Blue Revolution

May 23, 2011
Barnett, an award-winning journalist specializing in environmental and water issues, proposes that we need a new "blue revolution" comparable to the green one, warning that "like the unending bull market, or upward-only house pricesâthe illusion of water abundance is a beautiful bubble doomed to pop." She compares America's problematic water policies to nations that take floods and droughts more seriously: the Dutch use community consensus and compromise for the public good. Singapore's top-down policies, along with changing the tiny nation from "postcolonial pigsty to one of the world's most successful economies," are freeing it from dependency on imported Malaysian water as it gains self-sufficiency through intensive engineering, recycling wastewater into drinking water, and a conservation agenda "to bring people closer to water so that they can better appreciate" and protect it. Barnett believes that our water problems, from the devastation of Katrina to fights over the Colorado River, derive from "America's widespread lack of respect for water," and that we need to develop a water ethic that values and conserves water, keeps it local, avoids overtapping of aquifers and massive water projects, and leaves as much as possible to nature. Although water activists may be mystified by Barnett's lack of discussion of water privatization, the book provides an eye-opening overview of the complexity of our water-use problems and offers optimistic but practical solutions.

August 1, 2011

Water, water everywhere. Or not.

"Somehow, America's green craze has missed the blue," writes environmental journalist Barnett (Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S., 2007). A good citizen of Sacramento wouldn't dream of throwing a plastic bottle in the trash, and yet, California's capital, which calls itself "Sustainable Sacramento," uses 300 gallons of water per person per day, 8.5 times the consumption of watery Holland, and about four times the consumption of similarly dry Perth, Australia. Small wonder that reservoirs such as Lake Mead, on which Las Vegas depends, are rapidly being drawn down to the sand—though, admittedly, drought and climate change have as much to do with it as careless drinkers. The problem is endemic, writes the author. It's not just the arid West that is suffering, since even moist places such as Florida are rapidly using up their groundwater supplies. As with so much else, it all comes down to human actions: Conserving water and changing how we manage it would do a great deal to relieve the ever-accelerating crisis. Yet "using water ethically" in this way, as she puts it, faces formidable challenges, among them the "water-industrial complex" and its powerful lobby, aimed at preserving the huge profits that come with the control of one of the few things that humans actually need to live. Other enemies of progress, writes Barnett, are the squabbles over water fought by "lawyers billing by the hour rather than by communities drawn together in a shared ethic"; agricultural subsidies seemingly designed to encourage major users of water to be profligate; and politicians who resist the notion that Americans should have to curb their appetites at all. The subject is ripe for moralizing, but Barnett generally keeps the conversation at a practical level, noting, helpfully, that no American set out deliberately to exhaust the nation's water supply any more than the Soviets "set out to create the disaster of the Aral Sea."

Thorough and packed with data but a touch dry. General readers will find much of the same information in Brian Fagan's more engaging book Elixir (2011).

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September 15, 2011

Barnett (senior writer, Florida Trend Magazine; Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S.) contends in her latest book that the United States needs a national water ethic. She illustrates the need for a guiding principle by outlining best- and worst-case scenarios in national and international spheres. For best-case scenarios, we get a look at Singapore; Perth, Australia; and San Antonio. Water scarcity has forced these locales to overhaul completely the ways in which their inhabitants use water. Crisis has led to innovation and saved these communities from water shortages. For worst-case scenarios, we see extreme wastefulness in cities like Las Vegas and Atlanta. Barnett argues that the money we do pay for water does not represent its value. In fact, in times of scarcity, when consumers are urged to conserve, water companies lose revenue and are often forced to increase prices--negatively reinforcing the conservation measures water customers have employed. She concludes by outlining basic tenets that she believes should guide our water ethic. After taking in her wise words, readers are not likely to disagree. VERDICT Required reading for anyone who uses water.--Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Lib., Athens

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