Why talk water?
Because there are more and more places on earth where fresh water is in
short supply. A solution in Great Britain during Margaret Thatcher’s time
turned all waters over to corporations which priced it as you would oil. The
thinking was that just like the Carbon Tax reduces fossil fuel consumption,
water as a saleable commodity would cut waste and make desperately-needed
upgrades that the government couldn't afford. This makes some sense, except that distributing water for profit
introduces as many troublesome
issues as it solves.
In Australia,
for instance, water is piped from the wetter north to the drier south and
farmers and other enterprises that need water have to buy it. A megalitre
(one-million litres) of water will cost you as much as $700.00. Also, a kind of
“stock market” has arisen where people speculate on rising and falling prices
and buy and sell paper units of water for profit.
Canada
presently has a surplus of fresh water and vegetable-growing California has
been known to speculate on buying some of this surplus by, for instance,
diverting some of the Fraser River water southward. There are, of course,
corporations and investors who salivate at the thought of getting into a water
market.
I suggest watching Lords of Water on the
Knowledge Network (access on line at Knowledge.ca)
and look for future posts in what I’m calling a Let’s Talk Water series.
#2 will be titled, What is Water, Actually?
I’ve been thinking about this! I think that we as Canadians need to inform ourselves about the importance of conserving water. As someone who has always enjoyed water in abundance, I find this a little bit difficult to understand.
ReplyDeleteA friend of mine pointed out that it was unnecessary to rinse the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, and that it was quite capable of doing a very good job. She also keeps her hot water heater temperature very high, so not much water is required to run through the taps before you enjoy nice hot water. Very hot.
She was telling me the percentage of drinkable water that we send down the drain. I don’t remember it, but it was enough to make me change my dishwashing and showering habits.
So with that, and reducing toilet flushing to only the absolutely necessary situation, I could greatly reduce my water usage.
So what? Will this conserve any water? Will it put the ice back into the glacier that created our mighty rivers? Will it save me some utilities costs?
In any case, it just makes sense to not take more than you need of anything. I wonder who else I should share this with…
Thanks for these helpful comments, Karen.
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