What if one day you turned the faucet, but nothing came out? We take it for granted that we can get as much clean, potable water as we need, on demand. Most of us are blithely unaware of how fragile our freshwater resources truly are.
In order to raise consciousness about threats to our water supplies, several environmental journalists and science writers have written recent books exposing the nature and extent of the concerns, as well as potential solutions.
The Worlds of Water
To appreciate the scope of the global water supply and issues surrounding its sustainability, readers may consult The Atlas of Water by Maggie Black and Jannet King. There are six sections in this book -- “A Finite Resource,” “Environmental Pressures,” “Water for Living,” “Water for Economic Production,” “Damaged Water,” and “Water for the Future” – each of which consists of a half dozen or so brief essays, with vivid maps, charts, and photographs. The coverage is broad, not deep, but it serves for a comprehensive, one volume introduction to the subject.
As Brian Fagan demonstrates in Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind, reliable access to water resources has been a requisite of human civilization from their origins. Fagan proposes that there are three historic eras of humanity’s relationship to water. Until the Industrial revolution, owing to its scarcity and its unpredictability, water was treated as a divine gift and thus was central to many rituals and belief systems. With technology, water came to be viewed as a commodity, which could be exploited for economic and even military benefits. Finally, today we are slowly coming to realize that water is a resource, which must be managed sustainably.
Steve Solomon provides a similar, big picture perspective over time with his Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. At over 600 pages, this work is expansive and thorough. Though most of the content is historical and international, the author concludes in the present day with his urgent assertion that water is replacing oil as society’s most critical resource. There are haves and have-nots where water is concerned, and future conflict – even war – is likely.
The Future of America’s Freshwater
In America, the first popular book to examine water issues was Marc Reisner’s Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water, which was adapted into a four part PBS documentary. Three recent books update that work by looking specifically at how people are using and abusing this country’s water assets.
In The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty First Century, Alex Prud’homme embarks upon a hydrologic road trip, telling the stories of endangered water supplies from New York City and its $6 billion dollar water tunnel, to the disaster-scarred neighborhoods in New Orleans where the levees failed, across drought-strafed areas of the Southwest, and all the way up to the Alaskan peninsula, where pollution can be found even in remote areas. Several key questions arise from his observations, such as: Is clean water a commodity?, Do people have a right to water?, and What will it take to ensure that we have enough?
Similarly, Robert Glennon’s Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About It delivers example after example of America’s profligate use of water, from the billions of gallons that it takes to transform Las Vegas from a desert into a tourist destination, to the wasteful thousands of gallons that are used to synthesize just one gallon of supposedly eco-friendly biofuel.
Protecting Water Rights
The increasing scarcity of water resources is both a global and a local problem. Cynthia Barnett’s Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis argues that we must develop a water ethic based upon science and public awareness. As she sees it, the roots to the problem are in individual behaviors and attitudes, which are based upon benign neglect. Awareness of the problem is thus necessary for local action, which can add up to make a global difference.
Likewise, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water by Maude Barlow provides a clarion call for a populist movement in defense of water rights. As Canadian activist Barlow envisions it, a successful crusade must have far-reaching populist support in order to achieve water justice. While she argues that communities must gain local support, the ultimate objective should be nothing less than a global reform of laws that permit governments and corporations to exploit resources for their own profits. This book is a follow-up to her bestselling 2002 book, Blue Gold.
Whatever actions we may take, individually or as society, the relationship between human beings and water will remain complex, and probably disputed. As Charles Fishman observes in The Big Thirst, “Water service is so reliable that it has become inconspicuous…” and “the bad news is that the invisibility of water in our lives isn’t good for water. You can’t appreciate what you don’t understand.” If there is one critical message that each of these books contains, it is that this complacency cannot continue, for water is too rare and valuable to be neglected.
Sources:
Black, Maggie and Jannet King. The Atlas of Water: Mapping the World’s Most Critical Resource, 2nd ed. Univ. of CA Press, October 2009
Fagan, Brian. Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind. Bloomsbury, June 2011.
Solomon, Steve. Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization. January 2010.
Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American West and its Disappearing Water. Viking 1986.
Prud’homme, Alex. The Fate of Freshwater in the Twenty First Century. Scribner, June 2011.
Glennon, Robert. Unquenchable: America’s Water Crisis and What to Do About. Island Press, September 2010 (pbk).
Barnett, Cynthia. Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis. Beacon Press, September 2011.
Barlow, Maude. The Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water. New Press, May 2009 (pbk).
Barlow, Maude. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water. New Press, 2002.
Fishman, Charles. The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Flow of Water. Free Press, April 2011. quote can be found on page 4.
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