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Water conservation has become quite the trend over the past couple of years. What really helped the trend takeoff was the water shortage in California. This kind of brought to everyone's attention the fact that there really isn't an infinite amount of water and we are seeing that in a very tangible way. In this week's article, I want to give my opinion on the world's state of water.
The Truth
The truth is that there is a finite amount of drinking water on this earth as it stands right now. The problem is, our means of getting water are depleting rapidly. This will eventually lead us to find new or more efficient ways to produce clean water, or else we face the consequences. Farther down the road we will likely have to rely on glacier water or even desalinization.
The Problem
The problem I have with the water conservation movement is that the issue presented above is being disproportionately blown up. Yes, it will be a problem down the road, but people making a huge deal out of an issue that has little to no effect on us right now. Some people are so consumed by this idea of water conservation that they recycle used water within their home. Not to say that they bathe in the same water twice, but intra-home water recycling seems unsanitary, labor intensive, and barely rewarding.
The Solution
In the short term, the solution to this problem is to have a healthy respect for the fact that water is a finite resource. That means being mindful of how much water you use, but at the same time not going to extreme measures to save water. What needs to be realized when talking about earth's depleting water resources is that only like 3% of the earth's water is able to be drank. The other 97% is sitting righ there waiting for us to figure out an efficient way to turn it into drinking water. With the extreme exponential increase of technology within the last century, it would be logical to think that in the near future we could come up with solutions for our water dilemma.
