Gab@StFerdinandIII - https://unstabbinated.substack.com/
Plenty of cults exist - every cult has its 'religious dogma', its idols, its 'prophets', its 'science', its 'proof' and its intolerant liturgy of demands. Cults everywhere: Corona, 'The Science' or Scientism, Islam, the State, the cult of Gender Fascism, Marxism, Darwin and Evolution, Globaloneywarming, Changing Climate, Abortion...
Tempus Fugit Memento Mori - Time Flies Remember Death
Water, the world's most important commodity and the largest future market. Clean-up, reuse, information gathering, work-flows, river redirection, watershed management...hardware, software, services, solutions of all varieties will be deployed. Some surmise that wars will be fought over water scarcity. China's northern region might be a desert by 2030. Over 100 projects are redirecting water into northern China from southern China. We might see more of this across the world.
1) Famed investor and China-'Bull' Jim Rogers:
“I don’t mind if China has civil war, epidemics, panics, depressions, all of that. You can recover from that. The only thing you cannot recover from is water … China has a horrible water problem in the north. India has a worse water problem, there’s no question about that; America, in some places, has water problems. If China doesn’t solve its water problems then there’s no China story … I’ve been around the world a couple of times, I’ve seen whole societies, cities, countries that disappeared when the water disappeared.
They’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars … they’re spending staggering amounts of money trying to solve their water problem. I am presuming that they will. Now, maybe they won’t, and if they won’t, in twenty or thirty or forty years, the whole story’s over.”
“The country that has a long history of devastating floods and droughts arguably faces an even bigger water crisis today. After almost 30 years of double-digit economic growth and the migration of hundreds of millions of villagers to the cities, China has been barely able to meet the spike in demand for water. Its resources were scarce to begin with and pollution has made clean water even scarcer......
The scale of the challenge is enormous. Every year, on average 15.3 million hectares of farmland—13% of the total—faces drought. Today some 300 million people living in rural areas, or nearly a quarter of China's population of 1.3 billion, don't have access to safe drinking water. And among more than 600 Chinese cities, 400 are facing water shortages, including 100 that may see serious shortages, says Ma Jun, director of the Beijing-based Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs and author of China's Water Crisis. The country would need another 40 billion cubic meters of water a year—about a tenth of the volume of Lake Erie in the U.S.—to meet the needs of all of its city dwellers fully. "China is facing a dire situation in its water supply," says Ma.”
3) Ken Pomeranz, Environmental Historian:
“Rice, for instance is a very thirsty crop, but China’s rice production has been moving steadily North for many years for a number of reasons: expensive land in the South being taken out of agriculture, pollution, climate change (rice needs warm days, but also benefits from cool evenings), new varieties that are a bit less thirsty, etc. How much more of that will happen? Where are the limits? What are the prospects for a real breakthrough with drought-resistant GMOs? Or an environmental disaster with them? To what extent will very water-intensive industries, such as chemicals, relocate in response to actual or feared water shortages? What about the effects of electrical blackouts (partly due to low water levels in dams’ reservoirs) on industrial location decisions?”
“Since the 1950s, China has constructed 86,000 reservoirs, drilled more than four million wells, and developed 58 million hectares of irrigated land, which generates 70% of the country's total grain production. Efforts to conserve water have lagged far behind. The largest threat to sustainable water supplies in China is a growing geographical mismatch between agricultural development and water resources. The centre of grain production in China has moved from the humid south to the water-scarce north over the past 30 years, as southern cropland is built on and more land is irrigated further north. As the north has become drier, increased food production there has largely relied on unsustainable overuse of local water resources, especially groundwater. Wasteful irrigation infrastructure, poorly managed water use, as well as fast industrialization and urbanization, have led to serious depletion of groundwater aquifers, loss of natural habitats and water pollution.”
The biggest market in China is not infrastructure or 'consumer goods'. Demand management and the idea that the consumer is 70% of the economy is a myth. Without water there is no industry. The largest future market in China will be the commodity named water. At some point not only will water be priced on a market system for usage; but entire sectors and new technologies will be developed to manage water; clean it; redeploy it; service watershed areas and collate information around the most precious resource on the planet. China might be facing a 'water disaster' but it will be resolved with technology and brains.
The modern Muslim Jihad, an ongoing 1400 year existential, material and physical event, is funded with oil. The ransom/Jiyza tax is paid from Western states who discovered, refine and use manufactured oil and oil by-products in Western created technologies. No one can make a coherent argument as to why $1 Trillion a year needs to be sent overseas to Arab and Muslim kleptocracies. Even our so-called allies the Saudis through OPEC, manipulate oil prices higher to fund the expansion of the ruling elite's power and wealth; and of course the Jihad.
So what do the clever North American politicians, bureaucrats and most media support ? No drilling. No new refineries. No increase in capacity. Moonshine [ethanol] for cars. Wind and solar power for businesses and residences [good luck with that – zero energy is produced from either of these subsidized losers]. Or maybe the regression of society to one of neolithic-Mother Earth loving forest dwellers [at one with nature and so pure and just].
Oil prices will go higher, and a lot higher, thanks to the deliberate US policy to debase and eventually erase the US $; and of course the moratorium on drilling in North America. Oil price futures would fall 20% overnight if the US and Canadian governments announced that drilling and increasing refinery capacity would be official policy. 200 billion of barrels exist to be developed just in the western US shale deposits of Colorado and North Dakota. Another 500 billion can be extracted easily in the Canadian Tar Sands, the far north and in the US Beaufort sea. The Saudis have 200 billion in reserve by contrast. The Iraqis a similar amount. Why are we sending Muslim regimes a head tax for a product we discovered, to be used in technologies we created? It is mindlessness.
But the politicians would rather demagogue the oil companies and link any use of carbon to the destruction of dear old Mother Earth. More mindlessness. Tax the rich more. Tax the oil firms more. No drilling. No refining capacity increase. Moonshine for cars. Oil prices at $5 or $10 a gallon. Now that is clever earth-friendly policy.
"One of the main so-called subsidies that Mr. Obama wants to eliminate is for the expensing of intangible drilling costs, which has been part of the tax code since its inception. This immediate deduction—rather than amortizing the costs of development over a longer period—provides the capital and cash flow necessary in an industry where the risks are huge and returns are realized over many years, if not decades.
The rest of the items on Mr. Obama's list are tax credits offered to all manufacturers, not just oil and gas. Mr. Boehner's full comments at least revealed the right instincts—namely, proposing to eliminate such carve-outs in return for a lower corporate tax rate as in the Republican budget. The same reform should apply to clean (as well as all other) energy concerns too.
The liberal drive to tax Big Oil is rooted in an ideological commitment to higher energy prices, not consumer relief. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that the effective U.S. corporate tax rate for the oil majors was 26.3% in 2009, not counting royalties, excise taxes or bonus bids for leases. The effective rate typically tracks production and rises and falls with the price of oil. In 2008, it was 42.3%.”
By all means close loop-holes for corporations. But then lower the corporate tax every year until it goes to zero. Instead of actually solving the 'oil price crisis', politicians like the O-Deity will ignore facts and reality and simply demagogue 'big business' and 'big oil'. Maybe they enjoy the transferring of the head-tax to Islam, a cult dedicated to the eradication of the West. Maybe as well they truly relish the idea of everyone driving a battery powered car at 40 km per hour; for 10 km......[except for themselves of course, they will be conducting their important business in a oil consuming stretch Hummer limousine....]. In the real world we need to break OPEC [one good reason to be in Iraq amongst many]; and drill for oil in North America, anywhere and everywhere.
It is clear that Water will be one of the most important topics in the 21rst century. 2 billion people in the world do not have access to potable water and proper waste removal according to the UN. Water resources are being used up faster than they are being replaced. Fresh water resourcing issues are going to be more common. An example is Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam in Nevada. The Colorado river and other water systems are literally drying up, reducing Lake Mead's depth close to where water rationing for many US states will be imposed. This example though extreme, is probably not completely unique. Many areas in the world are suffering from a water scarcity issue, or from a lack of potable water and proper waste removal [using water based systems] .
Technology will resolve these issues. There is no doubt that we have the creativity to solve the many issues around water management. Software, hardware, bio-natural agents, micro-biological cleaning, house water and waste recycling, new filtering, ground water management, treatment methods – all of these and a lot more will be created, recreated or improved in the coming years.
As 'Water' becomes the next great focus of investment and concern, water management in all of its various forms will become one the world's largest growth industries; and a focus for environmentalists and those who are concerned about proper resource management. Water will become a market in which the happy marriage between the environmentalists [at least not the extremists of that group] and capital owners will occur.
I am actively promoting software and digital technology to accumulate information, record it, store it, and generate active and eco-friendly solutions for government agencies, both locally and internationally, with cloud based solutions. Without the information being centralized and accessible, we cannot resolve the many problems which our water systems face. This technology is a platform which will integrate informational sources and allow regulators and actors to assess what can and should be done based on the problem set in question.
A great magazine on the topic of water and water management is water.com
A corollary to this 'emerging' market is the generation of jobs, wealth, and higher living standards. And there is nothing wrong with that.