our water footprint

Perspective for your consideration …What does it look like when it’s fixed…?

Environmental News Network … http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37997 ...Water Footprints Make A Splash …If the full water requirements of a morning roast are calculated - farm irrigation, bean transportation, and the serving of the coffee - one cup requires 140 liters of water. This notion of a product's "water footprint" is gaining traction. Defined as the total volume of freshwater required to produce a nation's goods and services, the tool tracks domestic water demand and the impact of consumption on water resources across the globe. As world water availability begins to decline as the result of population growth, overconsumption, and climate change, more water advocates are encouraging governments and consumers to internalize the true cost of water through an account of their water footprint.
What IT would look like, for me, when it’s fixed … is individually we would be aware of our “water-footprint” honestly endeavoring to remember our impact upon all others occupying our planet. At the moment this seems like a very tall order and a notion outside the probability of many, if not most Americans.

Depending upon where one lives in the US, it really does not take much effort to be aware of the fragile nature of water in many communities around our nation, including those along mighty rivers or lakes. Our population increases coupled with our desire for new “stuff” contribute to increase demands upon our water resources. In idle moments many of us are aware, though we possess the innate ability to summarily disregard our own impact upon our collective dwindling water resource. How long we can continue to live this fairy tale is an unknown, though most assuredly a day of reckoning is dawning.

Economists have an interesting term for denoting the true cost of anything – EXTERNALITIES – which incorporates all the costs associated with everything beginning with its birth and creation ending with its final demise. Consider for a moment the externalities associated with cigarettes. Land cost, fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, fuel, seed, harvesting, storage, transportation, processing into cigarettes, paper, electricity, manpower, more fuel and transportation for distribution, vending machines, cabinets to display these goods, sanitation personnel to clean up after we toss the cigarette butts on the floor or out the window, those needed to fight the fire unintentionally created by errant smoldering cigarette butts. The doctors and medical personnel, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals required to treat folks for cancer and other debilitating health conditions the result of smoking. The educational institution created to educate folks not to smoke or to stop smoking, ad-infinitum. The reality is “we” choose to pay only a fraction of the real cost of any of the “stuff” we purchase, use, consume and discard.

There is a cost to create clean, pristine, safe water for ingestion by all living things. That cost includes the time to create honest awareness. And if one subscribes to the notion championed by Mother Teresa awareness is attained as follows … do not wait for leaders, do it alone, one person at a time …