DEAR WATER

When something is dear, you tend not to waste it. Which people are starting to get when it comes to oil. And which people will hopefully start to get when it comes to water, according to a recent Urban Land Institute article: ”Is Water the Next Carbon?” Water, of course, is literally essential to life; and so the distribution of clean water with which to drink, bathe, and farm becomes an increasingly important matter.

We take such things for granted in this country, since a quick turn of the tap yields us water on par with $3-a-bottle designer water in terms of purity. We give no further thought to spraying water all over our suburban lawns and don’t often find it worth it to install drip irrigation systems for our crops. Let’s hope we don’t wait until it’s almost too late, like we have with oil, to treat water as the precious resource it really is.