North American Water Abundance(?)
Submitted by Aguanomics Blog
David B. Brooks (senior fresh water advisor to Friends of the Earth, Canada) and G. Tracy Mehan III (former assistant administrator for water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and environmental consultant with The Cadmus Group, Inc.) debate “Water Abundance in Canada and the United States: Myth or Reality?” [PDF]
It looks like Mehan and I agree on pricing, subsidies, etc. almost 100 percent.
In contrast — but not in conflict — Brooks writes with the typical (to me) Canadian difference (pointing out Canadian’s greater trust in government solutions and lesser trust in markets). In doing so, Brooks adds a useful fact:
Nearly half of Canadian water drains either to the Arctic Ocean or to Hudson Bay. An estimated 12 percent of Canada is covered by lakes and rivers, but only 3 percent in inhabited regions. The Great Lakes rank among the 15 largest lakes in the world, but the bulk of their volume is a stock left over from the melting of continental glaciers; only about 1 percent is renewed each year. As Professor David Schindler from the University of Alberta and winner of the first Stockholm Water Prize has written: “While Canada has a large freshwater ‘bank account,’ the interest rate is very low.”
…and points out a stinging (and useful) inconsistency:
Why has it been so difficult in the United States, one of the most neo-liberal societies in the world, to get them [market liberalizations] implemented? Studies of governance should be as much about what does not happen as what does happen. Why do federal and state governments in the United States stray so far from their principles when it comes to water?
Read the whole thing to learn from their essays and interesting comments on each other.
Bottom Line: Water issues are not easy to explain or resolve, so we need to discuss them long enough to understand what to do but not so long that we never do anything!
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