Water World

Thursday, 17 August 2006

There's something I just don't get. People never seem happy. Either they're bitching about Global Warming, which either does or doesn't exist, depending on how you vote, apparently, or they're whinging about Population growth, density, and impact. And now water. So which is it going to be--is there going to be Global Warming, where the seas will rise, reducing land mass, increasing population density (but probably also wiping out the type of people who love to live near flooding rivers no matter what, or refuse to be evacuated from Volcano zones. . . .), but probably also producing bucket-loads of rain to fall back to earth in freshwater monsoons, OR, is there to be a doubling of water usage in the near future as third-world countries achieve the American Dream and Corporations expand their non-sustainable ways of consumption and pollution, creating wholesale water shortages and hording as the population blows out of all proportion, in a toxic, barren, desert wasteland?

According to this Gristmill article both things will happen with equally disasterous results--in short we're fucked. But hey, before we get all gloom and doom lets look at this from a different perspective. Normally I'm all down on Lawyers. I used to think they screwed the world up beyond belief. Now I've rather shifted my opinion. Firstly as to water useage. America needs to get online with some serious water conservation efforts anyway. Now is too late, but better late than never. Local beauraucracies need to pave the way for rain-water collection systems, grey water recycling and ways of reducing run-off. That's a start. We also need to more aggressively limit corporate growth in terms of polluting ground water--they should be made to recycle or collect or?? some percentage (above 45%) of the water they use. Farmers need to be rewarded for creative solutions to crop irrigation and not charged for water-rights which only restrict growth and don't encourage correct usage of resources. Now as to the rest of man's social ills. We can't blame this stuff on the Lawyers, first and foremost, although they do play a part--after all who allowed the patenting of life forms? No, as the linked article show, and so many more examples of things which have gone wrong or are snafu'd today, we can lay all the blame evenly at the feet of the SCIENTISTS.

"But they've given us so much", you say. Haven't they cured diseases, created cleaner, better power sources, researched ways to heal and extend life, etc? Indeed they have. But should they have? Most scientist are fine. They walk down their chosen path doing great things. It is when they veer off the path in search of intangibles and secret sciences for the government that we get into trouble. See the comments I left about this article on meat grown in labs. . . . Left unchecked Scientist come up with new and better ways of wasting money on "research" which is unproven and which testing creates all sorts of environmental disasters, at what overall cost? They've given us longer lifespans. But did anyone ask us if we wanted to live longer if it still meant that we would be bed-ridden, drug-addicted fools if we chose that path? They have extended our life, but not given us any assurances of quality near the end. Likewise, space exploration, genetic engineering, altering weather patterns, radioactive technologies, robotics. Cool, perhaps, exciting. But most of us get along fine without it. In 20 years have there been significant enough breakthroughs to warrant the amount of money spent, pollution created, strange side-effects or spurious alter-sciences created? I don't think so. Most of the time you hear about how science failed us. How something went wrong. Or how scientist have given over common-sense for the sake of "science" and the greater good--whether those of us in the greater good want it or not.

Yes, we can fear Global Warming, Rising Tides, Changing Weather Patterns, Global Drought and a host of other ills. But for my money there is nothing scarier than the unabated, unwatched March of the Scientists.