Lynne Kiesling
Wednesday’s Christian Science Monitor had an interesting article about burgeoning water scarcity issues:
Move over, carbon, the next shoe to drop in the popular awareness of eco-issues is the “water footprint.”
That’s the word in environmental circles these days. Just as the image of a heavy carbon foot made it possible for the masses to grasp the power of carbon-dioxide emissions, water footprint is the phrase now drawing attention to the impact of human behavior regarding water.
I wonder if people will continue resisting the accurate pricing of water as this issue evolves. We are only starting to chip away at the resistance to the accurate pricing of electricity, and if the Waxman-Markey bill is any indication, we are not going to have incentives and institutional designs in place that enable us to discover the accurate price of carbon any time soon. I would like to be able to be more sanguine about water.