Water: More Precious than Oil

“Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink…” or so the nursery rhyme says.

Even though 2/3 of the earth’s surface is covered in water, it isn’t useable by itself. Glaciers consist of only 2% of that 2/3, so we can’t look north or south for solutions.

Water will be the next commodity crisis, when oil and natural gas have finished their run. But it won’t be just any old water—water for drinking, crops, technological processing (microchips), and coffee processing will be in high demand just as we slip into an extended dry spell that signals the beginning of the end.

Did you know it takes 59 gallons of water to produce one pound of coffee beans? I had no idea, and am glad I drink tea.

So how can we place our chips to take advantage of this shortage as we are currently doing with oil?

• Desalinators—we have to make seawater useable somehow

• Infrastructure—pipes and filtering equipment, because we are facing an incredible-but-necessary pipe system overhaul (it isn’t just the roads any more)

• Utilities—someone has got to deliver and meter it

• Bottlers—more for foreign aid deliveries than domestic use

Just when we think we’ve figured out how to grow our way out of the oil crisis, we stumble into another one with how to water the crops. Water has been a “silent crisis” for years now, with aquifers going dry, lakes, streams, and rivers going dry or being dammed up and diverted, states having to buy water from one another, court battles over water rights, and not much being done about how to convert the only reliable source of water into something useable that won’t corrode or need regular maintenance from water/metal reactions.

All we can think or talk about now is oil and carbon dioxide emissions, otherwise known as “global warming.”

What will happen when the earth warms sufficiently to completely melt the glaciers into the sea, and THAT water too becomes unusable?

Over at the blog Frugal For Life, there is a discussion on how best to conserve water with things you do in daily life. I added a comment about a story I read somewhere describing how a Japanese family conserves water: first, the entire family uses a single tubful of water to bathe, then it gets put into the front-loader washer for laundry, then it gets used for mopping and doing windows, and lastly, it goes out into the garden. Other comments contained the tidbit about using and re-using water that eggs, potatoes, and frozen vegetables were boiled in. Still more comments had to do with taking “ship showers” and brushing teeth without leaving the tap on.

These are a good start. Grandma Depression tells us something else: a tub of water uses less water than a shower, especially when we use the shower for water massages (showers with multiple heads), steam showers, etc. In the kitchen, dual dishwashers (or even single ones), refrigerators with in-the-door water and ice dispensers, ice trays, etc. use more unnecessary water. Elsewhere in the home, we have huge aquariums and top-loading washers. Outside the home, there’s the pool, the Jacuzzi, the koi pond, the reflecting pool, the “water feature” in the garden, the power washer, the car washing hose attachment/soap delivery system, and the automatic sprinkler system.

When it comes to conservation, I say pick your battles. Tooth brushing, to me, pays me back in lower dental bills, and showering pays me back in good hygiene and fewer health incidents. I take my laundry out to a laundromat, and my car to a car wash that recycles its water, so I don’t incur charges at home. Besides, water’s already in use at these places, so why add to it at home? I don’t own a hot tub, a multi-head shower, or in-the-door refrigerator dispensers, so I guess I’ve already won half the battle. If I could have a garden, I’d have a place for my leftover egg-boiling water and it would pay me back with nutritious food for my efforts…I need to work on this one. I quit eating potatoes, pasta, and frozen vegetables, so I don’t have pots of water to drain off.

Does tea drinking make up for the ice I’m not making? :)

None of my efforts, unfortunately, go to help the crops or the microchip processing, though. And what will we do as a planet when water surpasses gas in price?

I don’t know if anybody’s able to see beyond the huge hump of Boomers and their locust-like consumption, but there’s an up-and-coming population that will be just as sizeable, and just as consuming: immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere. To us, this is a languishing land, but to them, it’s paradise on earth. As they make themselves to home in a country with green land, clean water, sort-of clean air, and property rights, they will multiply according to their home culture and religion—further depleting already stretched resources.

This land of abundance will be abundant no more. As we conserve and adjust, we can profit from the locusts—both waves—making them pay us back for the resources they squandered. The oil and gold booms are just about topped out, but the water boom is just getting started. A few water ETFs exist already, but none cover the gamut of sources—they focus on drinking water, or infrastructure, or utilities. I’m afraid individual stocks will be the way to go here, until a decent ETF, index, or basket comes along that deals with ALL aspects of water in one shot.