You might recall a child’s tale, the fable of Hansel and Gretel. It is a story packed with metaphorical inference and figurative representations, for the reality of its premises are far to grotesque, to horrid, to unthinkable to consider at face value. Most certainly, it is not a reality anyone would want to relate, in raw form, to little children.
The story of Hansel and Gretel stems from a catastrophic event which took place in Europe in the years 1315-1317. The event was a famine, not the result of a drought as we might presume, but just the opposite, an abundance of water, in essence a winter of perpetual precipitation lasting three long years. As food became more scarce, people resorted to eating their dogs, horses, and ultimately each other to survive, as repugnant a thought as that might be. As much as 20 percent of the European population did not survive the famine, and that estimate is no more than an educated guess, as few chroniclers of the period could grasp the enormity of the situation.
In 1315, the people of Europe could not foresee the coming famine, but today, the worlds population faces new perils which can be anticipated. Water, fresh water, is a commodity absolutely essential to the survival of life on planet Earth, or at least life as we know it. The problem is, fresh water supplies on Earth are being rapidly depleted, underground aquifers are being pumped dry, and global warming is melting the planet’s ice and altering precipitation patterns and levels. Each day there is less fresh water available to sustain an ever expanding human population base.
In the face of diminishing fresh water resources, the question at hand, wether individual water conservation will make any difference, is an important one. After all, with a human population in excess of six billion individuals, the cumulative effect of individuals saving just a few gallons of water a day would seem to be quite substantial. But this quandary is hardly a simple issue, but rather fraught with complexities and dynamics opaque to any cursory review. For instance, how much water does an individual really need on a daily basis. On the surface of it, the average individual may need a gallon of water for drinking, 50 gallons per day to bathe and flush the toilet, and maybe a hundred or so gallons to water a lawn or garden. This would represent maybe 200 gallons of direct water use, but this is the proverbial drop in the bucket compared to more indirect sources of water consumption.
The food we consume, the durable goods we purchase at the local market, the fuel we burn in our cars to get to and from the super market, are all things which require water to produce. Agriculture alone accounts for more water consumption on an individual bases than all other individual uses combined. For instance, how many gallons of water are required to grow a single ear of corn? It may take 50 gallons of water to produce a single bottle of wine. These indirect uses of water, when considered on an individual basis, far exceed the amount of water directly used by an individual. So, if we all eat a little less, buy a little less, and drive a little less, can we ease the fresh water crisis? Well, perhaps, but there is another dynamic that may thwart our best efforts in doing so.
Currently, the population of humans on Earth is expanding at a rate approaching 100 million people per year. Unless something happens to curb this growth rate, it is expected that human population will have almost doubled during the first half of the 21st century. Interestingly, the availability of Earth’s fresh water resources, on a basis of individual allocation, is decreasing at a slightly faster rate. At what point are there more people, than there is fresh water to sustain them? And what then? Are we creating a situation which could ultimately precipitate a rapid downward trend in human population, a catastrophe on the scale of the great famine of Europe?
Yes, we as individuals can do our part to conserve water, and it may have a short term effect, but if population growth continues at the current rate, any gains will likely be offset by increasing demand driven by population growth. On the other hand, if we were to reverse the population growth trend, and by lowering birth rates, reduce overall population by 100 million per year, in a single decade demand for fresh water, both directly and indirectly, could be reduced by almost 20%.
It’s hard to come up with a valid number for direct versus indirect water consumption on a personal basis, and even more difficult to do so on a global level. Even world population numbers are based on statistical estimates, not on any true census data. Given a ratio of 20:80, representative of direct to indirect water consumption, for every potential gallon of water saved on a personal level, a potential of 8 gallons could be saved on the indirect side of the equation. Does this mean we aught to focus on reducing indirect water consumption, since the greatest water conservation effect can be gained there?
Consider, about 65% of all fresh water consumed in the U.S., is used by agriculture to produce food for human and livestock consumption. Now take into account that as much as half of irrigation water is lost to evaporation. If about a third of all the available fresh water is being allowed to evaporate, then every gallon saved here would be equal to more than one and a half gallons saved on the personal direct side of the equation. Granted, farmers in California’s fertile central valley, where water is already at a premium, are using techniques like drip irrigation to increase water usage efficiency and reduce losses due to evaporation.
But again, this effort amounts to a drop in the bucket against the backdrop of the total American consumption of water for agricultural purposes. For instance, in the high country of northern California, where most of California’s water comes from, the technique of flood irrigation on pasture lands is still the status quo. Ironically, much of this pasture and alfalfa crop irrigation, is being done under conditions of arid high mountain desert, where evaporation losses are most accentuated. What this means is that a great quantity of California’s fresh water evaporates before it ever even enters California’s water distribution system. All this water wasted, so we can have juicy stakes to barbecue and cheap hamburger meat for McDonalds. Of course, if on the direct personal side of the equation, Americans curbed their love for the hamburger and reduced overall beef consumption, some of the currently irrigated pasture land could be retired from beef production use, thus saving a tremendous amount of fresh water. It’s not likely that California’s cattle ranchers would embrace such a proposal however, and that their lobbies in Sacramento and Washington would receive a quick inducement of cash to refute the contention that less beef production would mean a whole lot more fresh water down stream.
As must be becoming obvious to the reader by now, water conservation is a much more complex issue than it might appear to be on the surface, whether considered in terms of direct or indirect water consumption by individuals. But what is also becoming quite clear, is that water conservation comes down to the choices we as individuals make. For instance, it takes about 4 Acers of land per year to graze and produce feed for a single steer. Irrigation of this land requires a much greater volume of water, using flood irrigation techniques, then it does to keep your personal lawn green all summer. Are we as individuals willing to forgo our green lawn so that we can eat hamburgers? But even the choice of eating beef or having a green lawn pales in complexity to the personal choices which come into play with respect to the dynamics of population growth.
It is only human to hear stories of people starving in Somalia, Bangladesh or somewhere else, and want to help alleviate such suffering. The U.S. and Canada give millions of tons of grain every year as foreign aid to feed the third world’s population. In addition, we spend millions of dollars in health care immunizing children in these countries who would otherwise likely die from disease. The result has been a significant increase in life expectancy in third world countries, compounding an already runaway birthrate problem there, and establishing an ever growing demand for more food, and more water to grow it with. Taking into consideration the longer term picture, isn’t it more humane to withhold food aid now to stave off a much more egregious situation, not so far in the future? Would the dispensing of birth control remedies not be a better way to sustain these populations than to continue to artificially inflate their numbers? It comes down to the choices we make as individuals.
With respect to the long term picture for humanity on planet Earth, the future holds grim circumstances for each of us to consider as individuals. Fresh water is unquestionably a resource essential to the survivability of our species. How we choose to use available water resources, will very much be a factor in determining if our species will remain the predominant life form on the planet, and it ultimately comes down to the choices we make on a personal basis. No, we are not talking hear about the gallon of water you might save by choosing to turn the water on then off again each time you rinse your tooth brush, as opposed to leaving it running. The more complex issues which we must face as individuals, are those that will curb world population growth and even begin to reverse it. The choices we make in the voting booth, the causes and issues we champion, are going to have a much greater effect on water conservation than the small amount of it we can save through modification of our personal consumption habits. This is not to say that we should not try to conserve when and where we can, but rather that we need to focus on the bigger picture, the difficult issues and choices that can make a real difference for future generation who will inhabit this planet.
The people of Europe could do little, if anything, to change the circumstances mother nature thrust upon them and they had no way of anticipating such a dilemma. Stories like Hansel and Gretel, if you look beyond the fairytale gloss that has been applied to make such parables palatable for children, provide a degree of opacity to the dire circumstances, the desperation and acute anguish, people suffered during the great famine of Europe. That such calamity will ensue in the future, whether induced by natural cause or mans own handy work, is a certainty. But in this case, chroniclers of the event will not look at the generations preceding it and say they could do nothing to appease the situation, to alleviate or even prevent the human suffering wrought by it. No, they will say of our generation, we had the choice to do something, to conserve water on an individual bases and to do the other things to assure that future generations would have ample supplies of fresh water. What remains to be seen is what choices we will make.
So the answer to this quandary is a resolute yes. Individual conservation can effect the world wide availability of drinking water. This is true both in regards to our direct usage of water as well as our indirect demand for products which require even more water then we consume individually to produce them. And yes, our individual attitudes, convictions an political activism with respect to population growth may have a greater impact on the availability of water to drink now and in the future, than any other facet of individual conservation can ever hope to. In the final analysis, it all boils down to us as individuals, and the choices we make that influence the greater consensus. We are like a single voice in a choir, each lending amplitude to the greater body of a melody and its harmonic components. The notes we sing on an individual basis, matter.
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