To continue an earlier post about the global water crisis, one of the BBC headlines on my iGoogle homepage today is "Western demand 'hogging water.'" I clicked on it and it lead to this article, which, while focused on the UK, says quite a bit about the consumption of the world's water supply by the West -- we use far more than our fair share.
The article brings up an interesting point about "embedded water," defined as "the water used to grow food and make things." Unsurprisingly, I never even thought about that. Of course water isn't just for drinking and washing, and of course many of those developing countries that have water shortages have to produce goods to sell to richer countries, and those products require water. Duh.
"Embedded in a pint of beer, for example, is about 130 pints of water -- the total amount needed to grow the ingredients and run all the processes to make that pint of beer." This statistic is going to haunt me when I pour pints for thirsty customers at the bar...
So now that I'm feeling thoroughly depressed and guilty for being born into a prosperous society that has water in abundance, I think I'll go get a nice cold glass of ice water. Maybe that will make me feel better... Apathy is really dehydrating.
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