Back in the late 1980s, the North American cause célèbre for protectionists was the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In lacking a solid economic case for opposing deregulated trade, activists moved on to their usual tactic of playing on fear and emotion. They created the myth corporations were going to buy all the world’s water and drain us all dry..The Council of Canadians was formed and managed by noteworthy leftists such as David Suzuki and Maude Barlow. The point of the organization was to try and halt free trade and they focused on the message the big bad Americans would take Canada’s water if we allowed free trade while we wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop them..Their message was simplistic, wrong and effective..They always began by pointing out how desperately dry California is and how abundant Canada’s fresh water supplies were. They made the case Americans would move water from Canada’s western lakes and rivers into California for irrigation and drinking while paying pennies — if anything at all — for it. These myths were often accompanied by pictures of dry farm fields and depleted water reservoirs. A frightening scenario indeed..Free trade was implemented despite hysteric opposition from Canada’s left. People who believed the mythology of the Council of Canadians must have lived in terror with the knowledge the desertification of Canada was impending..So in 30 years, what happened to Canada’s water?.Nothing..What the Council of Canadians and other advocates always glossed over in their fearmongering was the rather important question of how this grand theft of water would actually happen..Water is notoriously difficult to move over long distances. It is heavy, it doesn’t compress and it needs to be moved in very large volumes to have any real impact anywhere. In BC, water would have to be moved over mountain ranges in order to get it to California. From the Prairies, it would have to go through multiple large river valleys which are ironically already carrying American water to coastal outlets. It would take a project thousands of times larger than the Panama Canal in order to move the equivalent of a small river from Canadian provinces to California. It just isn’t in the cards..Years of lobbying against any form of private water sales still had an impact on people. In BC, Nestle experienced fierce opposition for a bottled water facility in the Fraser Valley. Never mind the Fraser river dumps more fresh water into the ocean in an hour than 100 bottled water plants could consume in a year. The principle of selling water has been entrenched into the minds of many as being evil..Bottled water makes up a tiny fraction of human water consumption. It garners the most criticism because it is our most visible form of consumption. To be fair, using bottled water is wasteful due to the packaging involved and the availability of safely drinkable tap water in most communities. It really isn’t a big deal in the environmental or economic scheme of things..Most of the human use of water comes in the form of irrigation and industrial uses. It should be remembered, water used by humans will eventually go back into the system one way or another. Contaminated water is a real issue, but let’s not pretend that water simply vanishes from the world ecosystem the moment it is sprayed on a field or used in a factory..California still faces a crisis in water supply. They are draining lakes and rivers as the population grows and a drought continues. California is a naturally dry state for the most part. The Mohave desert isn’t a produce of man made global warming, it is thousands of years old. As long as the state hosts a large population, it will have challenges with water supply..In most of the world, desalination has been developed in dry nations with coastal access in order to tap the oceans for a supply. Israel, Australia and North Africa are benefiting from these projects. Desalination is expensive and energy intensive, but it still beats dying of thirst or associated hunger when crops fail due to drought..California has a massive coastline along the largest ocean on earth. The state is a natural candidate for large scale desalination projects. Some plants are already in operation and are providing water to urban areas. In light of recent developments though, it looks unlikely that desalination facilities will be developed further in California..A large project in Orange county California called Poseidon would have provided 50 million gallons a day to the parched Huntington Beach area. Due to environmental and anti-capitalist lobbying, the project application was rejected. Millions of dehydrated citizens just turned their backs on an abundant supply of water in an act of pure idiocy..The environmental case against the plant was weak. The impact of such a plant on a massive water body like that would have been negligible. A literal drop in the bucket. Modern facilities dispose of brine effectively and the ocean levels certainly won’t be dropping due to the minuscule removal of water in desalination plants..The reason opposition to the project was successful was due to the demonization of private involvement in utility provision. Much like the Council of Canadians did in the 1980s, American leftists created the myth that corporations would gain control of water and would bleed consumers dry. Indeed, it was projected that water bills may rise as much as $6 per month for some consumers due to this plant..They shout: “Water is a need! We should never allow it to be sold for profit!”.Food and shelter are needs as well. Which provides either of those needs to consumers more efficiently? The private sector or governments? How good is state funded housing? How well did the state control of agriculture work for the Soviet Union?.If people want treated water provided efficiently and affordably, they need to let the private market provide it..Apparently in California they would rather die of thirst..Populations are growing and we need to embrace new technologies in order to sustain them. Nothing can pivot to suit the changing needs of consumers better than private enterprise yet we continue to shun it..We are in a battle of ideologies and we are losing. The politics of fear and envy are winning and we are all paying the price..Don't think for a second that we are immune from such ideologies and foolishness up here in Canada. .People in Canada would apparently rather die on a waiting list than let private involvement in healthcare expand. Turning away private medical investment while our system crumbles is no less idiotic than turning away a glass of water while you are dying of thirst..The world is in transition in many ways and if we allow ourselves to continue to be guided by emotion and ideologies, we won't be transitioning for the better.
