« Study Says Asia Leads Global Economic Super-cycle | Main | 5 Drivers of Google's Engineering Ethic »
The Big Thirst: Can Industry Solve Our Water Problems Before It's Too Late? |
June 21, 2011 |
|
Posted by Don Dunnington at June 21, 2011 05:17 PM |
|
Charles Fishman says we all think we know water, but we don't really understand water. In fact, our thinking about water, he holds, is sometimes dangerously wrong.
All the world's cultures and religions and languages are filled to the brim with images and stories of water. In the developed countries, clean drinking water is so easy to obtain and so cheap to use that we never give it a thought. Even in the desert, we can turn a tap and water flows freely into our glasses, fills our tubs and swimming pools, and waters our lawns and gardens and golf courses.
Fishman worries that this seeming abundance of water, and our resulting blindness to pricing and deploying water more efficiently, will likely lead to catastrophic water shortages.
Around the World of Water
Fishman seeks to cure our ignorance of water with a lengthy review of water facts and science, and a globe-hopping tour of water and how we use and misuse it in industrial, agricultural, commercial and residential applications.
In a visit to IBM's huge chip-making plant in Burlington, Vermont, we learn of the huge amount of super-pure water they must produce to create their computer chips. We see how they have learned over time to think of water as resource that can be managed much more efficiently, significantly reducing both water and energy costs. But even with all their savings this one IBM plant still uses 3.2 million gallons of water a day.
Industry and agriculture are prodigious users of water:
- Fishman notes one ton of steel takes 300 tons of water
- 49 percent of water use in the US is for power plants
- It takes 250 gallons of water per person per day to generate enough electricity for a single home
- It takes five liters of water to produce a two-liter bottle of coke
- In water-short Australia, a single wool processing factory uses 380,000 gallons of water daily
- Also in Australia, a single farmer needs 6 billion liters of water to grow rice on his 10,450 acres
The good news about water is that it is never destroyed or used up. Fishman writes that we're drinking the same water today that the dinosaurs drank. The challenge is to use water efficiently, and to find affordable ways to make it available where it is most needed. Fishman appears to favor greater use of market pricing so that everyone has an incentive to use water effectively. He cites examples, such as the IBM plant in Vermont, where industry has been a leader in developing technology and procedures that help us use water more efficiently.
"Except for air and water," he notes, "…we pay for almost everything else in life that is essential; we entrust everything, from electricity to hospitals, to private companies." But Fishman worries a few pages later that "…it's also vital not to let business get so far ahead that we cede the future of water to commercial interests."
Despite his concerns about how far to trust business, Fishman seems most optimistic about industry's ability to create technical solutions that can maintain our lifeline to water. "Technology is making it easier to solve almost any water problem," he writes. He sees the real problem will be getting people and political leaders to recognize the problems, and understand and accept the technical solutions before it's too late.
As Fishman points out, "…running out of water is like slipping off the edge of a cliff—it's hard to be saved." Fishman wants us to save our water supplies before it's too late for the whole of civilization to be rescued.
- The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman is published by Free Press (400 pages). I bought it as a Kindle eBook on Amazon for $12.99.
Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator
