Here is a thoughtful little blog article on the topic of water conservation, something close to my heart. I find it fascinating that people tend to take water for granted in much of the United States. Water, such an abundant resource, in places, and so very scarce in others. This article provides links to some interesting studies with regard to water usage in a handful of countries, and what is being done to regulate this precious resource. I found it very interesting that power-generation plants use the most water, for cooling. It’s pretty easy to see that we humans are butting up against problems of scale, now that there are so many of us (over 6 billion), and our numbers are still going up. If that trend holds, we will have a few scale problems related to basic living to solve, such as water for everyone (a must), food for all (ditto), and someplace for all of us to live. It is clear that technology has helped us in a lot of ways, but, if we fail to enact that technology in a timely way, that doesn’t really do much to help people around the globe, and here at home. We humans tend to be lazy, put off planning until the merde hits the fan, not to mention the fact that planning for the future is not always easy, since things tend to change over time in ways that aren’t always predictable. Well, we will get the chance to see how Atlanta’s real-life water emergency plays out. I may be getting the wrong impression from the news, but everything I’ve read sounds pretty bad. We shall see.

continue reading.....