being set-up, again, for huge water profiteering by the corporate sector (which, incidentally, is the biggest waster of water).
What a downer, time for a drop of that amber fluid me thinks.
There may not be enough water for the both of us. According to the federal govermment, thirty-six states face water shortages, now and for years to come. The Associated Press story contained a fact that surprised me. The U.S. already has over a thousand desalination plants. The largest is in Florida. It’s the Tampa Bay plant which has a troubled history including three bankruptcies and a lawsuit, but it should be fully operational next year. We’ve already blogged about a large desalination plant to be built in Australia. They hope to power that one with wind energy.
The AP quotes numerous private and public officials to the effect that water will stop being cheap and new efficiencies will be called for. Water and the ways it is used and purified for drinking or industry are very attractive to VC investment and technological innovators. Just recently ZDnet reported on a new membrane being developed to clean seawater for human use.
This hasn’t been lost on some folks with big money. Heather blogged about IBM investing in a water tech company. And how tech can make irrigation more efficient. Good news as agriculture is major user of water in many parts of the world, espiecially in the the U.S.’s leading farm state, California.
There are private equity funds like Aqua International Partners. Khosla Ventures has an interest in a membrane tech start-up. And in Texas, there’s GeoPure also working on water recovering and recycling technologies.
Forget melting ice caps, rising sea levels, too much CO2 in the atmosphere, raging petroleum prices. You want a frightening stat? The U.S. uses a half million gallons of fresh water, annually, for each American. And I think I could go longer without gasoline than I could water. I still reel when I review the stat that only 2% of the Earth’s water is potable. This strikes me as a serious crisis. You know how much water it takes to brew beer?
Well there are over 35 billion gallons of beer made annually on this planet, to keep things moving forward. And 90% of that is water! Think about it too long and you won’t sleep easy tonight.
