Reposted from The Yellow Times.
John Brand, D.Min., J.D.
Fact 1: On average, adults can live without water for about seven days. After that, they die.
Fact 2: More people are becoming aware that soon, in a couple of decades or so, the world will experience a critical shortage of potable water.
Recently, I attended a conference titled “Water for People and the Environment” at Southwest Texas State University, San Marcos, Texas, sponsored by the Sierra Club. Mary Ann Dickinson, Exec. Dir., California Urban Water Conservation Council, was one of the main speakers. She started her presentation by projecting a chart indicating that in about 20 years, the population of the State of California is expected to double. She noted that a similar increase in population might be projected for Texas.
She then devoted the main portion of her speech to water conservation. If everyone were to install a 1.6 gallon flush toilet, X million gallons of water would be saved. If everyone were to put in a certain showerhead, additional millions of gallons of water would be preserved. The list went on. It showed how a change in our behavior about water usage would save seas of water. During the question period I asked, “Given all the conservation measures you have outlined, would enough water be saved to sustain the population of California twenty years from now?” Her answer was immediate and to the point, “Of course not.”
In my thoughtful and considerate ways, I flashed back, “Why are we wasting our time talking about conservation when that is not the solution?” Inasmuch as most of the folks in attendance were water conservation folks, my statement got a rather icy response.
The program was scheduled from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. At 2:45 p.m. “Desalination: The Ultimate Solution? A Tool in the Toolbox?” was the listed topic. That was the only presentation in which I was really interested. Regretfully, I was not in the mood to listen to three hours worth of speeches on Water Conservation when I thought that topic is basically beating a dead dog to death. I am all for conservation. However, that is not the long-range solution. At my age in life, I don’t want to spend time discussing things that are essentially a waste of time.
It is rather interesting that more and more articles are appearing, at least in our Texas papers, about the coming water shortage. During our recent gubernatorial election, the Republican candidate even made one reference about that problem. His comment was not very surprising, “Privatize water resources!” This message is from the folks who enabled Kenny Boy to rip off Californians to the tune of a few billion dollars, broke thousands and thousand of his employees by his stock manipulations, and bilked millions of investors with his fiscal policy. The idea of privatizing water resources comes from the same folks who “corporatized” our medical delivery system and are making it a disaster area. These are the same folks trying to fix the prescription drug problem with band-aids but refuse to look at the real source of the dilemma: the raptorial practices of the drug manufacturers. I am not going to trust those folks to privatize the most essential life-sustaining resource.
Wealthy people are already buying up water rights! Boone Pickens, one of our oil tycoons, reportedly is spending big bucks to secure water rights that he, one would infer, can then sell at a profit to thirsty folks. The Austin American Statesman, Nov. 16, 2002, reported the formation of a consortium buying up water rights in Kinney County for resale to municipalities in our State. The list of folks involved in this organization reads like clones of St. Francis of Assisi, Albert Schweitzer, and Father Damian. I am kidding, of course. The consortium is composed of folks whose god is money, whose pledge of allegiance is to their R.O.I., and whose professional mantra chants, “Profit, Profit, Profit—at any cost.” Maybe I am pegging them wrong. Maybe they all went to a Revival meeting in Kenny County, got converted and now have nothing but the welfare of our citizens in their hearts. If I am wrong in imputing totally self-centered motives to them, I beg forgiveness.
Now, fast forward to the Texas Legislature. It is endowed by its creator with unalienable rights to promote the interests of moneyed special interests, to put public welfare on the back burner, and to obstinately refuse looking at long-range consequences of its actions. Being true to the God who has conferred these rights upon them, our duly elected representatives are getting ready in the coming session to legislate the distribution of Texas’s dwindling water resources. This will be a turf war between competing powers seeking to gain control of the little bit of water that is available. Right now, the City of Austin is in a turf war between its interests to certain water rights and competing claims by the Lower Colorado River Authority. In an open statement, the City of Austin Mayor and the City Manager declared that the LCRA is a “competitor” and therefore does not have to be informed of actions by the City prior to the filing of a lawsuit. The handwriting is on the wall. There is to be no general water policy serving the masses of the people. The contest will be between entities seeking to make a buck from water rights. With the present bunch in power, may the best man win. Of course, the best man is the one with the most money to direct our legislature in the paths of righteousness in their name!
Each individual entity seeks to attain or preserve a territorial right. Attorneys will argue their positions endlessly and submit humongous fees while millions will be dying of thirst all around. If you think I am painting a scenario of things that will never happen, think again. Today, about 1 billion people in 32 countries lack access to clean water. Every eight seconds, a child dies from drinking contaminated water. Eighty-five million people are added to the planet every year and per capita use of water is doubling every 20 years. Industrial toxic dumping as well as urban and farming pollution are damaging surface water far more rapidly than fresh water can be mined from underground aquifers. Conservation and distribution of water rights among competing entities are not addressing the underlying problems. There simply will not be enough potable water within the lifetime of most people living today.
What is the solution?
Of course, it is in the consideration of the rhyme, “Water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink.” Most of the surface of our globe is seawater. There are billions and billions and billions of acre-feet of it. So, we can install little gills in our gullets to filter out the salt in the seawater as we drink it. No! I just thought this sounded cute. If fish can extract oxygen through their gills, it seems to me we should be able to somehow get rid of the salt as we slake our thirst. Well, chalk up another design error in the human species.
Of course, the answer lies in desalination. I know, I know! It’s expensive. It’s technologically impractical. It’s not cost-effective. Who in the world cares about any of that when your throat is parched, every cell in our body cries out for water, and every single muscle fiber in your body has shrunk to the size of a thin piece of thread? Of course, the sub-humane corporate Croesuses of our civilization will tell you desalination is not feasible while they are amassing the legal, but immoral, rights to more and more groundwater.
Yes, desalination is expensive at this point in time. Do you remember some twenty or so years ago, a cell phone sold for several hundred dollars? Now, they practically give them away! In size they have gone from a good-sized WW II walkie-talkie to a minuscule gadget fitting almost inside your ear. I remember when computers required a special room, special air-conditioning, and a technician who went around making sure none of the vacuum tubes had burned out. I probably have more power in my desktop than had an old IBM 1420.
Sure there are technical problems but the missing link in the chain is the will to do it! I wonder if these money-hungry, opportunistic human-like dinosaurs have ever thought what they will do with all their lucre in a world populated mostly by the dead? Their intent to corner the water of the world is as macabre as the field of the dead they will create.
Probably the biggest problem is not the desalination of the ocean water, although that is, I admit, considerable. The main problem is to have the energy to move the water from the seashore to a country’s interior. So, now we have uncovered the second part of the equation. It takes loads of energy to deliver the water to the consumers. There is not enough oil and gas in the world to accomplish that task! Desalination also requires technology converting existing energy, other than gas and oil, to save our species. Again, the oil and gas folks say it can’t be done. However, they are not totally truthful with us. There is enough solar, wind, geothermal, and wave energy to turn the world into a Paradise. Again, the naysayers will raise a hue and cry about expenses and technological problems. If we can land a man on the moon, build a space station, clone a sheep, develop a gizmo enabling the blind to see, and analyze the structure of DNA, we can sure enough solve the energy problem so we can desalinate and deliver fresh water to the people of the world.
Of course, when Texas State Rep. Tom Craddick, the expected next Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, owns 3 percent of the Kenney County water supply, any move towards desalination is pretty much dead at the starting gate. Rep. Craddock has stated that he would divest himself of his water interests in Kenney County. It’s easy to put your stuff in a blind trust. “How, Mr. Craddock, will you divest your ideas about private corporate greed and take an open-minded view of the problem before us?” is my question. As long as State and Federal Legislatures are crammed with satraps owned by the oil and gas lobby, all to what we have to look forward in about 20 or 25 years are the desiccated corpses of our fellow citizens.
Ezekiel 27 tells the story of the people of Israel who lost their faith in God and had reduced their heritage to dry bones. In the tale, God promises to pour out his spirit upon the skeletons and restore them to vitality and life. Regretfully, there is no God who will bring water to a parched earth. The answer is in our hands. An old story comes to mind. An impudent youth thought of a way to make the village sage look foolish. The lad caught a sparrow and held it in his loose fist. He then confronted the wise man with the question, “Old man, is the bird alive or is it dead?” If the answer was, “it is dead,” the youth planned to open his fist and let the bird fly away. If the old man said the bird is alive, the youth intended to crush it and throw it at the feet of the sage. When confronting the elder with this question, the reply was, “As you will, my son, as you will.”
With our technological resources, our brainpower, our experience, the whole issue boils down to the same proposition, “As we will, as we will.” Does our will point to privatization and death or does it point to social responsibility and life?
John Brand is a Purple Heart, Combat Infantry veteran of World War II. He received his Juris Doctor degree at Northwestern University and a Master of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry at Southern Methodist University. He served as a Methodist minister for 19 years, was Vice President, Birkman & Associates, Industrial Psychologists, and concluded his career as Director, Organizational and Human Resources, Warren-King Enterprises, an independent oil and gas company. He is the author of Shaking the Foundations. You are welcome to write John Brand.
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