Simply put, every drop of water counts

Halt global warming? It’s simple, one expert says: to save energy, save water.

More than 1,000 climate experts from around the world gathered last month in Stockholm for World Water Week. If you didn’t read about it or hear about it on TV, it’s not necessarily because of the crisis besetting modern journalism. It could easily be the subject. If there is anything that can clear a room faster than a plague of toads, it’s discussion of climate change and water.

Peter Gleick, a MacArthur fellow and president of a nonprofit environmental and public policy group called the Pacific Institute in Oakland, was in Stockholm for the meeting. He is, above any Californian, our man on the unmentionable.

So, are there ways to address this topic, I asked Gleick recently, without leaving everyone feeling utterably depressed and helpless? Absolutely, Gleick responded. “If you want to save energy, save water.”

Aha, logical. Energy saved amounts to greenhouse gas emissions prevented. Energy is a hidden cost of water. In 2004, Gleick published a report with the Natural Resources Defense Council on the subject. As the date of the report suggests, the knowledge isn’t new, but comprehension is so low, thousands of climatologists still feel compelled to sing the message in Stockholm.

It may be the stealthy quality of water. It simply seems to flow naturally into our sprinklers and garden hoses, while it’s actually moved to us. This takes so much power that the pumps that convey and treat California’s water account for roughly 20% of the electricity consumed in the state.

LA Times