"The water "coming out of your kitchen tap is four billion years
old and might well have been sipped by a "Tyrannosaurus rex."
Rather than only three states of water--liquid, ice, and
vapor--there is a fourth, "molecular water," fused into rock 400
miles deep in the Earth, and that's where most of the planet's
water is found. Unlike most precious resources, water cannot be
used up; it can always be made clean enough again to drink--indeed,
water can be made so clean that it's toxic. Water is the most vital
substance in our lives but also more amazing and mysterious than we
appreciate. As Charles Fishman brings vibrantly to life in this
surprising and mind-changing narrative, water runs our world in a
host of awe-inspiring ways, yet we take it completely for granted.
But the era of easy water is over.
Bringing readers on a lively and fascinating journey--from the wet
moons of Saturn to the water-obsessed hotels of Las Vegas, where
dolphins swim in the desert, and from a rice farm in the parched
Australian outback to a high-tech IBM plant that makes an exotic
breed of pure water found nowhere in nature--Fishman vividly shows
that we've already left behind a century-long golden age when water
was thoughtlessly abundant, free, and safe and entered a new era of
high-stakes water. In 2008, Atlanta came within ninety days of
running entirely out of clean water. California is in a desperate
battle to hold off a water catastrophe. And in the last five years
Australia nearly ran out of water--and had to scramble to reinvent
the country's entire water system. But as dramatic as the
challenges are, the deeper truth Fishman reveals is that there is
no good reason for us to be overtaken by a global water crisis. We
have more than enough water. We just don't think about it, or use
it, smartly.
"The Big Thirst "brilliantly explores our strange and complex
relationship to water. We delight in watching waves roll in from
the ocean; we take great comfort from sliding into a hot bath; and
we will pay a thousand times the price of tap water to drink our
preferred brand of the bottled version. We love water--but at the
moment, we don't appreciate it or respect it. Just as we've begun
to reimagine our relationship to food, a change that is driving the
growth of the organic and local food movements, we must also
rethink how we approach and use water. The good news is that we
can. As Fishman shows, a host of advances are under way, from the
simplicity of harvesting rainwater to the brilliant innovations
devised by companies such as IBM, GE, and Royal Caribbean that are
making impressive breakthroughs in water productivity. Knowing what
to do is not the problem. Ultimately, the hardest part is changing
our water consciousness.
As Charles Fishman writes, "Many civilizations have been crippled
or destroyed by an inability to understand water or manage it. We
have a huge advantage over the generations of people who have come
before us, because we can understand water and we can use it
smartly." "The Big Thirst "will forever change the way we think
about water, about our essential relationship to it, and about the
creativity we can bring to ensuring that we'll always have plenty
of it.
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