Fresh Water

Most people I know enjoy taking showers, especially after the scorching summer we've had already. Afterwards, you feel so wonderfully refreshed. Compared to showering, taking a bath is, well, a tepid experience. Obviously, all types of bathing use water. Other things we do also use water but many of those uses are hidden or, at least, not particularly obvious. I was reminded of that recently when I read a Fidelity Investment newspaper ad that was intended to shock readers by informing them it takes 35 gallons of water to produce a single cup of coffee and 635 gallons to produce one hamburger (I believe those numbers are exaggerated but that’s another column).

Naturally, Fidelity wanted readers to think about financial investment opportunities, such as new technologies to produce fresh water in areas that need it. Instead, I thought about how water affects our daily lives. Few people in West St. Louis County think of fresh water as a problem, not even in the drought we have now. Not with the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers in our backyards, so to speak. If you stand on the bank of either river and watch the water flowing by it seems almost limitless.

When we brush our teeth we use one gallon. A ten-minute shower uses about 25 gallons. A toilet flush takes between one and three gallons. Washing your hands or face takes one gallon. About 100 gallons of water are needed to make one cotton shirt. Producing one pound of wheat takes 80 gallons. (Source: http://ga2.er.usgs.gov/edu/sq3action.cfm)

Although West County residents seldom think about water shortages, we are not insulated from fresh water supply problems. Witness what has been happening over the last thirty years on the Great Plains. Also known as America’s Breadbasket, the Great Plains is one of the world’s most fertile and productive agricultural regions. Agriculture there, from which all Americans benefit in terms of food products, is largely sustained by groundwater irrigation from the Ogallala Aquifer. That massive underground system of nearly 175,000 square miles stretches from central Texas through southern South Dakota. Nearly 30 percent of all irrigated land in the U.S. uses groundwater from the Ogallala.

Only problem is, that Aquifer has been depleted over the past several decades by excessive withdrawals for crop irrigation. You might have seen the tell-tale green circles when you fly over the region. That situation isn’t critical yet but needs to be carefully analyzed and viable options pursued before it’s too late.

No matter what your opinion may be on environmental issues in general, water use today and in the near-term future is an important challenge because of present-day tight supply and looming population growth. And here you might think about the one billion plus people in China who are getting used to a diet higher in animal protein, especially beef, and remember Fidelity Investment’s statistic of 635 gallons per hamburger and the 35 gallons used to produce each cup of coffee.

Please note that this essay was first published as an Opinion Shaper column in the Suburban Journals, on July 25, 2012.

Jared Loughner’s Plea

Allow me to start this essay with a brief quote: “Experts had concluded that Loughner suffers from schizophrenia, and officials at a federal prison have forcibly medicated him with psychotropic drugs for more than a year.” Washington Post 8-8-12

So, what we have is a society (and its legal system) that forcibly medicated an acutely mentally ill man, who was found to be so sick and non-functional at the time of his arrest that he could not be tried (because the judge found him so impaired that he was unable to understand the charges or participate in his defense), until he could appreciate exactly how fucked up he was when he pulled the trigger, and then incarcerate him in federal prison for the rest of his life. All because he committed violent acts while mentally ill but was not “insane” under federal law (don’t even ask about Arizona law because that totally fucked up state doesn’t recognize mental illness as affecting individual actions).

It doesn’t take a brilliant legal scholar to see that Americans are so angry with and so frightened of people who have serious mental illness that it is far better to throw them into prison than to recognize and treat their illness. After Ronald Reagan was shot and John Hinckley “got off” by successfully pleading that insanity rendered him incapable of rational judgment, the key federal law dealing with insanity pleas was changed drastically. The goal of Congress was to raise the bar defining insanity so high that practically no one, no matter how mentally ill they are, would be “let off” so to speak by finding them not guilty by reason of insanity and then putting them in a mental hospital for treatment.

As a society we are obsessed with the punishment of those who violate our rules, witness the recent Texas execution of a black man with an IQ of 61 and our coldhearted eagerness to try children as adults and throw them into prison for life. Throwing those sick fuckers and rascally little bastards into prison should make our chests swell with pride to be Americans. Hey, we’re the BEST country in the world. If you didn’t know that all you have to do is ask us. We’ll be glad to tell you exactly how backward all the other countries are and how God has smiled directly on our form of government. We are, after all, an exceptional country.