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Consumerism threatens water supply
By Wan Lixin |
March 6, 2010, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
"AQUA Shock: The Water Crisis in America" by Susan J. Marks caught my attention because America easily impresses one as a land of unlimited resources.
In some American hotels, when one takes a shower he/she must let the shower nozzle spout nonstop, because the system is designed in a way that discourages any saving attempt.
On a six-hour transcontinental flight from New York to Los Angeles this January, I could not but marvel at an expanse of water in a lake that I first mistook for the sea, and the vastness of American arable land.
Given America's relatively smaller population compared to China, it is hard to believe that water scarcity is severe in the western US and a problem in some other parts of the nation.
According to "Aqua Shock," the US General Accounting Office reports at least 36 states expect to declare water shortages by 2013.
American thirst for fresh water has important ramifications at home and abroad.
On the domestic front, it is indicative of several developments.
As the author Marks observes, "The reality is that the United States has tapped into, sucked up and maxed out its once abundant and replenishable supplies of fresh water on the surface and underground."
A less benevolent statement would be: "...(The Americans), with their intemperate use of American bounty, have squandered the forests and silted and poisoned the waters -- and still do so ..." (Frank Talbot, in "Seeds of Change.")
Contrary to popular belief, this destruction of natural resources is not primarily driven by American thirst for water as a vital nutrient, but by American's destructive lifestyle.
While the population of the US increased 100 percent from 1950 to 1980, its water usage grew 600 percent.
This reflects less the biological thirst of changing demographics than the psychological thirst for good life, as symbolized by new goods and activities made or sustained by energy.
The energy industry, according to the book, consumes 195 billion gallons of water daily to run coal-fired, oil-fired and nuclear power plants.
Producing one gallon of gasoline requires five gallons of water and making a gallon of corn-based ethanol takes 980 gallons of water.
Even from a biological point of view, people in the industrial world become increasingly addicted to bottled or canned drinks that all entail energy costs in making, packaging, and transporting them.
It is misleading to focus only on waste such as water pipe leakage, but ignore the consumerist lifestyle market capitalism takes pains to globalize.
The propagation of this lifestyle and the perception of it as "civilized" -- ultimately driven by capitalists' craving for markets -- is at the root of the depletion of earth's natural resources.
For Chinese the water scarcity/pollution issue is of even more strategic significance.
As China emerges as the dominant global manufacturer mainly owing to its edge in cheap labor and resources, there is an urgent need to reassess the value of Chinese resources in this most populous country.
Globalized trade can be seen partly as export of dramatically underpriced natural resources (all non-renewable), in exchange for a paper currency or goods that are necessarily overvalued.
It can be debated whether the manufacturers have the rights to squander the natural resources, while polluting the water and air that are temporarily in our stewardship.
In some American hotels, when one takes a shower he/she must let the shower nozzle spout nonstop, because the system is designed in a way that discourages any saving attempt.
On a six-hour transcontinental flight from New York to Los Angeles this January, I could not but marvel at an expanse of water in a lake that I first mistook for the sea, and the vastness of American arable land.
Given America's relatively smaller population compared to China, it is hard to believe that water scarcity is severe in the western US and a problem in some other parts of the nation.
According to "Aqua Shock," the US General Accounting Office reports at least 36 states expect to declare water shortages by 2013.
American thirst for fresh water has important ramifications at home and abroad.
On the domestic front, it is indicative of several developments.
As the author Marks observes, "The reality is that the United States has tapped into, sucked up and maxed out its once abundant and replenishable supplies of fresh water on the surface and underground."
A less benevolent statement would be: "...(The Americans), with their intemperate use of American bounty, have squandered the forests and silted and poisoned the waters -- and still do so ..." (Frank Talbot, in "Seeds of Change.")
Contrary to popular belief, this destruction of natural resources is not primarily driven by American thirst for water as a vital nutrient, but by American's destructive lifestyle.
While the population of the US increased 100 percent from 1950 to 1980, its water usage grew 600 percent.
This reflects less the biological thirst of changing demographics than the psychological thirst for good life, as symbolized by new goods and activities made or sustained by energy.
The energy industry, according to the book, consumes 195 billion gallons of water daily to run coal-fired, oil-fired and nuclear power plants.
Producing one gallon of gasoline requires five gallons of water and making a gallon of corn-based ethanol takes 980 gallons of water.
Even from a biological point of view, people in the industrial world become increasingly addicted to bottled or canned drinks that all entail energy costs in making, packaging, and transporting them.
It is misleading to focus only on waste such as water pipe leakage, but ignore the consumerist lifestyle market capitalism takes pains to globalize.
The propagation of this lifestyle and the perception of it as "civilized" -- ultimately driven by capitalists' craving for markets -- is at the root of the depletion of earth's natural resources.
For Chinese the water scarcity/pollution issue is of even more strategic significance.
As China emerges as the dominant global manufacturer mainly owing to its edge in cheap labor and resources, there is an urgent need to reassess the value of Chinese resources in this most populous country.
Globalized trade can be seen partly as export of dramatically underpriced natural resources (all non-renewable), in exchange for a paper currency or goods that are necessarily overvalued.
It can be debated whether the manufacturers have the rights to squander the natural resources, while polluting the water and air that are temporarily in our stewardship.
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