Water Saving Tip #4: New Models wanted

Hello Everyone!

I going to talk about a some major barriers to conserving water. Of course, we've all heard about issues such as price, cost of conservation technologies, and so on. And in fact, one reader actually e-mailed me and asked about rationing as a means of cutting down on water consumption.

But perhaps the biggest barrier lies in the system itself. Namely that in our current society there is a sort of competition between "traditional" concepts of water rights, most of which saw the ownership of water as unethical and operated in terms of use rights, versus the idea that water should become a marketable good. The problem with traditional water rights systems is that it becomes very difficult to create any real incentives for conserving water without at the same time penalizing those who conserve the most. However the idea that water should be an economic good is problematic for several reasons. One of which is the long tradition of considering ownership of water as both deeply unethical socially. Furthermore, the concept of water as a marketable good and the rise of "water sellers" has a long tradition of fostering severe economic inequities, along with hierarchical and militaristic forms of social control.

Some of the common non-market forms of water rights are the following doctines:

1) Riparian Doctrine: Basically the Riparian doctrine grants water rights on the basis of owning the land adjacent to the water source, or upon the water table. At least in theory, access to the water is shared equally among the land owners or is proportionate. Generally under this system, shortages are shared equally, or at least as equally as land ownership is. This system is predominant in most of the Eastern United States and in many parts of Western Europe, especially Britain and France. Historians can have some fine arguments as to where this idea originated and, whether or not the French brought it to England. But of course, the English and French did bring it to the original 13 colonies, and most of the Louisianna purchase area, where it remains. It's easy to see how this could work in a French of English countryside, or New England where most people owned a small plot. (Of course things were never quite that idyllic, in reality.) But it tends not work so well where the land is held by a small elite class, where shortages are more severe and common. Or most of all, where the ecology of the area as a whole and the flora and fauna that live there have profound effects on the quality and even the quantity of the water.

2) Prior Appropriation: Basically this model of water rights could best be described by the principles of "first come first served" and "use it or loose it". While there are variations on this system it usually involves a situation where the first party to claim to put the water to beneficial use owns the rights to it. However most of the time if the party is not using the water or even not using all of the water, other parties can stake their claims on what is not being used. So basically it's like being in a school cafeteria where any number of other kids from your best friends to your worst enemies may come up and ask "Hey are you going to eat your pudding?", "Can I burrow that nickel?" Needless to say that the incentive to conserve water is systematically undermined by that system. Basically this system is dominant in most of the American West (California is a partial exception). It had its origins in Islamic Law. (Think we can use this to convince the Freepers and Birthers that the status quo of water in the American West isn't perfect?) Basically the Islamic religion was never crazy about wealth of any kind being hoarded without being used to benefit humanity or create work or something. So this traveled from North Africa to Spain and from Spain to Mexico. After the Mexican War this system of water rights was left at least somewhat intact in most of the West. This system holds sway in many of the more arid parts of the world. Of course, this system probably made more sense when most large scale use tended to involve farming, creating orchards and such.
Another problem with the idea of beneficial use is that there is no one standard under which it is defined. In theory the definition can be tight enough to define bathing outside of Saturday night as a luxury. Or it can include things such as indoor artificial ski slopes.

3) Pueblo Rights are another concept that parts of the US inherited from Mexico. Basically this defines the water under or in a city or town, as being for domestic and municipal use, without many options for other users to stake any claims to it. This could be a good thing if many other parties are out to take the water from the population for one use or another, or a bad one if conservation is low, the population is growing, and sprawl is rampant. Basically you can find examples of certain towns or cities either depending on this to survive or becoming a 900 gorilla.

4) Public Trust Doctrine-Basically this says that certain assets simply belong to the public, must be preserved for the public, and can't be bought up by anyone. The first example in history was supposedly was when the Roman Emperor Justinian declared that unowned portions of the seashore were open to everyone. Usually with water this would apply either to quality standards or to situations such as making a certain lake, river, or in fact seashore open to the public. Rivers in particular might be held under this doctrine as a form of transportation. Or certain limited amount of fishing, clamming and such might as be defined as a public right. So this right seems to be the first that inherently requires some attention to the ecology involved.

Of course, all of these models are both based on centuries of history and none have solved the problem of how to make water accessible for necessities, but at the same time prevent waste. Of course, not only is the world facing problems related to water that would have been hard for the ancients who created our water laws to comprehend, but new solutions are also hard to fit into this framework. For example, traditionally water has been stored in systems such as reservoirs, behind damns, or certain parts of the world a Persian concept called a Qanat or sometimes a Quarez. The last of which is a system of underground canals and moving part free wells. Historically they've been built by "expendable" members of society, but now some Israeli engineers are working on machines that can do the dangerous parts.
One major advantage of storing and transporting water underground is avoiding evaporation-something which is only going to get worse with global warming. However, underground storage of water is starting to include projects that are taking recycled sewage and injecting into aquifers. Another method of water storage designed to avoid evaporation is deliberating creating wetlands that use vegetation as way to prevent salinization and evaporation losses. Some argue that evaportation is a greater evil than absorption into the soil, since the latter tends to end up recharging aquifers and the former ends up adding salt to the soil.
Add to that those "novelties" the fact that we may be able to create more freshwater. The most obvious method is desalinization. But also some industrial processes such as creating fuels from biomass gasification and pyrolysis, or Virent Energy's plans to transform biomass into gasoline and other fuels are labeled as water positive. Which means that they produce more water as a side product than they consume. While the win-win potential of these technologies is easy to see, one problem/obstacle is the fact that the water produced may be quite polluted. Who is going be responsible for cleaning the water? Will it be diposed of into muddy and polluted puddles creating a new class of Superfund site? Or will it be made clean enough for municipal taps, ecologically delicate lakes or rivers, or even injection into an aquifer? And at whose expense? The biofuel/biotech companies who are after all producing both home grown/low carbon fuel and "new water" at the same time? Or appropriate technology solutions such as harvesting water from fog with special nets? Where do the economics of "creating" freshwater through desalinization or cleaning the byproduct water of biomass to fuel plants fit into all this?
Certainly the people who originated our current water laws would have never considered things such as man-made projects to refill wells, "man made" water, or harvesting water from the skies, anything more than the musings of philosophers, alchemists, sorcerers, fools, and the stuff of tall tales. What are we going to do to deal with them?

Currently the only alternatives to these ancient systems of water law that I've been able to find involve corporate privatization. Currently many locations use a combination of different systems. For example California, USA has a mix of riparian doctrine, prior appropriation, pueblo, and public trust depending on the type of water usage involved.

Some people have suggested that water distribution is one of those things that don't leave much room for any truly new ideas. That modern people just aren't likely to come to any conclusions that are our ancient ancestors haven't thought of.

And this question is a dilemma to me. On one hand the "hydro-conservatives" who say that new-fangled ideas are just old follies with new packaging, make a compelling case. On the other hand, I don't know how the old models will handle a changing world. If new models aren't developed is it possible that corporate ones will prevail?

This is just the start of the dilemmas raised by Water Politics 2.0.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Health Reform and Planetary Survival

Hello Everyone!

Today I'm going to talk about how health care reform and its implications for planetary survival. No, this is not about how the "Obama death panels" are going to curb the population, especially seeing how no such thing exists. I'm afraid, the American people have been living with death panels for decades, we just call them Insurance Companies. And sadly, they've been dealing out medical rationing not just on the basis of ability to pay, but to cut costs and fatten their profit margin for decades.

However, that is not the main topic here. The main issue I mean to address is the extent to which it has become harder and harder, and harder still for anyone who doesn't qualify for a government health program (Medicaid, Medicare, VA etc) or work for an employer that provides insurance, to afford anything no matter how basic. And there are many reasons why that matters for the whole idea of-I'm not fond of the word "sustainability" and consider it overused- really society's ability to adapt and respond to various problems rather than putting them on the backburner until the 11th hour or later.

One consequence of this is that bright people increasingly end up working for larger and larger, and thus fewer companies, simply because the smaller businesses either don't offer health benefits, or if they do it is harder for them to survive. Now this isn't to say that medium to large companies are always corrupt, weak on innovation, or inflexible nor does it posit a vision where small businesses are always seen as the answer to everything. But I do suggest first of all that a R&D and pilot level operations for technologies such as algal fuel, fuel from garbage or wastes, solar water heaters, solar thermal energy, and even a few electric car dealerships are coming from relatively small companies. Many of them have ambitions to scale up their operations but money remains a constant constraint. Of course, there are many reasons for this. However, one cannot overlook a context where almost any small firm either has to shoulder a large financial burden in covering health insurance costs, or letting most of their employees go without. And I've met many people who've worked for smaller firms and were temporarily willing to live with this risk plus lower salaries for "the cause", but then a chronic condition was diagnosed, or a child was born. And they felt that getting a job with a larger company was the "responsible thing to do".
But even with larger companies health costs are a factor in very conservative and unadaptive decisions. For example, Detroit has often claimed that "there isn't enough demand" for electric vehicles, hybrid, fuel cell, and flex fuel vehicles as opposed to SUV's and Hummers. But the truth is that SUVs and Hummers have a higher per vehicle profit margin than smaller cars and certainly electric, hybrid, or alternative fuel vehicles. And while there was a lot of greed and shortsightedness in the auto industry a major reason for the financial pressures that drove such decisions was the increasing insurance premiums of the companies' workforce.

So at both the big business and small business end our society's inability to find ways to cope with issues such as climate change or energy shocks has been stymied in part by a dysfunctional health care system.

It is important to remember that small businesses are not just the small farms and mom and pop stores that are often talked about. Nor are tech start-ups the majority of the rest. We are also talking about food processing plants, bottling plants, banks, software firms, certain law firms, farm equipment stores, canneries, not only bookstores but also certain publishers, software firms, environmental testing firms, HazMat companies, certain manufacturers and communications companies. It may even become possible for small companies to do things such as solar thermal energy, algal biofuel, carbon recycling, or desalination. If small businesses didn't deal with such a disadvantaged climate.

The current situation where smaller companies are at such a disadvantage and smaller manufacturers have a hard time surviving has created a situation where only the heaviest most energy and water intensive industries become a proverbial 900 pound gorilla and other industries are seen as expendable. Where we send the products of extractive industries such as steel and timber across the Pacific by the boat load and in return get back loads of cheap plastic crap from China. For Wal-Mart to become the nation's largest employer. And with Wal-Mart as the largest employer that means you are either going to have the status quo where Wal-Mart employees often go without health insurance. Or you'd end up with a situation where Wal-Mart becomes one of the largest if not the largest private source of income to the health care sector. Pick your poison!!

Does a public option look so scary now?

Also I'd like to address the reasons and concerns that drove the early ecology movement's attitudes towards health care. One common attitude in the early ecology movement was the preference for diet, exercise, meditation, biofeedback, vitamins, herbs, acupuncture, massage, folk remedies etc, over drugs and surgery. This may seem either quaint or commonsense to different people who read this blog. But to put that attitude in context this was before it was known that certain herbs come from endangered plants, back when much more was thought to be correctable by talk therapy than is accepted today, before several trends towards labeling various procedures as "unnecessary" backfired, and before Andrew Weil proved that "crunchy" attitudes towards health can be commercialized too.

But one thing that has been forgotten by much of the public is that one of the desirable goals of the health system would be that people should be able to get better health outcomes for less money. Under the current insurance companies Americans have pretty much been paying more and more for premiums, deductables, and co-pays but getting less and less in the way of actual care.

To add a particularly valuable perspective on health care, I'd like to post the opinion of an 85 year old nurse who grew up, a coal miner's daughter in the America that existed before the current insurance system. In short to include the voice of somebody whose perspective is shaped by nearly a century of experience. In reading Kitty Schindler's essay, I see not only a firm reminder that her time was nothing to get too nostalgic about. But also a painfully obvious commentary on how hard it has truly become for many people in our much more affluent times, to get even the most basic services. Sometimes even for those *priviledged* enough to get "cadillac" level health care insurance.

Say Goodnight readers!

The Absurd Fiction of "The Celtic South against The Anglo North"

Hello Everyone!!

Today I'd like to address something that I have been seeing more and more of over the past decade. When I first came across it in about 1999, I was literally scratching my head at the idea, based on my knowledge of some very basic facts.
When I saw James Webb's highly extravagant tome on the idea "Born Fighting", just after election 2004 I was shocked. And upon learning about Grady McWhiney's "Cracker Culture" and James Cantrell's "How Celtic Culture Invented Southern Literature", it became apparent that this idea is widely believed in some circles and is fast gaining traction.

Namely it is the idea that the Deep South and/or Appalachia are heavily influenced by Celtic culture, much more so than the North and that these Celtic influences account for traits such as hawkish politics, gun culture, distrust of education, hostility to labor unions, dislike of "yankee" movements such as women's rights, gay rights, and ecology, and last but certainly not least the stubborn and often violent resistance to carpet baggers and any move to provide African Americans with even the most basic human rights. According to this view Northern liberals are all a bunch of elitist, culturally Anglo Yankees who absolutely hate Celtic ways and just basically *don't get it*.

Now frankly, I find this a deeply troubling idea in part because it essentially hitches the "Southern Cause" to one of the few groups of Europeans that are well known for being historical underdogs. Or at least well known for it in the US!! Something that might jibe very well with the romantic idea of a victimized South, but not so well with actual history. And in fact, scholars of Celtic history and culture have been some of the biggest critics. While I am not such a scholar, I do think I know enough about American and European history to come up with a number of pesky facts that would clash with notion. Also it concerns me that this reminds me of other episodes in history where the idea of "racial" identity has been tied to a political agenda. And for trying to dress up the old Southern grievance that slavery, segregation, severe economic equalities and lack of investment in education, as well as some pretty horrible behavior is simply a matter of a culture and way of life that Northerners just don't understand and unjustifiably look down their snotty noses on.
Now this "ancient" grievance (Well, It's almost the same age as "The Troubles"!!) has been around since long before the American Revolution. And most of the time it has been around, almost any white Southerner would have fervently denied having any Celtic heritage, and would have considered Celts, just a few small steps above Africans and Native Americans.

Now certainly, there are people of Celtic ancestry and Celtic influences in the South. With the downright massive history of immigration first from Scotland's highland clearances, and later Ireland's Great Famine and economic aftermath, the sheer numbers of immigrants from Celtic countries to the Americas was so massive that it would have been very difficult for none of them to end up in the South. But the reality is that the overwhelming majority of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish immigrants to the United States ended up in the North or in the West rather than in the South.
Now there was another immigrant group that did heavily end up in and influence Appalachia, that has been known as Scots-Irish, Ulster Scot, Orangemen, or increasingly Borderers. The last term was coined by a historian named David Hackett Fischer one of the top historian of the American colonies and early US. In this book he argues that this group along with the Puritans, the Quaker Friends, and the wannabe Aristocrats who settled Virginia constituted the four most influential groups in creating America's core regional tendency and national cultures. Unlike Webb, Cantrell, or McWhiney, he did create a cogent argument in which you could say that the Borderers in the South and Appalachia had a profound influence on America than the Welsh, Scottish, or Irish immigrants didn't approach anywhere. However, this model also considers it an open question just how Celtic the Borderers actually are/were, both by physical ancestry and culturally. Fischer claimed that they were more English than Scottish. Others claim they were very Anglicized Scots or had yet other origins. I don't claim to know or even have a strong opinion on that question. Even genetic testing can provide ambiguous answers to such things as the documentary "African American Lives" made abundantly clear. It's also worth noting that only recently, when it became *cool* to have Celtic origins have these ideas begun to gain current.

But one thing is certain. Several of these traits that have been claimed to be "Celtic" by proponents of the "Celtic South" view, don't square with more unambiguously Celtic ethnic groups, or with modern Celtic countries. For example James Webb claims that the Scots-Irish reject labor unions because of their Celtic roots, yet the labor Unions in the North and the labor wing of the Democratic party were very heavily built by Irish Catholic Americans. Welsh Americans also have a very strong tradition of labor union involvement despite their smaller numbers. Also proponents of the "Celtic South" view heavily attribute the level of hawkism in the South to Celtic culture. Yet to describe the modern Irish Republic (the only modern democracy with a Celtic majority ethnic group) as a hawkish country, compared to the US, Britain, or certainly the American South is on its face laughable. In fact, proponents of "peacenik" causes such as banning landmines consider Ireland one of half dozen countries, that is most likely to be an ally the UN. And while many pundits claimed that Borderers in the US liked Bush's lack of English skills and took it as a sign he was "one of them", electing such a poor speaker would be unthinkable in Ireland. Irish citizens by and large were not charmed by Bush's poor grammar, and didn't care for his policies. Also in Ireland Obama is fairly popular as American Presidents go, in drastic contrast to his lack of success with Borderer Americans. And while relatively few studies have looked at Americans' political beliefs by ethnicity as opposed to race, some sociologists who have looked at it such as Andrew Greeley show that Irish and Scottish Americans tend to be among the more liberal white ethnic groups. Although of course every population produces its share of bigots and reactionaries, (Hi Bill O'Reilly! Sean Hannity!), on the whole the majority don't conform to James Webb's ideal of gun totting, hawkish, labor hating, Scots-Irish. And of course, many Scots-Irish or Borderer Americans, don't really fit his model either.
Finally, another attitude attributed to "Celtic culture" is anti-intellectualism in both the South and much of America. But again this doesn't gel with the fact that Scotland was among the earlier nations to adopt the idea of universal education and literacy, and did so when it was considered one of the poorest countries in Europe.

So whatever may the case with "Red State America" and there are many explanations ranging from low voter turnout among the poor to the idea that Colonial influences are relevant to this day, one things is certain. It can't be attributed to Celtic influences. That explanation is wrong. It's based on a severely intellectually dishonest view of history. And it's the kind of theory that lends itself to ideological myth making all too easily. And in fact, many Celtic scholars have expressed the concern that resistance on the part of academia in the US (perhaps the result of certain Anglophilic tendencies) to taking their field seriously, opens the door not only to a lot of New Age mush, but also a takeover by people with political and even racist agendas.

Say Goodnight Readers!!

Something Fishy! The Tragedy of Bad Ecology and Conservative Techology

In 2000, the Department of Energy estimated that it would take 15,000 square miles to replace all petroleum fuels with algal fuel. Now this is about the size of Maryland, which may sound shocking, but it is only about 1/7 of the land that we currently use to grow corn.

Of course, this study didn't take into account factors such electric cars, other biofuels, efficiency, public transportation, possible changes in miles driven per person-year, population and so on. So it must be taken as one basic reference point, rather than final word. But basically it makes the idea that algal fuel could have a strong role in dealing with oil shortages, global climate change, and the consequences of oil geopolitics, look challenging but plausible.

Of course, it is well known that problems exist involving factors such as costs, and the technological hurdles of extracting the algae from the water and the oil from the algae. However, I was appalled if not horrified at the "solution" proposed by LiveFuels. Namely to feed the algae to fish and since the technology for extracting oil from fish is no different from extracting it from a whale, use fish oil as a biofuel!!

Already the idea that the technology has been around for over a century, has been used to support another turkey of an alternative fuel, specifically corn ethanol. Both seem to involve cases of choosing a fuel that will likely have limited supply and bad numbers as far ecological impact, water use, and EROI (Energy Return on Investment), simply because "the technology is not complicated". Corn ethanol is basically a lousy investment in that it uses a huge amount of water and only provides 30% more energy than is required to produce it.

Fish oil biofuel is a similarly grim prospect. I question whether or not it is ethical to raise and kill such a massive number of animals-even if they are "mere" fish-not for food or sustenance, not for medicine, not for scientific advancement, not for ecological restoration, and not even to feed our pets, but simply to run combustion engines. On a more utilitarian note, it promises to be extremely inefficient. The most basic reason is one can expect it to take at least ten units of algal biomass to produce 1 unit fish biomass, as a basic principle of ecology. So if the theoreticaly amount of algae oil we would need to replace petroleum entirely would be 1/7 the amount of land we use to grow corn that sound difficult but manageable. However, if you multiple the amount of algae and therefore the amount of land by tenfold than it would require more land than we use to grow corn, in order to produce the same amount of fish oil. And of course that's also ten times the water demand (even if much of it could theoretically be sewage or saltwater), and ten times the energy required to grow the fish, before killing them and extracting oil from them.

Certainly there is no doubt that learning how to make harvest oil from algae efficient and cost effective is going to take a lot of work. However the advantages of algae include it's ability to grow rapidly with minimal inputs. Fish do not have that advantage even when fed fast growing algae.

As with the choice between corn ethanol versus bioforming waste cellulose int various fuels, and the choice to pursue carbon recycling or underground sequestration, the bottom line is whether you will accept limited supplies and low ecological efficiencies in return for a simpler technologies, or whether more effective solutions are worth investing time, research money, government support (of which petroleum gets plenty), and above all changes in the status quo and the way things are usually done. The former is the sort of conservative solution that demands little but provides little in return. The latter are solutions that demand a lot, but deliver the good. In this vein the "dividends" for photovoltaic research are just being to come in, and wind energy is finally hitting it's stride.

With research the same is likely to be true with actual-fish free-algae products.

Say Goodnight Readers!

Old Myths Rising

Hello everyone!

I wanted to talk today about a disturbing trend in research during the past few years. Namely the use of studies with very questionable methodology being used to "prove" that men have higher IQs than women.

IQ tests have been around since 1904, and one of the earliest and easiest conclusions of political important was the lack of any notable difference between men and women as far as IQ scores were concerned. In 1918, British psychologist Charles Spearman said of those who thought any "reliable" test would prove women to be intellectually deficient, "It is time to call off the pack of the investigators.....because they are following a false scent."

However, the "pack of investigators" has continued to go down one rabbit hole after another over the years. Around the time Charles Spearman declared gender difference in basic intelligence to be a "false scent"the theories of Sigmund Freud were gaining popular acceptance, and with them the view that women were masochistic, hysterical, incapable of developing an independent conscience or higher sense of social purpose, and that any desire on their part for roles other than wife, mother, and Victorian lady represented an unhealthy desire for male anatomy.

During the 70's and 80's, when the questioning of Freudianism went from the fringe to the mainstream, sociobiology came into fashion. Although it was sold as a way to explain a wide variety of human behaviors, much of the focus ended up on trying to "prove" that women were naturally housewives, prostitutes, and sexual objects. Now that models of sociobiology that make such claims about men and women are increasingly under question, the pack of investigators seems to be looking for what rabbit hole to run down next.

Some studies have tried to claim that women innately liked pink and men blue, even though in before WWI pink was considered a boy's color and blue more feminine. Also you would think if women "biologically" liked pink and men liked blue, that women would wear blue and men pink, because after all most heterosexuals supposedly spend more time looking and trying to attract members of the other sex, rather than their own!! Yet others tried to prove that gender equality had caused the Neandrathals to go extinct-Jean Auel eat your heart out!!

What I never expected, was to see them going over IQ tests to try and argue that women are less intelligent on average than men. Now this was a very strange idea seeing how IQ tests have been around for over a 100 years without finding any such thing. But yet, certain researchers claimed it was only because feminist dominated science had only failed to look hard enough. For example in 1994 a meta-analysis by Richard Lynn and Paul Irwing concluded that that the average man had 4.0 IQ points on the average woman. And it was welcomed by much of the British media until testing expert Steve Blinkhorn pointed out that their data was severely methodologically flawed, because they had based their conclusions on several studies of university students in different countries. In addition to the fact that university students are not the general population, the study actually excluded the 45% of their data. Namely a study from Mexico-by far the largest study they looked at-because it didn't show any significant differences between males and females. They claimed that this Mexican study was an "outlier" or a fluke, because according to them, "This university was unusually selective of female students." Also they gave the remaining studies equal weight even though the sample sizes ranged for 111 to over 9,000. Basically they fudged the data to show the results they seemed to want. In 2006, another study a Danish study claimed men average 8 IQ points above women, but it was investigated for academic dishonesty. And yet, much of the media treated these studies as somehow "overriding" years of IQ research on both children and adults? Some people welcome these studies saying that "new statistical methodology" have shown differences between men and women that older studies didn't pick up. I'm afraid, it's actually a very old statistical method called, "cooking the data". Basically this technique is designed to guarantee the results you want.

Of course, claims based on questionable IQ data can only stand for so long. But one has to ask. What trail will the hound pack, err scientists committed to proving women unfit for civilization, run after next?

Say Goodnight Readers!!

When The Nose Knows.

Author Tim O'Brien once said that the ultimate test of a true war story was whether or not you could feel it in your stomach. But recently I've begun to wonder if the mark of a genuine story of ecology and ecological degradation is the "smell factor". Let me explain.
From the time I was a teenager, I always felt that Frank Herbert's "Dune" wasn't very plausible. To be sure it was a brilliantly thought out work, the likes of which had never been imagined before and which later science fiction writers take as an immense compliment to have their work widely compared to. But all the same, it never passed the smell test.
For one thing I always wondered why the Fremen men weren't all sterile from wearing those stillsuits all the time, and how so much advanced intergalactic civilization building complete with such advanced spiritual and philosophical ideas came from a society where a bunch of guilds and aristocrats primarily fought over shares in a company called CHOAM, which was basically a interplanetary Walmart. Can you imagine a bunch of Bene Gesserit sitting in a roomful of Wal-Mart shareholders, complete with Hillary Clinton? I can't. But going back to the smell test, I always wondered why aristocrats like Jessica and Paul didn't start vomitting upon first encountering the Fremen. Or why the Fremen supposedly had great abilities to hide in caves and rocks, and ambush every enemy, when my guess would be that you could smell a group of them miles away downwind. That is seeing how most them had worn stillsuits and not bathed since childhood.

This week, I was reading another science fiction novel called "Alanya to Alanya", involving the arrival of repitilian aliens disguised as humans in 2076, where the situation with the water really passed the smell test to me. Unlike a certain childhood favorite of mine, where the alien reptiles came to steal earth's water, these reptilians basically came with an ultimatum to humanity to clean up it's act (war, pollution, misogyny, racism, class inequity etc) in a big way, or else have their technology limited by the aliens. Although the aliens had no intention of taking earth's water, it was apparent that the humans in this future had screwed the hydrosphere up colossally on their own. In fact, in this future one of the most obvious class markers involved water and the way people smelled.

Basically in this future municipal water was no longer for drinking, cooking, or watering plants but rather for bathing, washing, cleaning, toilets, and such. Although supposedly the quality was the issue, municipalities added a non-toxic but bitter chemical designed to keep people from drinking it. Water for drinking or cooking had to be purchased. And everyone who bathed and washed their clothes in municipal water smelled faintly of that chemical. Only the elite classes can afford ammenities where their household water didn't contain that chemical, and therefore didn't smell of it. In the book people who had been around the middle classes and working classes for a long time didn't notice it, but to those who spent their time amongst the elite it was very apparent.

Now to me that sounded all too probable. Of course, it has been suggested by some that a lot of energy can be saved by holding bathing and toilet water to a lower quality than drinking water-if the infrastructure could be worked out. But would it really be necessary to add a noxious chemical to the lower quality municipal water? And would selling bottled water for drinking, like the society in the book, be a good solution? If this society were real, I'd be inclined to wonder whether the noxious chemical was added to prevent ill health, or whether it was added to make people depend water sellers for food and drink. Of course, history teaches us that water sellers have often served as a mechanism to control the populus or enforce massive social inqualities both in the past and perhaps in our times with water privatization. The main character although a historian, doesn't seem to make that connection, but rather takes the situation for granted. Similarly in our world although the tap water is generally high quality and does not have a bittering agent added, the bottled water companies have largely hoodwinked the population into drinking their product. Amazing numbers of well educated people as well as low income people who do not need bottled water as an added expense, buy it anyway on the unshakeable convinction that the tap water is unsafe.

Indeed I wonder if the author added this plot device knowingly, or fully believing the myths that so many people buy into. Either way this plot device passed the "sniff test", in that it was ridiculous, mundane, illogical, and used an absurd set of rules for nefarious purposes.

Of course, I've long agreed with David Suzuki's stance that generally people should either trust their local water or raise hell if they honestly couldn't. And sadly many people in today's world are dependent on water sellers for not so much quality as quantity. A surprising number of people rely on solutions such as clay pots containing rice husks as a sort of water filter-the kind of filters sold in REI are a bit out of their budgets!! In the past this was why water sellers were such an effective way of enforcing social heirarchies and various inequities. And water sellers were rarely held liable if their "wares" made people sick. In the 19th century the English speaking world got the idea that beer was safer to drink than water. Which basically meant that cholera began to decline but alcoholism rates were horrendous. Ironically, as it became increasingly accepted that basic access to safe drinking water at least should be a human right and as filters available in the developed world became increasingly high tech, bottled water became an industry associated with class and status.

So while I could never believe that human beings would actually live like the Fremen in Frank Herbert's "Dune", I will never underestimate what, err, fishy smelling, machinations human societies up with involving water.

Say Goodnight Readers!