Water Follies

A favorite drink of the more-environmental-than-thou club (and others who just think it's cool) is Fiji bottled water.

Surprisingly enough, this water actually comes from Fiji--but not easily.

Not only is Fiji an 18-hour plane ride and a four-hour truck trip away, but before it hits our grocery store shelves, it has to make that trip twice because the bottles are not made in Fiji.

This is just a small example of the tantalizing and amusing tidbits in this Fast Company article about the bottled-water industry and the people who support it.

It you are an environmentalist or you know someone who you would like to needle with tales of the huge carbon footprint their precious wa-wa is leaving on its way to their mouths, you have got to read this article.

If you are interested in how Americans came to pay so much money for something that is available for nada, you might be interested in this too. Here is my favorite part:

"You can buy a half-liter Evian for $1.35--17 ounces of water imported from France for pocket change. That water seems cheap, but only because we aren't paying attention.

"In San Francisco, the municipal water comes from inside Yosemite National Park. It's so good the EPA doesn't require San Francisco to filter it. If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35. Put another way, if the water we use at home cost what even cheap bottled water costs, our monthly water bills would run $9,000."

If you are interested in "the way things work" this might prove to be an interesting read.

S.F. Mayor Bans Bottled Water

San Franfreako Mayor Gavin Newsome has finally done something that I agree with.

It seems that in the past 4 1/2 years, city government has spent more than two million dollars on bottled water--Newsome is going to put a stopper to that.

Frankly I don't understand how it became a city function to buy water for its employees in the first place. Last I checked, the City of San Francisco had running water.

In a way I think it is ironic that a place that is a hotbed for environmental (did you ever notice the word mental was part of that adjective?) activism should be switching to water au natural. After all, it's on the strength of their wailing that people think we actually have unclean drinking water--us, the United States of America.

So, the people who contributed heavily to the myth of our polluted water helped lead us to the idea that we needed to pay for what we could get for free.

I actually drink bottled water. I take a bottle and fill it up from my tap.

Are you in the 92nd percentile?

I'm smarter than at least ninety-two percent of the country!

The current issue of "The American"--it has a decent online version too--has some interesting numbers regarding the citizenry's opinion of global warming.

As a human-caused global warming denier, I am thrilled to be part of the eight percent of the populace who thinks concern about the make-believe disaster is unwarranted.

Unfortunately, it seems like the Chicken Littles of the world make up the rest of the populace. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that sixty-four percent think some action should be taken to combat global warming. At least twenty-five percent think we should at least do a little more research before taking any more action.

The magazine also has some other interesting findings:

*In 1992 fifty-three percent felt they understood global warming well or fairly well; that number has steadily increased so that by 2007 fully seventy-six percent think they know the subject well.

*Only fourteen percent actively participate in the environmental movement. Forty-eight percent of the people are sympathetic, but not active. Twenty-nine percent are neutral and only seven percent are unsympathetic toward the movement.

*As far as top concerns as a nation, only three percent cite the environment. Thirty-five percent of respondents chose the war in Iraq as a top priority for policymakers, followed by heath care, job creation (both fifteen percent), and terrorism (thirteen).

This is just a small sample of some of thought-provoking discussion in the issue of this magazine. I am pleasantly surprised with the subscription I inherited when my all-time favorite magazine, "American Enterprise", ceased publishing when editor Karl Zinsmeister took a job with the Bush Administration. Check out the link above for a look at the online version.