High and Dry

You can live a reduced lifetime on dirty air. And usually only the very young or very old succumb to tainted food. Without potable water, however, even the healthiest human organism can only last a maximum of four days.

No, China hasn’t run out of water, just yet. But with a quarter of the world’s population and three to four percent of its H20, She would do well to treat it as a resource more precious than oil.

However, the short-term priority is clear: Olympic face, a face that must be washed clean. To that effect, 300 million cubic meters of clean water will be diverted from Shaanxi to flush out Beijing’s generally fetid canals, ensuring that our distinguished foreign guests will have no reason to wrinkle their delicate noses. At least not at our bodies of water.

The big flush, as well as another siphoning to ensure Olympic visitors can rehydrate and enjoy forty minute steaming showers in their hotels, will come courtesy of millions of farmers in Shaanxi, who needless to say depend on the water to make a crop.

But to leave water’s critical role in agriculture out of it, consider how the capitol’s well runneth increasingly dry. The average person in China has 2300 cubic meters of water per year, a quarter of the world’s average. The UN defines anything under one thousand cubic meters as a water shortage. Those of us in the Beijing basin have 292.

Don’t expect the taps to stop working anytime soon. But it’s past time to acknowledge that our extra-moist, just-washed lifestyles are exacting a mounting toll on this country’s scarcest resource, and to guarantee that Shaanxi’s wheat crop quota is filled before any Olympic swimming pools.

Ernie's blog

Comments

Have you lost your mind?

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 15:57.

Have you been in a taxi cab, office, elevator, or enclosed place in Beijing lately????? It seems as though the capital's environmentally conscious citizens are already doing their part by bathing as little as humanly possible. I walked into a conference room in my office last week, and the funk was strong it had a texture!!!!!!!!!! I'm talking a mist like funk, with notes of dirty socks, jiaozi, and unwashed hair (not actually an essence you want to bottle and market for $65 at the airport duty free).
My point, do we really want to encourage these people to bathe any less?????? I don’t care if my children have to buy Evian to take a shower; I want to smell car air freshener and not 5 day old laundry the next time i get in a cab. Blatantly irresponsible journalism!!!!!

C'mon Beijing...Let's do OUR part!!!

Submitted by MALE-MAN on Tue, 03/04/2008 - 22:02.

Taking a tip from Miss Teen South Carolina who recently suggested that folks in "the Eye-rack" could save water by taking their ice home from "the MacDonalds" with them in a "the doggie-cup", we have a unique opportunity to really stand out and beat those Japanese at their own recycling game. Yes...it's time for all of us in Beijing, to take up the cause and save your own spit. It's easy, just keep an extra tea bottle and when that deep-seeded urge to clean the pavement strikes, just place your vital effluent into the bottle and there you have it for later use. Just think of the water savings which can be afforded the entire country as human spit has proven itself a valid substitute for washing government cars, watering ring road shrubbery and of course, quenching the thirst of visiting third-world dignitaries (they love that re-cyle tea in the sub-sahara). If you love this town, and really want to help, well now's your chance. Gam-bei!!