Water waste!

Saving the environment – while it is a respectable issue; while it is a very important thing to do in this disease-infested world, we must be careful that our means of going about it are also intelligent and respectable.

Raising the price of a certain resource that we want to save is one of the most convenient ways to try to cut down on our use of that particular resource. But does it really work?

Look what happened with petrol. I know people are building fuel-efficient cars these days, but those just don’t come in the same ‘league’ as the cars that use half a litre for every kilometre. So, have we succeeded? Do people use less petrol because otherwise they’ll have to pay that much more?

I use as little petrol as possible, yes, but that’s not because I’m thinking of how much money I’ll save; it’s because I’m worried about depleting resources, worried about pollution, worried about my health – not because it costs so much.

I think my point is that raising the price of some rare or depleting resource is not the best way to reduce consumption – it just makes that resource priceless. Everyone wants to own gold, don’t they? Do we really want a world in which drinking good water becomes a status symbol, just like owning a car that drinks petrol like, well, water?

Let’s look at consumption of water. Who consumes more water? And I’m talking strictly about drinking purposes here. The manager of some hotshot bank who sits in an air-conditioned office the entire day, or the labourer who runs around in the hot sun all day? For that matter, who needs to take a bath more often?

I have already seen people boasting about the kind of water they drink. There are ‘water connoisseurs’, even!

This has got to stop. Water is precious, more so to the people who can’t afford it. Raising the price of water will only serve to increase its consumption among the rich, and deprive the poor. So what does that make of the world? Survival of the richest?

I think we seriously need to stop and think about the means we’re using to conserve some of our precious resources. All said and done, it is the rich who exploit our resources, not the poor.