Upcoming piece: Mexico, Petro-agriculture, NAFTA, and the Transatlantic & Transpacific Partnerships

Wanted to give a heads-up to expect in the coming days a piece about the impacts of transnational trade treaties, their impact on the sustainable "triple bottom line," and finally a bit of their personal impacts.

Think your worst ecological sin is the carbon footprint from your RAV4's poor gas mileage? Unfortunately, it's probably not.

Do you think your worst ecological sin is the ugly carbon footprint resulting from your RAV4's rather mediocre gas mileage? Unfortunately, it's probably not.

This video gives a great explanation why. Pardon me while I go give my RAV4 a ... sand bath.

Despite what the oft-ignorant commenters on YouTube may think, the point of the video isn't that we all should stop using dishwashers, showers, and washing machines. It's to raise awareness so that when we hear water conservation measures come up in political discourse -- such as efficiency standards for appliances, or charging for water based on what it's actually worth, rather than how much it costs to extract and distribute -- people will better understand why the discussion is occurring at all.

One of the better comments (by Linnel Gifford-Mahany) said, "Jeez, makes one wonder how many gallons of fresh water there are in the world." Eureka! Just the sort of question that water resource scientists hope to hear asked. The answer is that of all the water on Earth -- including oceans, ice caps, rivers, and subsurface aquifers (groundwater), etc. -- only 0.7672% is usable fresh water (h/t US Geologic Survey). Yes, that's about one quarter of one percent. And keep in mind, the vast majority of even that still has to be treated to make it safe to drink! There is other water available, of course, but it comes at much greater cost; either it must be desalinated from brackish/salty sources, or melted from snow & ice. You've probably heard our glaciers and ice caps are already dramatically endangered, and that the cost of desalination is atrocious -- even the Saudis think it's expensive!

Digging a little deeper, you'll note this isn't solely the individual citizen-consumer's fault. We only account for about 8.5% of use with our Maytags, Whirlpools, and Klean Kanteens of agua. Power plants use 41.5%, and farming accounts for 37%, so they're by far the worst offenders. The good news is that there are real-life, current fixes that could help this problem notably -- they just cost money. Most modern farms are ginormous industrial agriculture operations which irrigate using open, unlined ditches that lose nearly as much water to seepage as they actually deliver to crops. Lining those ditches would make a huge difference. Much of the water lost to thermoelectric power generation could be reclaimed and re-injected into nearby aquifers rather than discharged as as loss downstream to the ocean.

So, take home message: pay attention to water conservation measures -- they matter. Whether it's more water-efficient appliances, more electrically efficient appliances (remember the 41.5%!), or government conservation efforts -- they matter! Ignoring the issue will guarantee a future where the price of water for drinking, cooking, and washing will be so high that all but the wealthy will struggle to pay, just as many of us do now to make our car and house payments.

Welcome -- and Happy Groundwater Awareness Week!

Welcome to The Naughty Environmentalist! After 15 years as a geoscientist, a few years reading Phil Plait's excellent Bad Astronomy blog, and a several more years of my better half accusing me of being a "bad environmentalist" for forgetting to recycle the cat food can lids, here I am, finally ready to write about it. As the blog's description says, while I'm passionate about our planet (and others!) and have been known to actually hug a tree or two, I'm as fallibly mortal as anyone else. I know how overwhelming it can be to keep track of which sustainably obtained fish is okay to eat this week, or to remember which new-fangled light bulbs do/don't contain Soylent Green ... so in this space, I hope to help myself and all of us negotiate that ever-winding green path.

I care deeply about our neighborhoods, our planet's neighborhood, our star's neighborhood -- and how Homo sapiens defines its place in those 'hoods through a technological society. So it won't be all-enviro all the time -- expect to see interesting trends in science and technology too. I'm also an avid outdoorsman, so it's likely that you'll see some commentary about hiking, camping, biking, and other outdoor fun.

First off: Happy Groundwater Awareness Week, coming up March 9th - 15th! Given the occasion and the drought situation in California, expect to see a few posts about water resources coming soon. I've retweeted several interesting stories on the subject over on my Twitter account, EcoKade. People are so often blasé about water supply, so I like that ThinkProgress has a piece up that hits so many of us where it hurts -- "California's drought is coming for your beer." Grist also has a slightly more serious take on California's agricultural water use by Alex Park and Julia Lurie, both fellows at the excellent Mother Jones. Take a gander, and feel free to discuss in the comments!

Secondly: if you didn't watch Cosmos last night, you should try to catch it tonight on NatGeo, or stream it from the Fox site. The show was lovely, but even if it hadn't been, I'd still give the shout out; just like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Carl Sagan's ability to communicate the wonder and majesty of science changed my life and set me on the path to becoming an earth and planetary scientist (with a little help from Gene Roddenberry). In many ways, I'm here with you blogging because of Carl. So in that spirit: "Come with me!"