‘The way ahead, or why we should all waste water’.

This is the title of the final chapter in the book; Overloading Australia, by Mark O’Çonnor and William Lines.

I quote;

“We believe in public spiritedness and wish we could endorse appeals to conserve water. Yet, our analysis shows that until we get restraint in population, there is no point in citizens saving water. If they do, this will not mean that their neighbours get more water for their gardens, or that tougher restrictions will be postponed. Rather, it means that politicians will be able to continue their irresponsible dream of putting over a million extra people in each of our three biggest cities over the next 25 years (and proportionately even more into Perth). So long as we have such misguided leaders, any water restraint shown by the individual citizen will only allow our politicians to persist further in their folly, and will lead – quite soon – to irreversible shortages of water, plus many other environmental disasters.”

The authors “urge citizens to defy water restrictions.”

Sounds eminently sensible to me, What do others think?

Ludwig,

I have read the book and I absolutely agree with it and you but I just can't bring myself to do it. The same argument goes for all the other limited resources at Australia's disposal. I just cannot force myself to be wasteful of anything.

Besides the strategy might very well backfire and and provide ammunition for the vested interests and religious fundamentalists, or whatever the mob are called, to use against those who understand the danger of continued population growth and speak out on the issue.

mate you seen the price of the stuff..[who can afford to simply pour it down the drain?...its time we stopped pizzing/shi tting in it [dont you think..[we going to have to drink it in time]..

wasting water is a great idea[not]..its time it was treated as sacred..[any polutors of it should get jail...by your nmeasure we would need to build bigger processing plants[more bulk to clean up]..

its simply insane..[if you dont want migrants simply lobby them to not come here...[this wasting water campain is simply a new sceme for racism]...some people are just dumb enough to open the taps and try to achieve it...[yet still not achieve your aim]

if you want no more migrants say enough,no more imagrants[but there is room for all]think we will need to put in bigger pipes..[needing imagrant workers to build the pipeline and re processing facilities]..sorry buddy its a dumb idea

I have not read the book, but I agree with the sentiment in the chapter quoted by Ludwig.

Funnily enough, just before the dentist started to drill one of my teeth a couple of weeks ago, he and I were discussing SA government's plan to double the capacity of the new desal plant that has just been started. I opined that they were doing something useful for the first time in their 8 years of control (or, rather, lack of control).

The dentist curbed by enthusiasm by saying that when they have the water, they will tout it around to undustries to come to SA; the industries will use all of it, and we will be back where we are now with water shortages.

Having read Ludwig's post, that now makes sense to me.

It would also mean that Rann could go ahead with his threat to double the population of Adelaide.

Acutally, I have written to MP's about the stupidity of increasing SA's population when we have barely enough water for the current population. I've been told that it is possible to have more people AND enough water.

This makes me think that the water restrictions are, perhaps, totally unwarranted: there is water, but they are conning us into saving it so that they can carry out their populating lunacy.

Waste not, but hide the water from the government, place it in secret tanks in backyards and underground, then use it again once the government gets the message...