yeah, right

[ritaxis]

Clean drinking water and agricultural water are scarce and getting scarcer. What should we do about it? Charge more money for it!!!

Idiots.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Basic economics, Lucy. Higher price will generate more supply and/or encourage conservation. The current prices, especially for agricultural water, are artificially low, which is encouraging waste.

(I have some doubts how much more "production" could be reasonably generated, and we do need to watch out for drawing down fossil water that isn't being replaced as fast as we use it already.)

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

If you asked California agribusiness to pay a fair price for water, don't you think they'd howl? It would be more than they're paying now, after all. Or even the good citizens of Sacremento, where it's illegal to meter water? That seems to be what the OECD is suggesting. What we don't want to see happen is charging the people who can't pay, and actually the report addresses that.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Would the same people who'd be getting the extra money for this water be the same people encouraging and building the increasing development that's much responsible for the scarcity in the first place?

(At least around here they are--or would be if they could get away with it.)

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

They were not, at least according to Reuters, talking about making agriculture and industry pay the real cost of water, which is a whole other thing. They were talking about raising the price of drinking water, as the primary method of dealing with the global water shortage.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

If that's what the OECD is suggesting, both I and Reuters appear to have missed it. It looked like they were talking about drinking water primarily.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

See, that's the thing. They're not talking about changing the way water is "owned," developed, and delivered. They're talking about using price as the whole way to control water production.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

If you mean in the article you linked (which is from Reuters, so I'm tentatively thinking that's what you mean), I don't see anything limiting it to "drinking water", nor do I see any indication that they think it's the primary means. It's what that one press release addressed, so it's what the article is about, is what it looks like to me.

[randwolf.livejournal.com]

The article actually doesn't say--I went over it very carefully. A bit more digging yields an OECD Observer article which talks primarily about agriculture. And here is a position paper. He says the right things, at least, though I also notice he compliments a Nestle CEO on reducing water usage in production. Um. I think a few millennia of thirst in hell might be a sufficient punishment. I am very glad I am not a politician, and so I do not have to say complementary things about Nestle CEOs as part of my job.