The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water.
The Big Thirst outlines our global attitudes towards water and how our current perceptions and relationships with water must change in order to grapple with the impending challenges of water scarcity. From the US to Australia to India, Fishman details how each country has dealt with water crises, the varying solutions and the different challenges each nation faces. Our current solution for water crisis is water importation, which is implausible and absurdly costly. One only needs to hear the story of Barcelona Spain’s water shortage in 2008 or even the small town of Orme, TN’s (142 people), where the town ran out of water for 4-months and was on a 3-hour a day water ration, to understand that water is a precious resource. Water management has improved over the years, but our systems are rarely updated and are currently being stressed (population, age decay, extreme weather patterns) to the point where these systems are failing. People only pay for the delivery of water, not for the maintenance and upkeep of systems, and thus are attitude about water is, “it’s water. Of course it’s free.” Free water is no longer a luxury we have, at least, free clean water.” Fishman calls for a change to our water habits and water attitudes, because our attitudes toward water is the strongest obstacle to changing and sustaining our water future, which is to say, sustaining our future.