The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water by Charles Fishman (PDF)

Description

Praised as “an entertaining and torrential flow of a book” by Nature magazine, The Big Thirst is a startling examination of the passing of the golden age of water and the shocking facts about how water scarcity will soon be a major factor in our lives.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.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “[A] lively and invaluable assessment of the current politics, economics, and culture of water. Lyrical in his descriptions of the beauty and wonder of water, Fishman is rigorous when explaining that the water we have now is all the water we will ever have.””A wide-ranging look at that most precious of goods, water, and a world in which it is a subject of constant crisis…A timely warning.””An engrossing, globe-trotting narrative [and] a comprehensive, remarkably readable panorama of our dependence on–and responsibilities to–a priceless resource.” About the Author Charles Fishman is the acclaimed author of One Giant Leap, A Curious Mind (with Brian Grazer), The Wal-Mart Effect, and The Big Thirst. He is a three-time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious prize in business journalism.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐The subject of this book is of paramount importance, but the author could have gotten his ideas across in half the time. Though a clear and compelling writer, conciseness is not his virtue; too much repetition is his vice. How many stories can one read about the same subject, even with subtleties acknowledged?In Chapter 5 the author lauds big companies for being ahead of the curve when it comes to taking water seriously: its quality, quantity and use. Yet he glosses over the other side of the coin, at times–take Monsanto, for example. This company’s development of drought tolerant corn and other seeds sounds good (for water use), but some ecologists and like-minded folk fear that losing the original nature of seeds opens the new gene-manipulated seed to devastating diseases which we can’t control and the seed has no natural fighting ability to resist. But Monsanto comes off as a good guy solely based on the single focus on water use–regardless of its 90 percent monopoly on many genetically-modified seeds. Additionally, farmers are basically being forced to buy Monsanto-altered seed. This forboding knowledge has been around for some time.Another head-in-the-sand coverage is about tourist ships (at least) using chilled, smooth, round, black river rocks instead of ice to keep their food-on-display cold longer–because solid rock stays colder longer, never melts, et cetera. But talk to river lovers, ecologists and naturalists and they lament the removal of the beds of rivers, creeks and streams. I don’t fully understand the problem, but the author–a detail man in many respects–seems to have no hint of it either.To be fair, although the author lauds some big companies, he does state that we should not “cede the future of water to commercial interests” (p. 142).Half the book can almost be summed up in a statement on page 144: “…people take water for granted–we take it for granted because good water is basically free, so we can afford to take it for granted” (yes, a little redundant).The other half is mostly an advocation of the drinkability of purified wastewater, among other conservation measures. Fishman makes a good case for the use of wastewater, but it’s not an easy sell. Not yet, not until we suffer a great deal more deprivation, it seems.I must say his writing is graphically clear and the math will astound you. In the end, it’s all rather appalling–or let’s say, in the end, it will be all rather appalling. Fortunately, a few localities in the world are taking wise measures to deal with this indispensible element of life. In other words, water is no longer dispensible to them.One of the worst case scenarios, currently and in the future, is India: A very modern country in many respects, but neanderthal when it comes to water–in every respect, from corruption, to disinterest, to quality and scarcity. This is a “country where water is worshipped, but gets no respect…; where people believe if they take a dip in the [goddess, but super-polluted] Mother Ganges, they are going straight to heaven. That’s irrational, of course,. But people are irrational…”–Ashok Jaity (p. 218, 232). And after reading this book, if you want another reason NOT to visit India–although there are many reasons to visit–read THE BIG NECESSITY: THE UNMENTIONABLE WORLD OF HUMAN WASTE AND WHY IT MATTERS; or read my review of the book on Amazon.If there’s one hopeful bit of news from this book, it is that water CAN be saved, cleaned and reused; that we don’t need to suffer from it or the lack of it apart from the sometimes tyranical behavior exhibited by Mother Nature.One interesting quote from the book–and there are many: “Ninety-five percent of the water that utilities provide [and most don’t] isn’t used for drinking or cooking, it’s used to flush the toilet [which many people don’t have anyhow], fill the bathtub, and water the lawn” (p. 177). To expand on that idea, many people and nations not only don’t have the water, they don’t have a water system that can adapt to scarcity. And, yes, this is becoming truer and truer in the good old USA.Finally, the author advises and warns that “the invisibility of the water system in the DEVELOPED [emphasis mine] world breeds its own kind of indifference to the needs of water infrastructure. India is simply an extreme version of the kind of benign neglect of water systems found in many other places” (p. 234).

⭐Water, as everyone knows, is the basis of life as we know it. We simply cannot survive without it. That makes water a very valuable resource and one that people have argued and fought over for too many years to recall.In this book, the author takes us on a journey about the history of water, why it is where it is, why cities have sprung up where they have, how water has been turned into a multibillion dollar business and what is happening in the water world currently. It is almost all encompassing on the subject of water and is fascinating in the process.One of the first points made by the author is that the water we drink today is the same water that has been on the planet for ions. That water was formed during a period in the earth’s creation and the amount has not changed since then. As a result, the water we drink today was, at one time, the toilet water of ancient civilizations and was where dinosaurs drank, bathed and went to the bathroom. While this may be a disturbing thought, it has been that way for ions and provides us with a method for reusing today’s water to become tomorrow’s water.Along the journey, the author points out that due to climate change, water that was easily obtainable in the past maybe be moving to newer locations. Cities that were thought to have safe supplies are in the process of going dry. Las Vegas, as one example, is reusing and capturing every possible drop of water since the supply at Lake Mead is dwindling by the day. Another example used by the author is the drought that has overtaken the City of Atlanta and how precarious the supply to that city is. He also discusses why this doesn’t have to be.This is only a small part of the discussion of water the author brings to the table. He goes around the world to explore water issues in other countries and why they have occurred and what can be done to fix the problems.I highly recommend this book to all. As the water we take for granted becomes harder to supply, we will need to develop new strategies for handling water supply to citizens and corporations. This book is the beginning step in a new way to think about

⭐Good

⭐A very interesting description of the new reality of water for mankind. Examples and real situations are well narrated. However something is missing when capturing the attention of the reader.

⭐A mind-boggling portrait of the world’s water crisis. Not North-America-centric, it delves very deeply into the many world-wide problems and insufficient solutions to our thirst for water.

⭐The first part of the book might mislead you to think Mr. Fishman is one of those ‘techno-fixies’ corporate power advocate, but the more you read this book, the more it turns out to be a wake-up call to our own habits and, in the end, to the physical limits of our water use. I reccommend it.

⭐Un libro que mucha gente debería de leer porque en él se trata el problema del agua, como se derrocha y los futuros problemas que esto va a traer. Fishman además trata este tema de forma muy amena.

⭐

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