Water World

In my opinion, the section Jefferey Sachs wrote about water is the most mind blowing chapter of his entire book. The idea as to what to write about for Jefferey Sachs’ book hit me during my 25 minute post football practice hot shower. Living in a well off part of California, people can’t help but take water for granted. When push comes to shove I believe the saying “money makes the world go round” takes the back seat to “water makes the world go round”, because you do not need money to survive, but water is essential. If my family disappeared, if someone stole my identity and liquidated all of my assets, and all of my possessions were destroyed, I could still survive, my life expectancy probably wouldn’t even drop much from a setback like that. I would still probably make it into my 70’s. However, you put a million dollars in my pocket and leave me in the dessert without water… I have three days maximum to live. Water is the most essential resource on the planet, nothing else comes close and in the midst of our daily showers and easy lives, it is really hard to appreciate the value of water. What is even more intriguing is that such a precious and scarce resource is relatively free in most developed countries.

When one starts realizing how precious water really is he or she might begin to feel guilty about their hour long shower or massive squirt gun fight, but an interestingly enough, household usage of water accounts for barely 10% of waters usage. However, this makes perfect sense as one can only drink so much, shower so long, or flush the toilet so many times. Where the water is used the most is through agriculture. If I don’t have water to drink I am dead in under a weak and if I don’t have water to use for agriculture within a society, I am dead within a month. It’s hard to really fathom the harshness of the situation, but with water the stakes are high. While oil is the lifeblood of our economy, water is the building block of all life period. Due the scarcity of clean water and the constant damage to water sources, I would not be surprised if many wars in the future were fought over water. The number one way to get someone to take up arms is to threaten their survival if they don’t and if someone doesn’t have water or a reliable source, what can be more threatening than that? What seems scariest of all is the water crises in the Middle East and in Asia. As it is, those places are already hot spots of conflict without bringing security of clean water into the picture. While Sachs addresses the seriousness of the situation, I do not believe he correctly identifies the severity. It seems that if he gave the topic of water more thought, it might be what he concludes is the absolutely most important environmental, economic, and social issue to address out of all of the world’s problems. As it is the Middle East and Asia are two huge powder kegs of conflict and anything to aggravate a situation is serious and what is more aggravating than the fear of losing a safe water supply? Considering how crucial water is and how futile one would feel even if they had all the power in the world, but no water, if any nuclear power had a water supply at risk, there is no saying how desperate a nation or a faction might become…