Blue Revolution: A Water Ethic for America

Last Wednesday I had the privilege to go to UNC-Charlotte with the Eco-Reps to listen to Cynthia Barnett talk about the water crisis in America. She was speaking a day after her newest book, Blue Revolution: A Water Ethic for America, was released for sale. Barnett has written another book on water crises, entitled Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. Her newest, however, takes a broader look at water crises, by including all of the United States and through references to practices used in other countries, like India and Australia.

There are 3.5 million miles of river in the United States, and 600,000 trillion gallons of water beneath our feet. This seems like a lot, but Barnett argues that it isn't.



The springs of Las Vegas that drew all of the people to the area dried up in 1962. Many other springs, natural spas, rivers, and lakes have also dried up as an effect of our wastefulness and disregard for the aquatic environments of America.

Cynthia and Hartman pose for a picture.

Our current water ethos dictates that water is a sign of wealth; massive lawns are evidence of this claim. In fact, grass is America's biggest crop. In the U.S. alone, there are 63,000 square miles of turf grass--an area larger than most American states. Large water is seen as large capital. The government is expected to provide and find water.

However, this is a flawed ethos. Cathleen Dean Moore agrees in saying that taking from world for comfort while leaving bad for the future is immoral. Aldo Leopold says that the answer to the water problem is to extend our social ethics to the land and water of the world. Luna Leopold, Aldo's son agreed, and said that the government should put some sort of guidelines and restrictions on the large water users and citizens. Currently, Barnett argues that we Americans have a bad case of "water schizophrenia" in building water parks, wasting water, using water for comfort. In Australia, Barnett reports, many houses now have rain barrels, with most new houses requiring them. In Singapore, they have changed the names of drains and reservoirs to "streams", "rivers", and "lakes". They also have started using plants to "recycle" water to make new drinkable water (which Barnett says is delicious).

When one thinks of how to cure a water problem, often people look towards desalinizing the ocean. However, desalinization plants are very costly and release a lot of malicious carbon emissions.

The real way to solve the problem is through reducing what we use and getting involved to change our water ethic. We are currently only using 3/4ths of the amount of water we used before the major drought a few years back; people learn to do with less when it becomes necessary. Water is currently so cheap, so if the government could increase the price, we wouldn't have as much of an issue of people wasting the water. If we try to change the ethic, we can very well change the norm of today's water consumption. Barnett provided the example of littering: in 1969, half of Americans admitted to littering, whereas in 2009 only 15% admitted to doing so. This is because the community made a judgment (an ethic) about littering, just as we could today do about water.