Saturday, April 07, 2007

Water

One thing I was thinking about in these days of global warming (and my tacky attempt to joke the other day about having a long shower) is this: if I save water here in Switzerland, will it help the people in countries with little water? Water is not exported is it? Unless it comes in expensive bottles. Tell me how I save energy by not using water here where I am. I'll do it no problem, but I need to understand why. When I grew up we were told that the children in Biafra (Africa) were starving. I never understood why eating everything on my plate (or not) was gonna help them. Now many many years later I raise the same question. Perhaps I'm a slow learner?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

directly, as far as I can see, you wont help countries in drought by saving water in Switzerland. Indirectly I think you will and this comes down to energy use. Energy is of course used to heat the water you use in the shower as well as in all the cleaning, filtering, purification processes water goes through before it comes out of your tap. Energy production generally means consumption of natural resources - which come from both local and foreign sources, and of course pollution (including greenhouse gases). This pollution has impact on our climatic systems, which are global systems, thus green house gas production in Europe (or the USA) can have influence on weather systems in the Southern hemisphere, apparently including increased severity and frequency of drought.
There's probably much more to it than that, but thats how I see the connection

Witchbitch said...

So every little saving counts. Good to know.