A striking fact that I found on the Internet was that an average American consumes about 159 gallons of water per day, while the rest of the world uses 25 gallons. http://www.mindfully.org/Sustainability/Americans-Consume-24percent.htm
I believe that we are taking advantage of a resource that we have. We are taking water for granted, because in some other countries or continents, people don't even have clean water. For example, in Africa, 42 percent of the population does not have clean water, and almost 9000 children die everyday from contaminated water. People walk miles just to get a bucket of contaminated water. The WAI( Water, Agriculture, and Industry) want to increase "sustainable economic and social development opportunities." http://www.prweb.com/releases/Africa/nonprofit/prweb2308064.htm
They are collecting money so that people can have clean water, like we do. And it is very important that we work to get other people in the world access to clean water. Most people don't really think about what is happening in continents like Africa. Similarly, in Ethiopia, the population is 85 million, and 49 million do not have water. http://water.org/Ethiopia/
This should just convince us more that we are very lucky, but we don't realize it, or we don't want to. Maybe if we compare the amount and quality of the water we have, then we can understand how fortunate we are, and how we need to appreciate what we have by not wasting it.
A couple days of ago I saw an interesting commercial on television about conserving water. The commercial showed a cartoon woman washing her hair, and a clock next to her that was timing the length of her shower. She stopped taking her shower after two minutes, and then it said that we need to take shorter showers, and in general, use less water, so that we can save a lot of water. This commercial really made me stop and think about what we talked about in class for a little, about saving water. I never really thought about how much water I use before, for example, I might take 15 minute showers, but when I saw this on television, it really struck me. I think it had an affect on me, and maybe others because we are always listening to what companies on television, and in the media are telling us, and if they tell us important things, like saving water, or helping the environment, then maybe change will happen. An example of this are some of my family members. I actually asked them about the ad on television, and their response was that they have some other things on their mind right now other than conserving water. When I heard this, I really understood that a lot of people in today's society think this way. People have busy lives these days, with work, school, shopping, and since the excessive use of water does not affect them directly, then they don't really stop to think about it.
We need to conserve water because the Bay Area has been suffering from a drought for a few years now. Reservoirs, rain, and run-off are very low. There are many counties in the Bay Area that are having either mandatory or voluntary conservation of water. I think that in order for people to feel they are responsible to protect the environment, they need to be affected in some way, so that they feel like they need to change something. For example, people might conserve water in a drought when they really have a limited amount of water, and if they use too much, they know what the consequence will be. In some Bay Area counties, people would be fined if they used water that was not necessary to use, like watering lawns. Watering flowers, and lawns is not very important, and one can live without that. We should only be using water for important things, like short showers, and brushing teeth, and most of all, be grateful for what we have.
9 comments:
i had no idea how many numbers of people are suffering in Africa because of no or contaminated water. The numbers you mentioned are staggering! If data like that was more publicized, there would be a greater effort to conserve water in our own cities, not only when we absolutely NEED to. I feel like although we are living in a drought right now, there is no pressure. I still have all the access to the water I will need to survive, so I don't really realize how badly we are running out of it. I think this is the case for a lot of people, and that is why there is not a greater effort to solve the problem... people just don't think there is one to solve.
I agree, Courtney, we need to be responsive to the drought in the Bay Area. We so often act as though water is an infinitely abundant source, when in fact it's quite limited. Most people don't even know where their drinking water comes from. In San Francisco, our water comes from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir, 200 miles away--and that supply is dependent on abundant snow fall there. Since that hasn't happened in several years, we face drought. So do many other parts of the west and southwestern United States. (Of course, continuing to build and expand cities in the desert doesn't help. The Colorado River, drained beyond its resources for cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix, no longer empties into the ocean; it doesn't have enough water to get that far).
Of course, conserving water in San Francisco won't help people in other parts of the world who have no clean water sources. One good organization that's helping build wells and install filtration systems in African communities is The Water Project (http://thewaterproject.org/), which was started by some young people just out of college. It's a great site, full of information, including the reasons that this work is so important. And it provides ways to get involved.
I agree. People are not affected by this drought, so they don't really care about how much they use. People don't think that there is a problem, so they don't try to conserve, but for the people that live in the counties where there was a mandatory conservation, they thought about how much they used.
I agree. People are not affected by this drought, so they don't really care about how much they use. People don't think that there is a problem, so they don't try to conserve, but for the people that live in the counties where there was a mandatory conservation, they thought about how much they used.
Good point, Esther. I live in Oakland, where we have mandatory conservation, and it works! We received a print-out from the water company telling us what our monthly limit is, and if we go over it, we pay quite a bit extra on our water bill. I suspect that this financial incentive might work for lots of people who otherwise wouldn't really pay attention to water as a limited resource.
Hi everyone,
I'm going to speak to what we can do locally.
It's easy to take abundant, clean water for granted because we rarely contemplate the true and total cost of this water. As Dr. Seeley mentioned, San Franciscans get their water from a resevoir behind the Hetch Hetchy dam, 200 miles away. Dams all along the Sacramento/San Joaquin river systems provide water for cities and agriculture, but in the process divert over half the volume of freshwater that would normally flow through the Delta, into the San Francisco estuary and out the Golden Gate. Dams have decimated salmon runs and reduced freshwater flows have negatively impacted a number of different species. In drought years, the problem grows even more acute. I think I mentioned in another post that the San Francisco Bay herring fishery has officially closed this season. The Cosco Busan oil spill hit the herring hard, but the drought has also taken its toll. Herring require specific conditions to lay their eggs- they like the water salty, but not too salty- and in a drought year, since less freshwater enters the estuary, the seawater is too concentrated for them.
Water is so cheap, yet so expensive! A huge percentage of California's electricity goes simply to moving water around.
All of these other costs- the environmental cost, the cost of transporting and treating water, for example- stay hidden from us. We only need to turn on the faucet and there it is-clean, abundant, and reliable. If we could train ourselves to be "conservation-minded" all the time, not just during droughts, that would be a good start. Local governments can and should take the lead by imposing mandatory limits and incentives. For example,some cities have introduced a system of tiered charges on people's water bills (kind of like exceeding the minutes on your cell phone; the more you go over, the higher the penalty!)
I could (obviously) go on and on about this important topic. Thanks so much for posting this!
Oh how funny...
Dr. Seeley must have posted her last comment as I was composing mine. I didn't know that Oakland had such a system- thanks for proving my point!
I live in Oakland also, but my family and I never got any notice from the water company that we could not go over some amount. Maybe it is different for different parts of the city, maybe not, but it would be interesting to find out.
I can understand the water shortage problem, coming from San Diego, the prolonged drought has brought some strict water restrictions. For instance, people with even numbered addresses can only water their lawns for 10 minutes or less on Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Mondays. Failure to comply is typically met with a fairly heavy fine. I understand the reasons and it baffles me how we have all of this technology and yet we still can seem to figure out how to use it to purify water or other environmentally beneficial uses. Hopefully we can find a way soon, it's so sad to see how many people are living with either very little or no fresh water, and yet we Americans use so much of it. Which begs the question: Why do we use so much, when the rest of the world uses so little? I like the facts and the links you provided, it's information that more people should consider looking at.
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