[Scpg] NEW BOOK Water. By Steven Solomon.

[Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network]

Water
Through the aqueous humour
Dec 30th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Water. By Steven Solomon. Harper; 563 pages; $27.99. Harper Collins; £18.99.
http://www.economist.com/books/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15172532

TO WRITE a history of water was a good idea. 
Since life depends on water, it has been man's 
constant companion from the moment his forebears 
emerged from the sea and, you could say, even 
before. Human affairs have therefore been 
intricately related to water. But man has 
mistreated his friend, and now, it is said, the 
world faces a water crisis. There is too much of 
it in some places, too little in others. It has 
been acidified, dirtied and squandered. It should 
no longer be taken for granted.

The first three-quarters of Steven Solomon's book 
is an account of the ascendancy and decline of 
various civilisations, seen through a watery 
lens. The survey starts in antiquity with Egypt, 
Mesopotamia and the areas round the Indus and the 
Yellow River. It runs through the Roman empire, 
the building of China's Grand Canal in the 
seventh century and the Islamic era that 
followed. Then come the stirrings of mechanical 
development in medieval Europe that preceded the 
invention of the steam engine in Britain, the 
arrival of the industrial age and the mass 
production, and consumption, of the American 
century. Along the way the reader learns about 
aqueducts, dams, canals, waterwheels and devices 
for lifting water, as well as sanitary 
inventions, naval battles and maritime voyages of 
discovery. The thesis is that enduring 
civilisations are underpinned by effective water 
control.

As a contention, this may seem banal, yet the 
tour d'horizon might also have been a tour de 
force. One difficulty, though, is that Mr Solomon 
so often strains to make water more important 
than it actually was. The Roman empire, it seems, 
fell apart because it lacked the "unifying 
impetus" of an inland waterway like China's. It 
was hydroelectric power, ie, water, that powered 
the aircraft factories and aluminium smelters 
that in turn played a "decisive role" in 
America's victory in the second world war. Sewers 
and piped water gave the West "comparative 
economic and politically legitimising advantages 
over its cold-war rivals". The distance-shrinking 
Panama Canal was another triumph for water. And 
it was water, or rather its absence, that obliged 
eighth-century Islam to go out and trade and 
conquer. Indeed, the Muslims' use of camels-a 
proxy for the precious liquid-in crossing deserts 
just showed the importance of water. No surprise 
then to learn that the defining geographical 
condition of America's Far West was not its Far 
Westernness but, yes, water scarcity.

Matching the over-claiming is the overwriting. 
Clashes are existential, audacity is 
breathtaking. Almost every change is a 
revolution, every expansion an explosion. 
Catalysts abound. Indeed, water, it is said at 
the outset, has an "extraordinary capacityŠto 
catalyse essential chemical reactions", making it 
the Earth's "most potent agent of change". In 
truth, water is hardly ever a catalyst in 
ordinary conditions.

In other respects, the problem is under-, not 
over-performance. The 97.5% of water that is 
salty, for example, is hardly considered, except 
as a means of transport. This leaves quite a hole 
in a history of water. And though much is made of 
the steam engine, ice scarcely merits a mention.
In the last quarter of the book, Mr Solomon 
abandons history and turns to the water shortages 
of today and the political clashes they may 
cause. Competition for Nile water is acute 
between Egypt and Ethiopia. Fierce disputes also 
divide Turkey and its southern neighbours in the 
Jordan basin. With India and China, both 
prodigious consumers of ever-scarcer fresh water, 
the rivalries are mostly, though not entirely, 
internal. And in many places, notably the United 
States, north Africa and the Middle East, 
aquifers whose water may have lain undisturbed 
for 10,000 to 75,000 years are now being 
recklessly drained, with no prospect of a refill 
for an aeon or two. Everywhere it is the poor who 
suffer most.

Mr Solomon is not despairing. He gives some 
reasons for hope. Too bad he did not devote more 
of his book to the present and the future, and to 
the policies that could alleviate the situation 
he describes.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.permaculture-guilds.org/pipermail/southern-california-permaculture/attachments/20100106/25f4abdb/attachment.html>