Ice cubes, fountains, swimming pools, lakes, cold showers, thunderstorms, rainbow, and waves: water! This time of year, it's everyone's favorite resource. As the temperature climbs, its importance in our lives – for health, comfort and enjoyment – is ever more evident.
I recently went to the shelf in search of a book entitled simply "Water" and described as "eccentric and intriguing." I discovered that water is the publishing world's favorite resource right now as well. New books on the topic abound.
The one I originally came for is part of the Alphabet City series published by MIT Press; a diverse group of artists and writers are invited to address a single topic. In "Water," they range from the "mythic to the infrastructural," delivering hard facts with a touch of whimsy and a lot of interesting photographs.
"Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization," by Steven Solomon, takes us on a lively, whirlwind tour of the role of water in world history. From Egypt and Mesopotamia, through the Indus Valley and China, back to London and on to the United States, Solomon's thesis is clear: A society's success is dependent on its ability to harness and effectively manage water.
Unfortunately, our control and manipulation of fresh water has often created new environmental challenges and the "needs" of today's industrialized nations are now exceeding the sustainable supply. Furthermore, the distribution of fresh water across our planet has never been equitable: "almost one-fifth of all humanity ... lack access to at least a gallon per day of safe water to drink." Solomon believes that without dramatic changes worldwide in our management and use of fresh water, water scarcity will lead to widespread war.
James G. Workman, in "Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought," tells the astonishing story of the government of Botswana's attempt in 2002 to force the remaining 1,000 Kalahari Bushmen into "civilization" by sealing the borehole that provided them access to water and dumping their supply of stored water into the sand.
The Bushmen defied the government. Under the guidance of elder woman Qoroxloo, they returned to the old ways of living with extreme water scarcity. Qoroxloo became Workman's guide as well, teaching him their ancient techniques for cooling and sanitation, as well as the secrets to extracting every precious drop of liquid from the desert ecosystem.
When he asks, "What would Bushmen do?" Workman isn't expecting us to adopt a hunter/gatherer lifestyle. But even for the complex modern world, there are transferable lessons. Individual responsibility is paramount: enough and no more.
Workman does more big-picture thinking than that might suggest, but Peter H. Gleick brings it straight home with "Bottled and Sold: The Story Behind Our Obsession with Bottled Water." In the United States, someone buys a bottle of water every second of every day. Why? Tap water is safe almost everywhere in the country, and Gleick argues persuasively against the health and purity claims made for bottled water.
Gleick believes sound water management should provide easy public access to clean water and make bottling water difficult and expensive. At the very least, the environmental costs of manufacturing and disposing of plastic bottles should be included in the price of bottled water.
Some years ago, I was blessed with the opportunity to travel to the high Arctic. One of the things I did there was pick up litter. Plastic water bottles are commonly found on the coastal shores of the high Arctic. They don't come with tourists; they come on the ocean currents.
"Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man's Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science" is Curtis Ebbesmeyer's story of his near-lifelong study of the debris bobbing about on our world's oceans.
In 1991, a sudden storm struck a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean. The ultimate result was that 61,820 Nike sport shoes were released into the sea. A year later, hundreds of Nike shoes began washing ashore in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon. Thus was born Ebbesmeyer's obsession.
With the assistance of beachcombers worldwide, he started tracking the journeys of trash. Sixteen years later, he was able to use such flotsam to begin calculating the orbits of the oceans' 11 gyres – the circular, interlocking regular currents that cover as much area as all the land on Earth, a total of 91,050 miles. One of these "global conveyor belts" brings plastic water bottles to the remote wilderness of the high Arctic.
All of these books urge us to view the Earth as one place, one system. All of them include a plea for a future of "hydro-democracy." Whether we agree or not may not matter. As the Bushmen taught Workman, "We don't govern water. Water governs us."
Photo by Joost J. Bakker (Creative Commons)
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