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• The Future of the White House
• g-Think Survey Results: Future
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• Can Green Business Survive the…
• Interview With Mark Kelleher
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• The Future Does Not Exist
• The Future of the Web
• The Future of Energy

When I was a little kid, I’d let the water run like it was going out of style. This pained my conscientious, compost-happy parents, who would barge into the bathroom and turn the faucet off with dramatic exasperation. I wasn’t trying to be wasteful. It was just one of those strange, psychosomatic habits that, in hindsight, smacks not necessarily of apathy but of a fantasy of limitlessness.

At some point in the early nineties, my father, an Awakening Consumer long before it was fashionable, outfitted all of the bathrooms in our house with low-flow showerheads. These were ingenious little contraptions that turned my wonderfully hedonistic rainstorm into a vapid drizzle. My father was delighted with his efficiency. I was tortured by memories of the good life.

I have to be honest—embarrassingly honest—even right now, even amidst seeing images of drought in Somalia and reading about the water crisis shattering middle-class life in India, I still have a tough time seeing water as a luxury. I’ll chalk it up to human nature. You see, there’s nothing mysterious or sexy about water. It’s always there for me when I need it; I turn on a faucet and it pours its heart out to me. And so, ever drawn to the unavailable, I lose interest. But for more than 1.1 billion people worldwide who lack access to clean water, those two hydrogens and one oxygen are effectively playing hard to get.

In typical capitalist fashion, the market has romanticized water, making us believe that it’s about more than just hydration, creating a myth of sorts. Take FIJI, which is essentially the Gisele Bundchen of bottled waters. Intoxicatingly exotic—its proposition of “artesian” redefined what we expect from water—FIJI is ubiquitous enough to fool us into believing that it’s the girl next door, but good ecological sense says that this water is a no-no. As for efforts from the likes of Ethos, H to O (Help to Others) and Belu to redeem the evil of bottled water consumption with the goodness of global clean water charities, it’s a nice idea, but all that bottling and shipping just perpetuates climate change, and as the world gets warmer the thirsty get thirstier.

In the future, water-rich countries will capitalize on thirst and the world will be wooed by a new buzzword: hydropolitics. It’s already happening. Just a couple of weeks ago, Barcelona made moves to import water from France. Turkey, Syria and Iraq have long disputed control of the Tigris-Euphrates water basin. India and Pakistan are continually at odds over the Indus River. China controversially diverted parts of the Yangtze River northwards, to quench the overdrawn Yellow River. Tajikistan’s interest in creating dams to sell hydroelectric power jeopardizes water flow to Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Will we see Brazil, Canada and Russia selling water to Yemen? Or, quite possibly, trading it for oil?

The chase has only just begun. By 2025, two thirds of the world’s population will face water shortages. Consider the fact that, each year, the planet has 77 million more mouths to feed; then consider the fact that it takes a liter of water to produce just one calorie of food, and things start to look pretty desperate.

Unfortunately, we can’t escape the basic physiological need for water—our bodies will literally dry up without it—and so, unlike the energy crisis, there’s no such thing as alternative sources. However, there are some alternative approaches including grey water systems, which if used for toilet flushing can result in a 30% reduction in water use for the average household; rainwater harvesting which, while a mandatory requirement for all new construction in Bermuda, is actually restricted in Colorado as it’s argued that capturing rainwater is technically “stealing” from the communal watershed; and desalination, which is actually greater in theory (hey, there’s no shortage of salt water on earth, so let’s just take the salt out—okay!) than in practice, as it requires massive amounts of energy and creates industrial waste. One of the more interesting concepts is waterbag technology, the large-scale transport of fresh water hinging upon a simple physical truth: fresh water floats in salt water. The “Spragg Bag” waterbag uses a patented zipper to connect waterbags as if they were railroad cars. The water train? Maybe it’s coming.

But none of these are solutions. And the reality is that there isn’t any immediate or clear solution—not when the problem is rooted in insurmountable, finite numbers. It’s simple math: there are too many of us, and not enough water to go around.

So what’s a human to do? What’s an Awakening Consumer to do?

Perhaps the answer to the future is a return to the past. There was a time when primal needs weren’t compromised by convenience or desire, and survival itself was swoon-worthy. It may sound radical, but I think there’s something appealing about the idea of life as we know it—our beautiful, self-important, charmed lifestyle—becoming extinct. Real allure lies in the promise of just being.

Sources: World Bank, World Health Organization, Reuters, Storming Media

Photo credit: wili