Nowadays every news headline seems to say that we're going to run out of fossil fuels any minute.
Besides being critical to the running of our vehicles, about 90 percent of everyday items, including almost every plastic, are made out of these fuels. Solutions are falling quickly short of this approaching problem; we're not ready to go solar, wind power is severely limited, and nuclear power scares the pants off of us. So why shouldn't we panic? Maybe because it isn't the biggest immediate threat to our future.
While consumers are crying about spending less than $3 per gallon for gasoline to fill up their gas guzzling SUVs, they spend twice that amount for bottles of designer water. And this is, coincidentally, where the similarities and unique blending of oil and water issues come into play.
Do you remember the movie Jurassic Park when there was a race between the raptors and the humans? Right about the time where the raptors were going to snatch the humans, an onscreen attack occurred where the T-Rex gobbled up the raptors and effectively ended a fast-approaching threat - but at the same time replaced it with an even larger approaching threat. Well, welcome to Jurassic Water Park. Quit worrying about running out of oil because the world is going to run out of clean drinking water long before that occurs.
Bottled water sales are now close to $6.00 per gallon for the better brands. In about twenty years, we will look back on this price as the bargain of the millennium. According to the book Whose Water Is It? a collection of essays edited by Bernadette McDonald and Douglas Jehl, 70 percent of the earth is water, but less than one half of one percent is available to drink. To put it more graphically, this book suggests taking a one-liter bottle of Evian water that consumers pay two dollars too much for and pouring out all of it except for one drop. That bottle represents the earth's entire water supply, and the remaining drop represents all of earth's water that is fit to drink.
The good news is that we're going to run out of oil long after we run out of water. According to the United Nations, half of the world won't have enough water to support its population by 2025. So the voracious raptor oil problem has just been gobbled up by the greater T-Rex water disaster looming ever larger in the near future.
Whose Water Is It? further explains that of the nearly 50 countries that are now short of water - or will be by 2025 - 40 of those are in the Middle East and North or Sub-Saharan Africa, which is also where most of the world's oil resides. While we're still pumping oil in Texas and Oklahoma, they can't pump much more of their water needs out of the nearly empty Ogallala aquifer that lies under the entire southwest. These two states might not even be viable for human habitation by the time they fail to supply our gas guzzlers.
So, you see, these concerns for oil have been clearly exaggerated when compared to the water issue. How long do you think really thirsty people will wait for a glass of water compared to a gallon of gas? Whose Water Is It? states that nearly two billion people currently have less than a gallon of dirty drinking water a day, and are probably not planning on waiting patiently in line for 19 years just for the entire clean drinking water supply to disappear across the globe by 2025. And most of those people don't even drive SUVs.
As Ohioans, however, daily and lengthy showers will still be in the picture for us, because according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, almost 20 percent of that pathetic last drop of water in the bottle is contained in our very proximate Great Lakes. Not only are these lakes the largest and most accessible sources of drinkable water on earth, they are also located about four hours north of Athens.
So, the future Ohio University student body will be one of the most hydrated and best smelling groups in the world. Which would be great for OU enrollment, if it wasn't for that whole worldwide crisis thing.
- Jessica Beinecke is a freshman journalism major. Send her an e-mail at jb275005@ohiou.edu.
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Jessica Beinecke
