Todays post is from Ronald Rovers and is a cautionary tale about our habit of using resource stocks in our pursuit of the good life at a speed beyond natural replenishment. This is how it begins:
“Suppose you eat a orange from a well known brand like Jaffa from Israel, you might expect there is nothing to worry about, oranges grow by nature, each year a new yield arrives, so its a “renewable resource”. Its part of a circular process, a closed cycle, and every year new oranges grow. You suppose. However, the situation is somewhat different: oranges grow in Israel, but not naturally: only because of heavy irrigation. Now Israel is not a water rich country so its pumped up from underground aquifers, century old water reservoirs. [1] The aquifer in this case however is mainly under the West Bank, which is (was..?) Palestinian area. The aquifer is drained, and Palestinians, who are not allowed to extract water directly from the aquifer, only by open wells, see the water level going down until the well dries up. In other words, if you eat a jaffa orange , a Palestinian might have no drinking water. Besides, the aquifer is not replenished , or not fast enough, and will dry up in future. A perfect example of how resource cycles work, and their effects being invisible to us in daily life. It seems all right, as if part of a closed loop proces, but its an open end process, shifting burdens. …”
What follows is about wool, concrete, sand and apps.