The Daily Show's Jon Stewart Interviews "Unquenchable" Author Robert Glennon On Water Crisis

Author Robert Glennon was the guest on Thursday night's Daily Show, discussing how Americans mistakenly use water as an infinite resource.

He points out that many proposed alternative energy sources, such a ethanol, take a tremendous amount of water to produce.

Jon Stewart suggests that maybe we can take the foot or so of water expected to be added to the sea level from global warming and drink it.

WATCH:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Robert Glennon
www.thedailyshow.com
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Comments

[MurCal]

We need the political courage and motivation to make this happen.

In other words, we're doomed.

[Gasparilla]

We can't address the problem until we address population growth in this country. We can't address population growth until we address the main thing fueling it, which is immigration.

[skippypicasso]

I'm sorry, that is a sense-free comment.

[Gasparilla]

I really need to explain it? More people put more demand on our resources. What don't you get? 1 plus 1 equals 2.

[noneIn2008]

The #1 environmental crisis world wide is water. Good to see it getting some coverage. If we spent only a fraction of the green money on good drinkable water, millions of lives would be saved in developing countries. But, is saving lives the objective? Or is it something else?

[JScott]

If limited our human numbers it would be easier to resolve.

[Chip W]

I'm a fan of Jon Stewart, but he doesn't know when to not make a joke.

This isn't a crisis because no one sees it - everyone still turns on their tap and gets water.
Management by crisis is easier than foresight because priorities make themselves clear. Then action becomes easier and something either can or can't be done about it.
I think a lot of management by crisis is on the horizon.

[JScott]

Dunno bout this book. But another good one is 'Cadillac Desert'.

[gbrooks]

I'm, so far, taking some reasonable steps to reduce water waste:

--composting toilets
--rain barrels for my garden
--short showers, not allowing the faucet to run when unnecessary

I'd like to set up some sort of grey water system as well

I think that if more people took this sort of route now, the water "wasted" via solar panels will not become an issue.

[AngieMom57]

Good job!

Very few people are even reading about it, very very few are brave enough to do as you are doing...

"The Humanure Handbook"

[mamacat]

Saw the interview, but have not read the book. I was disappointed that the author did not discuss the agricultural and commercial uses of water.

Here in CA 80% of the water use is by agricultural enterprises, some of them with very old federal contracts allowing them to waste huge amounts of water on things like growing rice in flooded fields, in areas that are semi-desert. All I heard about on the interview were things like how people should use less water in their toilets. What about the much larger amounts of water wasted because of crazy and unfair agricultural politics?

During periods of drought and high temps last summer, some nuclear powered electricity plants were forced to curtail output or shut down because of a shortage of fresh water. Nuclear plants use a lot of water.

In the Midwest, much of the agricultural water comes from tapping into and draining the ancient acquifer under the region. The practice is unsustainable, because the amount of water being removed is many times more than what is replaced on an annual basis through rainfall. At some point relatively soon, much of America's Midwest will run out of water for agricultural purposes. The amount of water needed for direct consumption and daily use by people is very small, by comparison.

The subject of the discussion on The Daily Show reminded me of a saying I used to hear when I was young, "Don't be penny-wise and pound-fool­ish."