Ruminations

Water footprint

Image source: www.disinfo.com

An article in The Guardian today made me realise that my concern about water supplies (or lack thereof) has been overly country-centric. The headline: Revealed: the massive scale of UK's water consumption makes reference to the concept of virtual water; that is, water one consumes as a result of consumption of imported goods which require water for their production. Britain ranks 6th in the world, with average household water use for washing and drinking amounting to around 150 litres a person daily, plus 30 times as much in virtual water, used in the production of imported food and textiles.

All this will be of no surprise to those attending this week's World Water Week forum in Stockholm where access to clean water is being discussed in much the same way as access to oil; it is a finite resource that is running out in some areas and becoming more expensive with obvious consequences for consumer prices. Time to assess our water footprints perhaps.

Arthur Scargill on nuclear power

Image source: bbc.co.uk

There is a characteristically controversial piece in The Guardian today by former NUM President, Arthur Scargill. While it is almost sacrilegious for me to say it -- given my support for the miners during the famous 1984-85 strike -- I'm unconvinced by his arguments. If clean coal technology were readily available this would be a no-brainer but, unless I am mistaken, there is a lot of work to do yet before this becomes a serious possibility. Unfortunately, as James Lovelock points out, we don't have the luxury of time.

Quintessential Keating

Image source: abc.net.au

Former Australian PM, Paul Keating, was in fine form last night on ABC's 7.30 Report. Love him or hate him, he was (and still is) a visionary and a dying breed in the age of the 10-second sound byte media driven political scene that dominates today. The main theme of the interview was national savings and, more specifically, retirement income. The Keating Government set in place a system that would have ensured Australian baby-boomers had enough set aside for their old age (phased-in compulsory employer super contributions of 15%). The Howard-Costello administration abandoned this (at 9%) when it took office in 1996 and the greying population missed out on 2003-07 equities boom that would have given them sizeable nest eggs by now. What I miss most about Keating, though, are his insults. Peter Costello he referred to as a "nong" and a "slow-moving dope" and said that "in policy terms he's a mouse". 'Onya Paul.

The ravages of conspicuous consumption

Image source: www.dir-help.org

There was an interesting piece in the Indian Express a couple of weeks ago by Gautam Bhatia, that highlighted the dangers of a country like India aspiring to be like the United States. Resource consumption will increase dramatically but so will the generation of waste. Sadly, in a rapidly developing economy like India, conspicuous consumption is the order of the day, even -- as the Bhatia piece points out -- in the construction of so-called green buildings, where glitz and glamour take precedence over what makes sense economically. If there were policy settings (in India and elsewhere) that incentivised the development of a service and flow economy -- as opposed to one based on consumption -- where those providing the services would be responsible for the disposal of the associated waste, this might encourage design more compatible with recycling and reuse, and we might avoid becoming one giant global rubbish dump.