Is Water the New Gold?
Pay Attention, Please!
Water! Our most precious resource next to air.
I was just sitting here this morning thinking about water. Strange, I know. Most Americans rarely think about water until they have no water. We’ve grown to expect that when we turn on the tap, clean drinking water will magically appear. We trust our infrastructures to deliver our daily water. We’re so confident that water will always be there that we waste it with little thought about how important it is to our survival.
Air, water, and food followed by shelter are the essentials to survival. When we talk about the necessities of life, these four things are what we mean.
Three minutes, three days, three months is supposedly how long we can live without air, water, and food.
How odd that rich countries take all three for granted.
We squander and pollute air, water, and food. Yet, in 2020, for the very first time, water became a commodity on the stock exchange. It largely went unnoticed.
In fact, water may very well become the new gold of the future.
In the great state of Maine, where I lived for many years, a bottled water company conducts business as usual. Unfortunately, many small towns are now left with dry wells and no water. The corporation isn’t satisfied.
They want to double the water they extract.
The Great Lakes region has many a greedy corporations eyeballing it, foreign as well as domestic. The Colorado River was divvied up long ago and distributed beyond its current capacity.
Americans are funny about what they consider crucial necessities.
Or maybe it’s just modern life has infected humans with unrealistic aspirations. We’ll risk losing our houses, the very roof over our heads, before we reign in our over-inflated need for STUFF.
There’s a sense of entitlement coupled with amnesia that produces unrealistic expectations.
We love to be entertained. We’ll risk losing air, water, food, and a roof over our heads rather than give up baubles. That tells me we’ve forgotten what our ancestors’ lives were like.
You know, back in the good old days.
Technology and the ability to steal natural resources from many parts of the world, have given us a false sense of security as well as a level of greed that we no longer recognize as greed. We see our long lists of stuff as necessities.
We think we’re entitled to waste precious resources.
So, if you ever wonder what I sit and think about in the morning as I sip my beloved cup of coffee, this is it. Water. I think about other women who must walk miles each day to collect a few gallons of water for their families. I think about that hot shower that I’ll take in a few minutes and feel grateful. I ponder the very essence of life as I prepare to write.
I think about life and water because water is life.
Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
