Why this binge drinking?

I used to take my water bottle to the classroom.  I figured that if I am going to be participating in talking for almost two hours, well, I better have water by my side in case my throat became dry or if I had to clear my throat.

Extremely rare was the day when I actually sipped from it though.  Evidence-based practitioner that I am, well, it has been a long time since I carried my water bottle to classes.

And that was only for my classes.  I couldn't be bothered walking around with a water bottle in my hand, as if I was a toddler in need of a comforting milk-bottle and pacifier close by.  Unlike most of my fellow Americans, I don't carry coffee or soda or whatever in my hand wherever I go.  Practically paraphilic infantilism all that to-go behavior is! ;)

These days, it is all about water.  Soda and sugar are increasingly treated like cigarette and nicotine.  "Hydrate" is considered as the Eleventh Commandment!  "Hydration is now marketed as a cure for nearly all of life’s woes."

“There’s no evidence that a little bit of dehydration really impacts anybody’s performance,” said Dr. Mitchell Rosner, a kidney specialist at the University of Virginia

Exactly.

And then there is the possibility--however small that is--that one could over-hydrate; if that happens, water is practically poison, as I blogged just a few months ago.  Further, people seem to think that the only way one can hydrate is through water.  But, hey, what about coffee? Fruits like oranges?  Ah, yes, it is not about critical thinking and evidence ;)

We have been brainwashed:

We think of water as so good for us that the bottled water industry doesn’t need to spend much money on convincing us to buy it, compared with marketing budgets for other beverages.

Even if we decide that we all need access to drinking water all the time, well, there are other ways to accomplish that.  The public spaces that we use could have drinking water fountains/faucets.  But, oh yeah, the commercial water industry made sure that we would even get rid of them so that they can sell more packaged water at exorbitant prices!

I am getting angry now; have to douse that fire inside with cold water ;)

Searching for water on the moon!

By the time I came along, humans walking on the moon had already become a part of school textbooks.  During my teenage years, it was all about the space shuttle.  I recall telling my grandmother that it might just about be possible that, well into my years, I will be able to travel to outer space and come back to earth.  She didn't care for that though!

There was the science and technology aspect that I was fascinated with, yes.  But, I was also troubled by the deprivation and injustice that was all around.  The rebellious teenager ended up not caring about science and technology, and became increasingly worried about the misplaced priorities of a society that was not addressing the fundamental and basic needs of people.

I continue to worry about the misplaced priorities.  More than five years ago, I blogged about the colossal waste that results.  In my post, and in most of my complaints about India's awful resource allocation decisions, my question has always been along the lines of why the fundamental issues--like toilets--don't get the priority they deserve.

Or, consider water.  Chennai, a "city of nearly 10 million — India's sixth largest — has almost run out of water."

Without water we are doomed.

Piped water has run dry in Chennai, the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu, and 21 other Indian cities are also facing the specter of “Day Zero,” when municipal water sources are unable to meet demand.
...
Middle- and upper-middle-class people in Chennai are paying twice as much as before the crisis for water from tankers, and they can afford to drill new wells twice as deep as would have been needed 15 years ago. “We are on war footing,” one of my cousins, who lives there, remarked. As with most environmental crises, the poor are affected disproportionately.

As always, it is the poor who suffer the most.

Yet, it is the same old democratic ways of resource allocation--the government of India is getting ready to launch yet another spacecraft to the moon.  Like the previous one, this mission will also search for, among other things, water.  What a tragic irony!

The US, too, is no exception to this rule.  In the context of the 50th anniversary of the first ever human footprints on the lunar surface, think about the US in the 1960s when JFK launched this mission.  Life in the US was brutal for anyone who was not white.  By the time NASA was getting ready for the launching of the Apollo 11 rockets, MLK had been assassinated.  There was injustice all around.  Yet, the government was not investing resources in order to address the injustice.  We were a lot more enthusiastic about spending gazillions to go to the moon.

Which is why there was a protest.  A symbolic one.  But, a protest nonetheless:

They must have been a sight: around 150 Americans, mostly black mothers and their children, walking with two mule-drawn wagons through light mist and rolling thunder. Led by Ralph Abernathy, the caravan arrived at the John F. Kennedy Space Center in advance of the Apollo 11 launch. Unlike many thousands more, however, they hadn’t come in celebration and awe. They came to protest.

The reasons were real.  The protesters were no snowflakes!

The contrast was dramatic: mules and rockets, rambling wagons and a vast sky to be conquered. The S.C.L.C. argued that one-fifth of the American population lived in poverty, without adequate food, shelter and health care, and therefore it was indecent for the nation to spend billions on the dream of spaceflight. Abernathy said, “I am here to demonstrate with poor people in a symbolic way against the tragic and inexcusable gulf that exists between America’s technological abilities and our social injustices.” 

"They exposed the essential tension at the root of the nation."

America’s ambition persistently stopped short of the equality creed, and yet it seemed to always demand a self-effacing patriotism from even the most vulnerable, including the poor folks who marched with Abernathy on Cape Kennedy.

Back in India, the injustices seems insurmountable.  A couple of months ago, during my winter visit with the family, I met a vocal activist.  I asked him how he keeps going. "I am a rabid optimist," he replied.

In writing about the water crisis in Chennai, he writes:

Our dominant economic model, with its blind faith in technology, is doomed.
...
Chennai's struggles with water - be it flooding or scarcity - cannot be addressed unless the city re-examines its values, and how it treats its land and water. 

Injustices cannot be addressed without examining the values behind our collective decision-making.

Yes, celebrate the anniversary of a phenomenal human achievement of going to the moon and returning.  But, let's also pay attention to the injustices all around us.  As MLK noted, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

Do monkeys take long showers?

Here at home, I usually take long showers. Because I can. We live in an area of abundance of water.  So rich in water that we know that it is only a matter of time before we get climate-change refugees 'streaming' into our state from the east and south.

But, when traveling, especially in India, it is always a quick "bath," as they say in the old country.  My father is always surprised at my quick turnaround.  This past trip too it happened.  "You are already done?," he asked me. I told him that Uncle RM, who was known for his "காக்கா குளியல்" (to mean that he had very, very quick baths) remarked that the less we bathe the better it is.

Bathing less is better.  Sounds contrarian, right?  But then he was a contrarian.

Anyway, I continued with my father my explanation of some ways in which RM was right.  Bathing, with or without soaping ourselves, dries up the skin.  I then quoted my doctor's advice, that most of the water and soap should be only for a few specific parts of the body.  You know well what they are, correct?

As it always happens, I didn't get no respect ;)

Think about it.  We humans are animals.  How often do you see other mammals taking leisurely baths?  Most would rather not go anywhere near water other than to drink it.

I don't mean to suggest that we stop showering.  Hell no.  But, if we start from that point of departure that the largest organ--the skin--needs to be treated with care, then we will think about showers also very differently.

There’s no hard and fast rule for this although dermatologists agree that as a society, we shower too often.
Many of us douche daily, however, if you’re not doing anything too strenuous, you can shower every other day, not smell offensive and ensure your skin retains those vital oils that too much washing depletes.

Perhaps I now have your attention.  How about washing clothes then?  Changing the linen?  How frequent should these activities be?

Aha, got you thinking, eh!

I tell ya, even the underwear you can rethink:

While the thought of reusing your undergarments for days on end might make some people shudder, an underwear line from Danish company, Organic Basics, has certainly grabbed our attention. The company claims that you don’t have to wash a pair for weeks as its products kill bacteria and odours, leaving you feeling fresh and clean.

For once, an ad that doesn't use female models but only objectifies men, eh ;)  What is with the tattoos though?

Yes, there is a reason for this post--it is getting hot here.

Source

We are under a heat advisory!

The heat makes me sweat. Don't worry--I will shower!

Taking a dump in the commons

(I have sent the following to the editor)

Like many, I am disappointed that Oregon’s legislature did not pass a cap and trade bill in its short session that ended on March 3rd. It will be a while, therefore, before we Oregonians figure out how to stop pumping carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.

In discussing emissions, politicians often try to sell the laws they propose as jobs, jobs, jobs. Here in Oregon, the cap and trade bill was floated as the “Clean Energy Jobs Bill.” Politicians take this approach for a good reason—public discussion on emissions is incorrectly framed by climate change deniers as job killers. Hence, the constant repackaging of legislation in this arena as an employment generator.

If a significant percentage of the public and their preferred leaders are not receptive to straight talk about the urgency to limit the emission of CO2 because of the role it plays in climate change, then there is another way to repackage it in a form that will appeal to many—as public health infrastructure.

In order to understand limiting CO2 emissions as an “infrastructure bill” we can learn from recent history. When England, and later the US, started industrializing, cities grew rapidly. People rushed to London, New York, and Philadelphia, in search of jobs and fortunes, and the growth of such population centers was unprecedented. The crowding of people and their close contact with each other made it easy for pathogens to wreak havoc, and life in the city became nasty, brutish, and short.

Two hundred years ago, Londoners were not only in close proximity with each other, they also lacked the piped water supply and sewer systems that we now take for granted. In the absence of protected systems, human feces found their way into fresh water supplies, like wells, and illnesses and death followed. A widely discussed example is the cholera epidemic in London in 1854 that was traced back to a single well where a mother had washed her child’s dirty diapers.

When American cities started growing as important economic centers, the population here, too, experienced health issues. Cities recognized the importance of public health and started investing in protected water supply services. As the Harvard economist Ed Glaeser points out, by the end of the 19th century, municipalities in the US were spending as much on water supply systems as the federal government was spending on everything except the military and postal services. It was a massive public infrastructure investment that wins applause from even contemporary anti-government crusaders.

These public investments in clean water supply and sewer systems separated the bad—the feces—from the good—potable water—and did wonders to decrease the incidence of water-borne diseases like cholera, and contributed to sharp increases in life expectancy. Thanks to our public sewer system, we now use the bathrooms at home and at the office, and don’t worry for a nanosecond about what happens after we flush.

This infrastructure is not for free. We pay monthly bills to our wonderful local utilities that collect all our refuse, process them at large sewage treatment plants, and make our cities livable and beautiful.

We do not want people to treat the banks of the Willamette River as their bathrooms—unlike, for instance, how the poor do in India by the side of lakes and rivers. Yet, we are the same people who have been merrily discharging filthy CO2 waste into the air that all of us breathe! We need an infrastructure plan to address this public dumping.

CO2 is a harmful byproduct of our activities that should not be dumped in the commons. Whether it is the smokestacks in factories, or the tailpipe in the car that I drive, the CO2 that comes out is casually and irresponsibly released into the air. All of us—yes, I, too—should be held accountable for this public dumping, and be required to pay for the needed infrastructure.

However, unlike with human feces, it is not easy to capture CO2 from the air and process it, though scientists and technologists are working on that approach. An easier and simpler approach is to limit our use of carbon in the first place. The less carbon we use, the less CO2 we will produce and, therefore, we will dump less in the commons.

Which is why I suggest that attempts to limit the use of carbon, through taxation, should be an important aspect of public health infrastructure investment for the future, similar to how generations past invested for the betterment of our lives. I hope that our elected officials will decisively act on this in 2019.

Climate Change? Bullshit!

One of the many, many, many problems that trump has created for me is this: The fascist sucks up so much of my time and energy that I have very little left for the world outside.  I used to have plenty of time for the rest of the world; now, despite being on furlough, I barely have time to keep up with his shit!  And boy does he shit by the truckload every single day!!!

I don't even have the time anymore to talk about the old country.  Well, ok, that is also because I have given up on that old land.  But, it is not as if I don't keep up with the news about the Subcontinent.  For one, talking to my father every other day means that I have an idea of life there, however skewed that reporting might be.

As I have blogged before, one of the regular features of our conversations is about water.  Yep, water.  About the water shortage in Chennai.  About groundwater depletion in Sengottai.  And, of course, the monsoon.

We might be far removed from the village and farming life of our ancestors, but we father and son always worry about water, and the rains.

Therefore, the monsoon floods in different parts of India, too, have been regular topics.  "Remember the old news reels before the movies that you kids made fun of?  "பீகாரில் வெள்ளம்" (Floods in Bihar) in that grave newscaster voice?" he remarked.  Because, well, there have been floods in Bihar.  And in Assam. And ...

We humans are messed up; we do not understand how integral water is to our existence on this planet.  Despite scientists searching for water in the universe as signs of life, we fail to truly understand the preciousness of water.  We continue to abuse and mis-manage this life-giving resource.

But, hey, we humans are nothing but pesky irritants on this planet.  The more we try to mess with the planet, the more our own very lives will be threatened--either as water shortage, or as floods.

This summer, more than a thousand have died in the floods in South Asia; "while flooding in the Houston area has grabbed more attention, aid officials say a catastrophe is unfolding in South Asia"

“This is the severest flooding in a number of years,” Francis Markus, a spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said by phone from Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital.
...
Asked how the situation in Nepal compared with that in Houston, Mr. Markus said, “We hope people won’t overlook the desperate needs of the people here because of the disasters closer home.”
India has also suffered immensely. Floods have swept across the states of Assam, Bihar, Odisha, West Bengal and other areas.

It is not over yet.

And the rain keeps coming.
On Tuesday, Mumbai, the sprawling financial capital, was soaked to the bone. Nearly all day, the rain drummed down. As people scurried up the sidewalks, the wind tore umbrellas out concof their hands.
The sky seemed to fall lower and lower, pressing down on the building tops, cutting visibility to a few blocks, then a few yards. By midafternoon, it was so dark it felt like nightfall.

And, yes, like with Hurricane Harvey, climate change likely played a role:

"This is not normal," Reaz Ahmed, the director-general of Bangladesh's Department of Disaster Management, told CNN. "Floods this year were bigger and more intense than the previous years."
Climate change appears to be intensifying the region's monsoon rains.

Climate change?  News to me!

 Unchecked urban development has also left many communities in the region without proper drainage systems, which only compounds the problem when a natural disaster strikes. "A lot of the urbanization ... has happened in a largely unplanned matter," Abhas Jha, the World Bank sector manager for Transport, Urban and Disaster Risk Management for East Asia and the Pacific, told CNN

It is one thing if my blog-posts and op-eds echoing such logic are ignored; after all, I am but a lowly academic at a podunk university.  But, it is a shame that real experts continue to be attacked by the fascist and his adopted party.  What a fuck up!

Caption at the source:
Flood-affected people sleeping by a highway toll plaza in the Indian state of Bihar last week.

Water, water everywhere ...and it is all good?

Everyday something or the other completely amazes me.  It could be nature, my own stupidity, or an impressive achievement.  No, the achievement is not an Olympic gold medal--after all, you know well what I think about that expensive mass entertainment ;)

A human achievement that amazed me?

Israel now gets 55 percent of its domestic water from desalination, and that has helped to turn one of the world’s driest countries into the unlikeliest of water giants.

In the old days, we used to joke that with enough money, water will run uphill.  Without money and water running uphill, Southern California will be one heck of a desert by now.  Instead of being bone dry, it now gets water from all directions, with water running uphill at many places thanks to the power of electricity and pumping, which cannot happen without money.

Now, money and ingenuity turns salty sea water into a potable variety.

Just a few years ago, in the depths of its worst drought in at least 900 years, Israel was running out of water. Now it has a surplus. That remarkable turnaround was accomplished through national campaigns to conserve and reuse Israel’s meager water resources, but the biggest impact came from a new wave of desalination plants.

Boggles my mind!  Aren't you also impressed?  What a turnaround in a decade!

In 2008, Israel teetered on the edge of catastrophe. A decade-long drought had scorched the Fertile Crescent, and Israel’s largest source of freshwater, the Sea of Galilee, had dropped to within inches of the “black line” at which irreversible salt infiltration would flood the lake and ruin it forever. Water restrictions were imposed, and many farmers lost a year’s crops.

It was the same drought that catalyzed the instability in Syria.

 “The drought lasted for years, and no one said anything against the government. Then, in 2011, we had had enough. There was a revolution.” That February the Arab Spring uprisings swept the Middle East. In Syria, protests grew, crackdowns escalated and the country erupted with 40 years of pent-up fury.

Israel managed its meager resources well.

The turnaround started in 2007, when low-flow toilets and showerheads were installed nationwide and the national water authority built innovative water treatment systems that recapture 86 percent of the water that goes down the drain and use it for irrigation — vastly more than the second-most-efficient country in the world, Spain, which recycles 19 percent.

Pause for a second and re-read that.  Israel recaptures about 86 percent of the water that goes down the drain, and the next best effort comes from Spain, which recycles 19 percent.  It is one hell of a gap between 19 and 86, right?  Think about India and China and everywhere else, and about all the water that is wasted.

If all that does not impress you enough, consider this:

Water produced by desalination costs just a third of what it did in the 1990s. ... Israeli households pay about US$30 a month for their water — similar to households in most U.S. cities, and far less than Las Vegas (US$47) or Los Angeles (US$58).

As the article notes, this level of a sophisticated desalination technology is a game changer.  If only our collective efforts would be directed towards such important aspects of life, instead of on Olympics and Facebook and ...

All was lost for want of ... water

I worry that I blog on way too many topics.  I worry because while I am a polymath wannabe, I am at best a dilettante.  There is, therefore, the nagging worry that it is only a matter of time before the world sniffs out this fake.  

But then, every once in a while something happens just enough to boost my ego.  It happened today too, which means I can rest easy for a while ;)

What happened today?  I read this in my favorite newspaper from the old country:

The Ganga that has nourished the Indian civilisation for centuries has recorded a historically low inflow in its lower reaches this year, going by the evidence on the ground. The inflow at the Farakka barrage in West Bengal nearly halved, compared with the quantum of water available in the last two years. The NTPC’s plant beside the barrage had to shut operations from March 10.

An NTPC plant shutting down?

Readings showed that the water level in the canal connecting the river to the plant was going down rapidly. Water is used to produce steam to run the turbines and for cooling vital equipment of coal-fired power stations.
By next day, authorities were forced to suspend generation at the 2,300-megawatt plant in Farakka town causing shortages in India's power grid. Next, the vast township on the river, where more than 1,000 families of plant workers live, ran out of water. Thousands of bottles of packaged drinking water were distributed to residents, and fire engines rushed to the river to extract water for cooking and cleaning.

Unprecedented.

What's the connection between a coal-fired power plant and water?  As the Union of Concerned Scientists put it in the context of the US:

Coal-fired power plants, which produce almost half of the country’s electricity, have significant impacts on water quantity and quality in the United States. Water is used to extract, wash, and sometimes transport the coal; to cool the steam used to make electricity in the power plant; and to control pollution from the plant.  The acts of mining and burning coal, as well as dealing with the waste, also can have major effects on water quality.

A lot of water is needed.  When there was no water, the NTPC's coal fired plant had to close down.

So, back to me.  After all, the blog posts are always about me ;)  Why do I feel like I am not that much a fake after all?

Back in April 2009--yes, seven years ago--the newspaper  published an op-ed of mine, in which I wrote about the importance of water in energy production.  I wrote there that water is a lot more to be worried about than CO2:

This is but another incentive for us to explore alternative energy sources that do not impose additional demands on water, which will then also mean lesser reliance on coal. Water-constrained countries such as China, India and Israel ought to encourage innovation on this urgent issue.
At the same time, we here in the United States have a wonderful opportunity to use our research and development infrastructure to develop feasible and economical approaches that will ease the pressure on water resources, and thereby help the world.
After all, to borrow a water metaphor, we sink or sail together!

Of course, my worry that I am a fake is a waste of my time; after all, nobody cares about what I think anyway! ;)

My obsession with shit!

Regular readers, I mean "regular" readers, know all too well that I talk shit. I mean, about "shit."  From wishing you "Bristol #4" to an arty bathroom.  I tell ya, this is one stinking blog! ;)

And then there is that other shit that I am passionate about.  You know about that too--the lack of sanitation infrastructure for hundreds of millions in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.  "If only we can develop less expensive ways of processing shit."  Aha, now you remember.

Do you recall the challenge from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to reinvent the toilet?



In a recent entry at his blog, Bill Gates writes:

I watched the piles of feces go up the conveyer belt and drop into a large bin. They made their way through the machine, getting boiled and treated. A few minutes later I took a long taste of the end result: a glass of delicious drinking water.

Yes, things are happening, even if only slowly.   It is "part of the Gates Foundation’s effort to improve sanitation in poor countries."

Because a shocking number of people, at least 2 billion, use latrines that aren’t properly drained. Others simply defecate out in the open. The waste contaminates drinking water for millions of people, with horrific consequences: Diseases caused by poor sanitation kill some 700,000 children every year, and they prevent many more from fully developing mentally and physically.
If we can develop safe, affordable ways to get rid of human waste, we can prevent many of those deaths and help more children grow up healthy.

The system that we have in this country, or many other countries, is expensive.  It requires sewer lines, sewage treatment plants, qualified personnel, and--to get the system running--electricity, which itself is in serious shortage.

So, if only a re-invented toilet will extract the water from shit and make it potable, and use the carbon in the shit to generate electricity.  My, won't that be multiple birds with one stone?

The project is called the Omniprocessor, and it was designed and built by Janicki Bioenergy, an engineering firm based north of Seattle. ...
Through the ingenious use of a steam engine, it produces more than enough energy to burn the next batch of waste. In other words, it powers itself, with electricity to spare.

 If it were not for Gates Foundation providing the seed money, such efforts to reinvent the toilet might not have even begun?  Isn't that a depressing thought?  To me, this is an example of how we misdirect our talents and capabilities.  We spend enormous amounts on wars.  We develop technologies to send humans to the moon and bring them back. We spend gazillions on sports stadiums that consume more electricity than entire countries in sub-Saharan Africa do.  All these mean that we have the know-how and the resources.  But, we merely choose to spend on things than what are really, really important for humans.

The next step is the pilot project; later this year, Janicki will set up an Omniprocessor in Dakar, Senegal, where they’ll study everything from how you connect with the local community (the team is already working with leaders there) to how you pick the most convenient location. They will also test one of the coolest things I saw on my tour: a system of sensors and webcams that will let Janicki’s engineers control the processor remotely and communicate with the team in Dakar so they can diagnose any problems that come up.

When we talk about the "internet of things" we are only fascinated with examples like how our refrigerators can keep track of the inventory and how an automated drone can deliver milk that a robot will load up in the fridge.  Because, all we do is gaze at our own navels!  What a contrast the Dakar project is--the connectivity that the internet offers is put to such a constructive use.

I will leave it to Bill Gates to wrap this up:

It might be many years before the processor is being used widely. But I was really impressed with Janicki’s engineering. And I’m excited about the business model. The processor wouldn’t just keep human waste out of the drinking water; it would turn waste into a commodity with real value in the marketplace.

Here's the video of the project and Gates drinking the potable water that was once a part of shit.  Give this man a Nobel Peace Prize already!

In energy, too, it’s the water ... again!

About this time six years ago--ok, ok, April 7, 2009, if you want me to be specific--my newspaper column was titled "In energy, too, it's the water."  I noted there:

instead of urging countries, particularly India and China, to stop using coal, perhaps we ought to focus on how to a large extent it is all about water. Many parts of India, China and other countries have low levels per capita of available water. For instance, while the United State has about 1,600 cubic meters of water per person, the average in China is about 400 cubic meters, and even less in India. This immensely valuable resource can be put to better uses than in coal-fired power plants.
This is but another incentive for us to explore alternative energy sources that do not impose additional demands on water, which will then also mean lesser reliance on coal. Water-constrained countries such as China, India and Israel ought to encourage innovation on this urgent issue.

But, hey, when was the last time anybody ever listened to me, right?  

Today, I read this about a town in Texas:

Last week Georgetown, Texas, a town of about 50,000 about 30 miles north of Austin (and the home of Nolan Ryan) announced that the utility that it owns, Georgetown Utility Systems, would soon get 100 percent of the electricity it provides from renewables.

What is the connection to my column from six years ago?  "because it will save on electricity costs and decrease our water usage.”

creating electricity from fossil fuels doesn’t simply require lots of natural gas and coal. It requires a huge amount of water. “Production of electrical power results in one of the largest uses of water in the United States and worldwide,” the U.S. Geological Survey notes in this infographic. At power plants, water is heated to make steam and huge amounts of water are needed to cool the equipment. Producing the fuel that powers these plants—mining coal and fracking natural gas—also consumes a huge amount of water.
But creating electricity from wind turbines and photovoltaic panels requires virtually no water. 

Ahem, is it ok to say "I told you so?"

BTW, such developments via the marketplace are yet another reason why I am not a big fan of the rah-rah fanaticism about fossil fuel divestment.  Other than a few nutcases who continue to believe in coal and petroleum, most of the corporate world is fully aware of the issues, and put their money where their mouth is--after all, that bottom-line is always their guide!  (A post for another day.) 

But then, at the end of it all, nobody listens to me. I don't get no respect.  The story of my life; what a Cassandra Curse! ;)  

Psst, is it ok to drink? Drink water, that is!

A few years ago, before my trip to Tanzania, I went to get the yellow-fever shot and medication to keep malaria away from me.  The doctor advised getting a bunch of other precautionary shots as well, which seemed reasonable to me.  "Let's do a blood test first and see where you are" he said.  "Because you grew up in India, chances are high that you already had a Hep A infection" the doctor added.

What the what?  I had Hep A?  I remember a typhoid infection during my undergraduate years, which then relapsed as well.  But, Hep A?  When did that happen?  Why me?  Woe is me!

I forget now what the blood tests revealed.  But, there is a good reason why the doctor conjectured about Hep A:

Hepatitis A is a liver disease caused by the hepatitis A virus. The virus is primarily spread when an uninfected (and unvaccinated) person ingests food or water that is contaminated with the faeces of an infected person. The disease is closely associated with unsafe water, inadequate sanitation and poor personal hygiene.

Food or water "that is contaminated with the faeces of an infected person."  Gross, right?  But, ahem, remember the crap floating in the tasty Thamirabarani River back at my grandmother's village?  And who knows what else!

These days, there is bottled water everywhere in India.  Huge containers of potable water are delivered to homes, though I have no idea whether these are safe to drink.  I trust this is ok.  At this stage in my life, I don't want to know either ;)

My daily American life is a total contrast to this life in the old country.  There, I open the water faucet, place a glass under the clear flow and drink that tasty, sweet, cold water.  No worries about germs, infectious diseases, and crap.  One of the very, very few countries in this world where drinking the water from the faucet poses no health risk.  If Rome wasn't built in a day, water that is safe to drink did not happen overnight either; it began a century ago in the US:

The first standards for drinking water in America were developed by the Public Health Service in 1914, two years after the famed aviation brother Wilbur Wright died of typhoid. The federal standards addressed bacteriological threats, but the PHS’ powers were limited, so the standards applied only to interstate common carriers such as trains, buses, and ships. Water providers to these carriers had to use chlorination, and this soon covered all the major cities.

There are paranoid environmentalists and health-nutcases who, even now, think that chlorination is harmful to humans.  Maybe. But, I don't care.  Because, unsafe water is a gazillion times worse than chlorine in water.

Our tap water is safer than it has ever been. But continued protection of our drinking water for the next 40 years will require vigilance and perhaps a transformation. It should not be surprising that something as fundamental and pervasive as drinking water cannot be fully protected by a single statute. We are used to enjoying safe water and paying monthly bills as “consumer drinkers.” Fundamental protection of our drinking water will not occur, however, unless we take on the role of “citizen drinkers,” using our political process to demand effective protection through better enforcement of our laws and renewed scrutiny of activities threatening our source waters.

I will drink to that.  After I reach home, that is ;)

We are all responsible for the drought in California?

Cogito, ergo sum is one that has been a wonderful guiding philosophy for me ever since I came across that.  (No, it was not in a Latin class, my friend!)  I often remark to students that education is all about thinking.  Thinking almost always challenges out gut instincts, which will not only make us a tad uncomfortable but force us to view the world in completely different ways.

But then thinking is hard work.  When students parrot statements condemning GMO food, or WalMart, or even the virtues of locavore as helping the local economy, it worries me very little.  They are, after all, in the process of figuring out how to think through.  I then prompt them with questions.  It is like the typical response we all received from our mothers throughout most of our childhood: "what were you thinking?" but without the judgmental tone.  Hmmm..., and then I wonder why enrollment in my classes has been on a decline! ;)

When I came across a Facebook comment, made perhaps in a lighter vein, that the ice-bucket-challenge was a waste of water, I was tempted to point out that the ice-bucket-challenge was a mere, ahem, drop in the ocean of wastage.  But, I did not, because Facebook is not really about serious discussions.  I have my blog for that! ;)

Vox.com provides a logical way to think through how we use water, and compares it with the gallon used in the ice-bucket-challenge:

source

The Slate piece that the chart is based on is not about the ice-bucket itself but a related water story--on how so much bottled water is exported out of California, which has been experiencing a terrible drought.

On Monday, Mother Jones produced this set of viral maps showing that most of the country’s bottled water comes from California, which just so happens to be in the midst of an epic, soul-crushing drought.
Barring a tropical storm or other variety of apocalypse, there is really no reason to ever buy bottled water. Bottled water is expensive, and it’s wasteful. But truthfully, exporting bottled water across state lines contributes an incredibly tiny amount to California’s annual water loss. You should never buy bottled water, but it’s because of the plastic, not because it’s making California’s drought worse.

Our gut instincts might tell us that exporting water from a state that has a serious water shortage is the worst thing Californians can do.  Which is where our gut instincts are wrong.  Not because exporting bottled water is wrong--it is wrong because of the plastic, as the article notes, and not because of the water itself.  What is the reality that challenges our gut instincts?

According to the bottled water industry, Americans consume about 30 gallons of bottled water per capita, each year. That may sound like a lot, but you’d do more to stem California’s drought by forgoing a single glass of Napa Valley wine or a single slice of Central Valley cheese. Skipping a single car wash would save more water than two people buy in bottles each year. But here’s the kicker: A single steak dinner uses as much water as almost a lifetime (61½ years’ worth, to be exact) of drinking bottled water. Animal products use so much water mostly because of the inherent inefficiencies of growing hay or grain first, and then feeding it to the animals. Animals raised industrially (not on pasture) are even worse: It takes a lot of water to wash away all the poop that would otherwise just recharge the soil.

Imagine a scene in California: a lovely middle-aged couple having a steak dinner with two glasses of wine and a tomato salad.  And their table also has bottled water.  A typical environmentalist will point only to that bottled water as a crime against nature, when the reality is far from that.

As long as you are checking your "gut" regarding thinking, you might also want to check your real gut:

Since California’s agriculture uses 80 percent of the state’s water anyway, small changes in your diet can go a long way. And since a good chunk of the entire country’s food comes from California, that means you don’t have to be a local to make a difference.

Even if you are a vegetarian--good for your health and for the global environment--and are eating almonds and cheese from California, you have contributed to worsening the state's drought way more than a schmuck does drinking water that was bottled in the Golden State ;)

Mining the mountains of Meghalaya and West Virginia

Less than a month ago, the New York Times' India Ink blog that is about India had a report with a troubling headline: "A Village Brings Down Its Hills as Lure of Mining Grows."  It was, yet another, depressing piece on the economics versus environment struggle that seems to be the only way we humans know.  Apparently we know not how to make it economics and the environment.

The NY Times reported on the mining activities in the hills of Meghalaya, a state in the northeast, whose name means the abode of the clouds, which will invoke nothing but wonderful imagery.  But, the photo in the report is anything but that.

Meghalaya "has become home to an increasing number of family-owned limestone mines, whose owners are seeking wealth unheard of in a region accustomed to subsistence farming."

Of course, it will be a wonderful development to raise the standards of living and provide opportunities for people to live a life that is more than mere subsistence.  But, the lucrative mining comes at a steep environmental cost:

“In this village, we get our water straight from the river,” Mr. Pohsnem said. “As soon as the mining started, the water became undrinkable. Now they say they have stopped mining near the river, but they have buried the headwaters of the streams already. Maybe with the money they make from mining, they can buy clean water, but that is not a solution.” ...
“We used to have deer and bears around here, but even the squirrels ran away after the mining. If they cannot drink the water, then how can we?” he asked. “It’s no use fighting — better that we buy a place elsewhere where there’s no mining.”

Mining messing up the local water supply is an all too familiar story. Not only in India or China, but even right here in the United States.  And not the US of a hundred years ago as the country's economic engines were revving, but even now.  The chemical spill in West Virginia this past January is the context for this piece in the New Yorker with an equally depressing title: "Chemical Valley."  After MCHM—4-methylcyclohexane methanol--leaked in the thousands of gallons, and after another chemical--PPH--had leaked as well, 

Authorities urged the public to watch for symptoms of exposure, including rashes, nausea, vomiting, and wheezing. Just after midnight, President Obama declared a federal emergency. He dispatched FEMA and sent in the National Guard to deliver truckloads of bottled water.

The water was not safe for  “drinking, cooking, washing, or bathing.”

Interestingly enough, the local health department is headed by a guy with origins in India--Rahul Gupta, the son of an Indian diplomat.

When I asked Dr. Gupta, the head of the health department, if he and his family were drinking from the tap, he said that they were not. The water at their house still had an odor. “It is very difficult to drink licorice-flavored water,” he said. I asked if there were any outstanding scientific questions, and he laughed. Then he said, “What is the metabolism and excretion of this compound in humans? Does it accumulate? Where does it accumulate? What is the carcinogenic potential? What is the teratogenic potential? What does it do to home pipes? How does it interact, if at all, with other compounds in water, such as chlorine? Does it form harmful or harmless products?”
Dr. Gupta ran though another half-dozen medical and scientific issues, and arrived at the question that concerns him most. For a man who had left a country that had undergone radical divides in human development, the causes and effects of the Freedom Industries spill feel like a departure from an American principle he thought he understood. He said, “The 1974 Safe Drinking Water Act allows every resident of the United States to have access to safe drinking water. So how do we say that, for three hundred thousand people in this part of West Virginia, it’s O.K. to have ‘appropriate’ water? Do we understand the path we’re taking here, by defining two different classes of water, for two different groups of population? Do we really want to go down that path? In the history of this nation, it doesn’t end well when we go down this path.”

What is it that makes us think so little of water?  Even when we understand the preciousness of water and its connection to life itself.  When we scan the universe, it is the presence of water that we use as an important proxy for whether we might be able to detect life far, far away from this pale blue dot.  Yet, we sacrifice water because ...?

source

We humans are so messed up!

Water
By Ralph Waldo Emerson

The water understands
Civilization well;
It wets my foot, but prettily,
It chills my life, but wittily,
It is not disconcerted,
It is not broken-hearted:
Well used, it decketh joy,
Adorneth, doubleth joy:
Ill used, it will destroy,
In perfect time and measure
With a face of golden pleasure
Elegantly destroy.

Air, water, and land. All three polluted in China. Is manufacturing worth it?

In the years before Rupert Murdoch bought out the Wall Street Journal, and changed the tone of the paper, I was a regular reader of that paper. Even a subscriber at one point.  (I am sure that will gladden the hearts of my socialist colleagues!)

The WSJ was unique in one way--it was almost as if the editorial page was a newspaper of its own and ideologically driven with Robert Bartley in the driver seat, separate from the rest of the paper that was not that far from a middle-of the-road routine journalism.  The paper even had Alexander Cockburn as a regular columnist giving his interpretations from the far left side of the political spectrum.  

Typically, every issue had an interesting rather off-beat story that began in the front page and worked its way into the inside pages.  I can even faintly recall the image of Daniel Pearl's portrait on the front in that characteristic WSJ-style.

Even now, every once in a while, the WSJ breaks free of its ideological framework (I guess it is possible now with Murdoch being distracted with many professional and personal issues!) and presents lengthy pieces, like this one on China's pollution in the rural areas, affecting the agricultural lands too.

Pollution in China is not anything new in this blog.  For instance, this past January alone, I had three entries (here, here, and here)on the topic, with the bottom-line question of all is all that cheap manufacturing for the rest of the world really worth all the pollution?

In its latest piece on China's rural pollution, the WSJ notes:

For years, public attention has focused on the choking air and contaminated water that plague China's ever-expanding cities. But a series of recent cases have highlighted the spread of pollution outside of urban areas, now encompassing vast swaths of countryside, including the agricultural heartland.
Estimates from state-affiliated researchers say that anywhere between 8% and 20% of China's arable land, some 25 to 60 million acres, may now be contaminated with heavy metals. A loss of even 5% could be disastrous, taking China below the "red line" of 296 million acres of arable land that are currently needed, according to the government, to feed the country's 1.35 billion people.

To begin with, though it is vast in land area, most of the land is not suited for agriculture.  And then to have between 8% and 20% of the arable land messed up?

Caption at the WSJ story:

In Dapu, a chemical factory sits next to a farm. 'Nothing comes from these plants,' says a local farmer.

I suppose the air pollution is visible in Shanghai or Beijing--which is why, finally, after years of dodging the issue, China is committing $277 billion to clean up the air pollution over the next five years. Water pollution is also equally visible--when dead pigs float down the river, or rivers run in some psychedelic colors.  Compared to air and water pollution, contamination of soil is pretty much out of sight, and happens far away from the big cities.

[Factories] are moving to the countryside to take advantage of cheaper land, often made available with the help of local officials who want to boost growth, environmental researchers say. In other cases, urban leaders want factories to move out of crowded cities. The ensuing problems of rural pollution are exacerbated by the fact that many small-town governments have less capacity to properly regulate complex industrial activities than their counterparts in big cities, experts say.

Even in a dysfunctional politics like the one in India, such happenings get reported by the media, and activists head to the courts--like Rahul Choudhary, about whom I had written in the Register Guard.  But, it is a different story in China, where negative reports rarely see daylight.

China's Ministry of Environmental Protection refused to release the results of a multiyear nationwide soil-pollution survey, calling the data a "state secret."

It gets complex:

Removing heavy metals from farmland is a complicated process that can take years—time lost for farming. That is a chilling prospect for a government tasked with supporting 20% of the world's population on less than 10% of the world's arable land. Any major reduction in food security would hurt the Communist Party, which has staked its reputation in part on its ability to keep the country's granaries full with minimal imports.
The government's refusal to release its soil survey, meanwhile, has only added to fears that officials know more than they are willing to say. Launched to great fanfare in the state media in 2006, the survey was originally scheduled to be completed in 2010. In June last year, an environment ministry official told the Xinhua news service that more than 20% of soil samples in a trial program for monitoring pollution, involving 364 rural villages, had failed to meet national standards and that the results of the survey would be published "at the proper time."

We consumers have a responsibility, too.  As I often remind students, "the invisible hand" watches out for whether we are willing to put our money where our mouth is.  If we are willing to pay up, then the market responds.  But, as long as we do not care about the pollution in China, or labor dying in accidents in Bangladesh, and all we care about is getting the most inexpensive product, even if it means that we toss it away after a few months, well, we will have to witness the pollution too.


China’s Andy Rooney Has Some Funny Opinions About How Great The Chinese Government Is

How do you say hello in Tamil? மேக்க மழ உண்டா வேய்

Way back, when joking about the old village ways of the old country, we would ask ourselves at home in the typical Tirunelveli dialect, மேக்க மழ உண்டா வேய்  (any rains in the west?)  That question seemed like it was pretty much the standard greeting among the menfolk in Pattamadai.  For all the reasons: the place was in a rain-shadow region east of the mountains, and the monsoons over the Western Ghats were critical for the river flow.

All kidding aside, the visits to Pattamadai also were valuable lessons on how precious water is--something we would never have known otherwise.  In Neyveli, where we grew up, water--and tasty water at that--was in plenty.  And piped too!

Thus, even now, talking with my father about the rains in Pattamadai is not rare, especially now that it is the monsoon season.

"It has been abundant rainfall all over India" father said a few conversations ago.  He added that because of the substantial inflow into the rivers and dams in the west, those states have had no choice but to release water downstream into Tamil Nadu, particularly to Mettur Dam.

A few days ago, he reported that the water level at Mettur Dam, which had been at 15 feet a few months ago, had rapidly gone up to fifty. Then sixty. Then seventy.

"The intial rise will always be rapid" father said.  "As you know, as the water level increases, the area over which the water spreads also increases, which means it will require a lot more water inflow to get it up to seventy-five and eighty."

The retired civil engineer hasn't lost anything at 83.  Good for him!  I hoped that he would not test me with a math problem of "if so many cubic-feet/second is the inflow, and the dam's height is ..."  I was just short of  yanking my hair out of the scalp--whatever is left in my balding head--in trying to recall the formula for the area and volume of a cone.  Thankfully, father moved on to how Chennai's water will depend on the rains later in the year.

Two days ago, father was excited.  "Mettur level has gone up really well, which means that they will release the water for ஆடி பெருக்கு" (a pre-planting festival time in early August.)  The Hindu notes that the water level at the dam is just shy of 90 feet.  Later today, when I call up my parents, I bet he will be thrilled and will have more to say on this.

While water level there is something to celebrate, here in Oregon it has been a remarkably below-normal precipitation over the year thanks to which the Willamette River looks like a feeble trickle.  As I was eating blackberries off the vines by the riverbank, a neighbor asked me "have you ever seen those rocks in the middle of the river there?" as she simultaneously pointed them with her finger.

"Nope" I said.  "Throughout the walk it is that way.  I see boulders and stretches of pebbles that I didn't know existed in all these eleven years that I have lived here."

"And it has been so hot" she complained.  "Looks like the California I ditched is catching up with me" she added with a laugh.

Even though we joked about the Pattamadai men talking about rains all the time, it is only thanks to them that I was made aware of the importance of rain and water.  The water that makes life possible in Pattamadai and anywhere on this Pale Blue Dot.  Maybe my life here by the Willamette is nothing but the continuation of the life my people had by the Tamrabarani.

May the farmers in Pattamadai, and everywhere else on the planet too, and the rest of us also, always have plenty of water, and may we never, ever, forget its importance.

Harnessing that profit motive. Creative and Conscious Capitalism?

As I noted a fortnight ago, the profit motive is so darn wonderful and a curse at the same time.  Since the end of WWII, and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, it has been a worldwide experiment on how to handle this profit motive.  We do have variations on this, from the US model to the Scandinavian approach to the Chinese one to ... In all these, there is no hands-off approach to the profit motive and, instead, these different approaches reflect the different ways in which societies attempt to rein in that profit motive.

A few years ago, as Bill Gates started thinking, talking, and doing philanthropy, he talked about ideas on "creative capitalism."  That was five years ago, and it is awful that as I go back to posts that long ago, hyperlinks rarely work anymore.  I wonder how archivists and librarians deal with this nightmare; not my problem, at least for now!  For now, I did a Google search, which led me to this site, in which Gates notes:

Why do people benefit in inverse proportion to their need? Well, market incentives make that happen.
In a system of capitalism, as people's wealth rises, the financial incentive to serve them rises. As their wealth falls, the financial incentive to serve them falls, until it becomes zero. We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
The genius of capitalism lies in its ability to make self-interest serve the wider interest. The potential of a big financial return for innovation unleashes a broad set of talented people in pursuit of many different discoveries. This system, driven by self-interest, is responsible for the incredible innovations that have improved so many lives.
But to harness this power so it benefits everyone, we need to refine the system.

See, the gazillionaire Bill Gates, as he started to think of the world beyond Microsoft, also was seduced by that tricky question of how to refine the system that is driven by the profit motive.  In such a refined system, the poor and the underserved can also be quickly brought up to levels where the market forces might then take care of them too.

It is one heck of a challenging question.  And Gates' vision?

The challenge here is to design a system where market incentives, including profits and recognition, drive those principles to do more for the poor.
I like to call this idea creative capitalism, an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities.

Hey, we cannot complain that Bill Gates simply talked about this and forgot all about it after exiting Davos--the guy has been walking that talk ever since.  But, of course, this is not a challenge that he can take up on his own and solve it.  

Now, another entrepreneur is talking a different variation.  This time, it is the founder of Whole Foods, which is also popularly joked about as "whole paycheck," but that is a different story.  

"I think the critics of capitalism have got it in this very small box - that it's all about money," explains John Mackey, co-founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods. "And yet, I haven't found it be that way. I've known hundreds of entrepreneurs and with very few exceptions most of them did not start their businesses primarily to make money."

The popular, or populist, image of a capitalist is of bloated fellow smoking his cigar in utmost comfort while plotting how to screw the hoi polloi.  But, that ain't so.  There is no doubt that there are several rogues out there, but, seriously, isn't Whole Foods that liberals love so much a capitalist enterprise by itself?  My neighbors own a small business and they aren't out to rob people.  Anyway, let me stay focused here on creating a refined system, call it "creative capitalism" or "conscious capitalism" or whatever.  

In Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, Mackey and his co-author, Raj Sisodia, make a case that businesses are at their best when reaching for a higher purpose that ranges far beyond any simplistic notions of the profit motive or self-interest.

I came across one other example of how the profit motive is doing good--in the case of providing potable water, the lack of which was something I recently wrote about.

WaterHealth International, a social business that has set up drinking water centers in western and southern India, now purifies about 1.4 million liters of water a day, and serves around five million people.

As I recently commented to a student, if I am not an "Argumentative Indian" then I am a "Doubting Thomas." So, of course, I checked out the company's website; it is not clear whether the communities in which this system has been installed fully paid for it, or whether corporations and/or foundations subsidized it.  Even if the latter, then it is nothing but the model that Bill Gates outlined where businesses, NGOs, and governments team up in order to provide for goods and services to the poor whom, otherwise, the profit-motivated businesses completely bypass.

It isn't a perfect world; but, to read about such developments is encouraging enough.

Women carrying water from the common hand-pump, in Pommern (Tanzania)

Water, water everywhere ... but, not always safe to drink

(Earlier in the morning, I submitted this as a possible op-ed in the Register Guard.)
Update: it will make it to print, according to the editor's quick reply

“The next time you come to India, you might hesitate to drink water here” my father laughingly said when I talked with him a couple of days ago. He explained the basis for that remark—a surprise check by government officials at drinking water plants in the city of Chennai, where my parents live, revealed a shocking lack of quality control. He suggested that I read about it on the web, and I did. Officials inspected about 300 facilities that sell packaged drinking water, and even found cockroaches and other insects at one facility.

What a contrast to the situation we experience here in Oregon. The water that comes out of the faucets at our homes is not only safe to drink but also refreshingly tasty. I am reminded of a student who remarked how awful the water tasted when he visited Texas and he wondered why we don’t sell packaged Oregon drinking water in other states.

If you have never thought twice about this tremendous luxury that we take for granted, then make sure you spend at least a minute reflecting on it on March 22nd, which is World Water Day.

A reservoir at Sengottai

Yes, water is a prime requirement for life, and it is that water that makes us fondly refer to Earth as the “Pale Blue Dot. “ As the United Nations notes, “universal access to efficient drinking water supply and sanitation services is the foundation for the fulfillment of basic human needs.”

That very ingredient for life has also historically been one of the easiest ways for disease causing organisms to enter human bodies and sometimes even kill them. A classic example is cholera, which has felled many humans over the millennia. It was during a mid‐nineteen century cholera outbreak in London that a physician, John Snow, systematically linked the disease to water and also to the geographic area that was the source of the outbreak.

Over the 150 years since, the United Kingdom, the US, and other advanced countries invested in sewer systems to make sure that pathogens did not easily contaminate the drinking water system, and improved the water supply infrastructure too. As Edward Glaeser, a Harvard economist, observed, “In 1900, America’s cities were spending as much on water as the federal government spent on everything except for the military and its pensions.” That phenomenal investment alone contributed to a significant increase in life expectancy.

Investment in water and sewer systems do not necessarily have short‐term profitable returns, which is also why they were traditionally public investments. The returns on these investments come via better health conditions that, in turn, promote higher productivity over a couple of generations.

However, back in India, public investment in water has been inadequate compared to the huge population. Even worse is the situation when it comes to sanitation systems to deal with wastes. Open defecation then easily leads to the contamination of drinking water supplies similar to how the dumping of wastes into the Thames River eventually led to the cholera outbreak in London.

It is relatively easy to question the priorities of a country like India, which has not made investment in water and sanitation systems an urgency. If the country can launch satellites into geostationary orbit and operate as the back‐office for the world, then surely it has the technical know-how and resources to develop this critical infrastructure. But, I suppose democracy is a messy process that often skews priorities.

As if the complications of the political process are not enough, precipitation patterns seem to be changing as well. Farmers and urban dwellers alike note that the monsoons do not seem to be along the old predictable schedules and are also a lot more geographically uneven, with some areas getting drenched and others going dry. More than once my mother has asked me whether it is related to the global warming that she often hears about. “It could be” is all this academic can tell her.

So, given all these, what can we do? At one level, nothing much because it is primarily up to the governments and people in the developing countries to make water a priority. However, as a result of awareness, we might be able to support the activities of foundations and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) that are working on these vital issues in those countries. We can also certainly try to understand the importance of freshwater, including in our own areas. More than anything else, thinking about all these and more on World Water Day will yield a new found appreciation for the rain that falls in plenty in the wonderful paradise that Oregon is.

Photos of the day: World Water Day

It is not any painting here .... the river is polluted. The caption for the photo at the source:

A worker looks at a photographer from the door of a factory that manufactures screws and nuts, next to a polluted river inJiaxing, Zhejiang province, China, on March 15, 2012. China's continuing reliance on heavy industry meant it failed to meet its own targets for cleaning its air and water in 2011. (Reuters/Stringer)

Even more dramatic and terrifying is the following one, also from China:

So, how much more are you willing to pay for the cheap goods from China, in order to make sure that the precious water will be better managed?

Photo of the day: more on women's work

The photo's description at the source is:

ANYTHING FOR WATER: A group of tribal women fetching water from an agricultural well at Govind Tanda Karepalli Mandal in Khammam Distrcit. Photo: G.N.Rao

Yet again, I am blown away by the physically demanding labor that most poorer women have to do day in and day out, and almost always they seem to do that with a smile on their faces.
In Tanzania, too, it was women carrying water from the community hand-pump to their homes.  There were lots of young and older men alike cycling around, playing football, .... No, I did not take photos--neither of the women carrying water, nor of the men biking or chatting.

In this photo, it appears that one small slip could easily mean a fall into the well and, perhaps, crashing one's head against the rocks.  I am getting a tad dizzy just looking at this photo ... 

Worse than the Swine Flu. Lots.

My niece asked me whether the Swine flu was really a huge issue. I told her something like this: It has the potential to become huge. However, it is gaining so much attention because of the potential in the rich countries. Otherwise, nobody would really care. Which is why malaria or other diseases that kill people by the thousands every day in poor countries barely register a blip in the global health radar.

Case in point: an outbreak of diarrhea has already killed more people in one Indian state than the Swine flu has killed in the entire country.

The deaths have been reported in several villages in Kalahandi district, Health Minister Prasanna Acharya said.

Local newspapers put the death toll at 38. Health officials say 237 people suffering from the disease have been admitted to hospitals.

Diarrhoea is a major killer in the world and is thought to be responsible for around 4% of all deaths.

Yet, all the attention is on Swine flu :-(

In energy, too, it’s the water

Over spring break, I did what university faculty members are notorious for. I attended an academic conference in Las Vegas — and got more depressed about the state of the world!

At the opening plenary session, the speakers talked about the increasing problems with water in the American Southwest, which might also be related to systematic changes in worldwide precipitation patterns. One piece of local data: Water levels in Lake Mead, the reservoir behind Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, are down to 48 percent of capacity.

So the following day I headed out to Hoover Dam — consistent with the teacher in me who favors field trips as key learning exercises. My previous visit there was more than 10 years ago, when my parents visited us from India. My father had studied about Hoover Dam in his civil engineering program, and I recalled his eager beaver excitement when we were there.

This time around, the low water level was obvious. The bathtub rings above the water’s surface looked like nasty scars. To see the conditions in person was way more real and worrisome than it was when I listened to the speakers while comfortably perched in the conference hall.

Tourists rushed past me as I was parked overlooking the dam, and I wondered how the changing water and drought conditions around the world might affect electricity generation. We tend to forget that even coal-fired power stations need a lot of water; globally, about 45 percent of electricity comes from coal.

I grew up in an industrial company town — Neyveli — in southern India, where the principal activity is to generate about 2,500 megawatts of electricity by firing up the lignite mined there. Lignite, a variety of coal, has a low energy content compared to more energy packed varieties like bituminous or anthracite.

Generating power from lignite requires water every step along the way — which, in Neyveli, came from underground. The area was fortunate to have extensive aquifers, naturally recharged by the approximately 40 inches of monsoon rains every year. However, many engineers, including my father, were and are worried that continued large-scale use of groundwater might catalyze sea water intrusion — after all, the sea is barely 20 miles away.

Thus, strange as it was to think about how water shortages might affect coal-fired power generation while standing atop Hoover Dam, it was more worrying to think about the following confluence of factors:

Coal is being used extensively worldwide as a source of energy. In India and China, 70 percent to 80 percent of electricity is coal-based.

Burning coal is a major source of carbon dioxide, an agent for global warming and climate change.

Huge quantities of water, often groundwater, are needed to sustain coal-based power generation.

Water is absolutely necessary for life on this planet, and there are enough data trends to justify worry about the future availability of water — especially groundwater.

Therefore, instead of urging countries, particularly India and China, to stop using coal, perhaps we ought to focus on how to a large extent it is all about water. Many parts of India, China and other countries have low levels per capita of available water. For instance, while the United States has about 1,600 cubic meters of water per person, the average in China is about 400 cubic meters, and even less in India. This immensely valuable resource can be put to better uses than in coal-fired power plants.

This is but another incentive for us to explore alternative energy sources that do not impose additional demands on water, which will then also mean lesser reliance on coal. Water-constrained countries such as China, India and Israel ought to encourage innovation on this urgent issue.

At the same time, we here in the United States have a wonderful opportunity to use our research and development infrastructure to develop feasible and economical approaches that will ease the pressure on water resources, and thereby help the world.

After all, to borrow a water metaphor, we sink or sail together!

For The Register-Guard
Posted to Web: Sunday, Apr 5, 2009 04:29PM
Appeared in print: Monday, Apr 6, 2009, page A7