The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's part 4 of the series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured here.

James Workman is author of Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. He is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC, an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

IV. Resolving the 3 Paradoxes of Water Conservation:
Forget virtue, durable conservation must tap human vice

In April 2001, US Vice-President Dick Cheney famously trashed the idea of doing more with less: “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue,” he said, “but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”

It pains my liberal conscience to admit it, but ten years later it seems he’s right. To save water and energy and build deep-seated resilience from the grassroots level up, cities need to start tapping into a far deeper human instinct: avarice.

Yes, yes. I know that sounds rather crass, even for me, but hear me out.

We can agree that climate mitigation demands clean energy; likewise climate adaptation demands efficient water use. Building on that, we all know that water and energy conservation remains by far the fairest, fastest, cheapest and cleanest route to global security. It restores a resilient society, a stable climate, an autonomous foreign policy and a robust economy while avoiding political land mines of regulations, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade treaties.

The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's part 3 of the series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured here.

Last installment: next Friday!

James Workman is author of Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. He is a visiting professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC, an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

III. The Third Paradox of Water Conservation: Monopoly
Why must solvent utilities encourage and reward waste?

Let me introduce you to my friend – a professional schizophrenic – who manages conservation programs at a local urban water utility in the US.

She’s hardly alone in her mental instability or the predicament that caused it. Using her name would jeopardize her career. But based on 53,000 American water utilities, I estimate at least 100,000 people like her suffer from split personality in the US alone. Her symptoms remain mild – a nervous twitch, sweaty palms and rolling eyes – but worsen as water scarcity puts competing stresses on her utility’s ageing system.

The roots of her disorder are simple. Nearly a decade ago she was hired, given a small staff, budget and discretionary funds to promote ambitious conservation programs and rebates throughout the service area of her water utility. It was the ideal job to match her ideals, a rare opportunity that pays you to do what you love. But there was, alas, a deep and hidden problem, which gave rise to psychological complications.

The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's part 2 of the series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured on the right.

Next installment: next Friday!

James Workman is author of Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought. He is a visiting
professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC, an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

II. The Second Paradox of Water Conservation: Efficiency
Why does your water-saving device increase our collective thirst?

The ghost of the late British economist William Stanley Jevons is disrupting our best efforts to tackle climate change.

Jevons’ specter first haunted hybrid vehicle owners. To get their extra mileage’s worth and display clean and fuel-efficient credentials, they began to drive faster, farther, more frequently than before. Jevons then haunted homes that installed compact fluorescent bulbs and “green” appliances, making people switch on more lights and gadgets, more often, and leave them on longer or even continuously.

In short, Jevons makes us frugal misers burn more of the energy we set out to save. And even if I’m disciplined enough to resist Jevons and still stamp down demand, my haunted neighbors offset my savings by using up my spare fuel and electricity.

The Three Paradoxes that Obstruct Water Conservation, and How We Can Resolve Them through H2Ownership

Here's the first of a four-part series on water conservation by global expert James Workman, pictured here.

Look for the next installments of this important story on Fridays.

James Workman is author of  Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought.  He is a visiting
professor at Wesleyan University’s College of the
Environment and co-founder of SmartMarkets LLC,
an online utility-based platform that unlocks equitable water and energy markets for cities using the system that has sustained the Kalahari’s indigenous people for 30,000 years.

I. The First Paradox of Water Conservation: Value
Why is water so "priceless" in use, yet so worthless in exchange?

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe chairs Nestlé, the world’s 44th largest company, which last year earned US$ 9.6 billion profits on US$ 100 billion in revenues. He is the consummate international businessman, bargaining hard, overseeing 280,000 employees, outflanking competitors, and at ease with heads of state. Yet he remains incapable of negotiating one simple and irreplaceable ingredient without which his company ceases to exist: water.

He hardly seems the quintessentially gloomy Malthusian, yet Brabeck foresees “limits to growth” because our global fresh water supply is both finite and being rapidly, stupidly, depleted. The world can sustainably use 4,200 cubic kilometers of water he notes, but it consumes 4,500 even as aquifers plummet and rivers run dry.

Another Inconvenient Truth
A few years back he called water scarcity “the other inconvenient truth,” one riskier than climate change, and predicted that the cost of staple cereals would rise as the world exhausted its water. Time proved him right. Grain prices spiked 90%, triggering widespread urban food riots like those from Tunisia and Yemen to Egypt and Libya.