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How can England possibly be running out of water?

theguardian.com

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Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#31

Post by bayarearefugee »

jameslk wrote: post #18
bayarearefugee wrote: post #2

Don't worry about it. Just lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy and reduce regulations, the magic hand of the market will fix everything!!! :D

What do lowering taxes have to do with water running out in the UK?

Well we're not going to lower the taxes on normal wage earners, silly.

But we need to lower the taxes on the wealthy and corporations (and reduce or eliminate regulations) so they can distribute their capital to make new water!

Don't you know anything about modern economics?

:D

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#34

Post by sandbags »

As the article mentions, privatised water companies have built no new reservoir capacity and relied on drawing from rivers and other sources.

What the article doesn’t mention is that pre-privatisation a new reservoir was built every year up to about 1960 and then every few years until privatisation in 1992.

So we are about 30 years behind in adding capacity to the system. This combined with the inadequate levels of investment in the system leading to enormous wastage, is the answer.

Water should never have been privatised. At least not without a framework for a national strategy for water. I suspect that wasn’t done because it would have made water companies and unattractive source of profit.

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#35

Post by tankenmate »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #15
tankenmate wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

although a good point, there is obvious surface level nuance though; oil companies hid the research of climate change for a decade or two, they also lobbied (and still do) against subsidies for renewable energy and for oil and gas subsidies (in development in most countries, and even end customer price subsidies in others). and of course there's further nuance below the surface as well.

An interesting thing that happens here is also the conflation of company and country. You mention the oil companies blocking and obscuring the research, but GP was putting the blame on the shoulders of the "oil countries." Something to be aware of with the rise of weaponised xenophobia and general background islamophobia.

Corruption and undue political influence stemming from a large source of extractive income isn't a an issue particular to Islam as I can see it; in fact I'd say it's something endemic to the human condition.

But, when it comes to oil production what I would say is that due to the overlapping geography of the foundation and consequent spread of Islam and largest and easiest to extract oil resources in the world being very large combined with human tendency to overfit pattern matching that it is all too easy to see why some would conflate the two.

But Islamic majority nations aren't the only "oil countries", and not all "oil countries" are corrupt (but I'd guess the overwhelming majority of "oil countries" are corrupt, not least because of Dutch Disease).

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#36

Post by jameslk »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #31
jameslk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do lowering taxes have to do with water running out in the UK?

Well we're not going to lower the taxes on normal wage earners, silly. But we need to lower the taxes on the wealthy and corporations (and reduce or eliminate regulations) so they can distribute their capital to make new water! Don't you know anything about modern economics? :D

Does this snarky point you’re trying to make connect with anything in the article? I saw no mention of taxes

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#37

Post by hnhg »

Short answer is that the UK gave private companies to extract as much wealth as possible with minimal re-investment in infrastructure. The nation has since seen water rationing and raw sewage being pumped into rivers and beaches, but at least some shareholders have benefited, right?

Re: How can England possibly be running out of water?

#39

Post by forrestthewoods »

antonvs wrote: post #30
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #21

Can't they get water from the ocean?

No. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-dont-we-get-o...

> It can cost from just under $1 to well over $2 to produce one cubic meter (264 gallons) of desalted water from the ocean. That's about as much as two people in the U.S. typically go through in a day at home.

Uhhhh that seems pretty cheap and affordable?

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