Blue Gold

Recently, I moved back to Hong Kong and re-acquainted myself with the Chinese culture. What pops up in my mind is the 5 elements - Gold, Timber, Water, Fire, Earth, thanks to the beautiful mall known as Elements. These Elements nomenclature is also used in Japanese's naming for the weekdays, so it's part of a Pan-East-Asian cultural conceptualization of our world.

Blue gold is actually just water. Yes, H2O.

When we think about gold, black gold (oil) and the blue gold(water), blue gold should certainly trumps the rest as we cannot live without water.

There are signs that the human world is running out of fresh water. I say "human world" because global warming probably evaporates even more water into the air from the seas, it's just that they are not falling back as rains onto the right places at sufficient levels to meet human needs anymore.You may ask why? Nobody really knows but my best guess is that if the air is too hot/warm, the water precipitation will not be able to "condense" itself at the usual regions, they need to be in contact with cold air to condense. That's why Siberia is getting much more rain these days and places which used to get lots of rains, Vancouver, London, gets tons of snow instead because it is only at these time (the cold Winter) that the water precipitation get "cold" enough to condense themselves.For anything beneath these latitudes, droughts (no condensation), think Western United States and Western/Central Australia. For geographical reasons, some areas will always be saturated with water, namely the tropical areas and when the air is so humid and saturated with water, rain comes by easily with or without further warming. In fact, the climate change mostly happens in cooler areas anyways.

Let's take the fussy climate change science out of the equation (assume my reasoning in the previous paragraph is wrong). Just by looking at the rate of human population growth, urbanization and industrialization accompanying with it, we are bound to be stress with fresh water if the original capacity (namely the major rivers and underground water sources) don't get "scaled up" accordingly.

Unfortunately, naturally occurring fresh water is not like a plant that can be expanded and "propped" up like a machine. It is re-charged by rainfalls or depends on glaciers, which takes millions of years to be built up. Some even call the water underground as "fossil water" which just means it is unsustainable like the fossil fuel.

So we have the last James Bond movie's plot, Quantum of Solace, focused on the "Blue gold" beneath the ground, how apt.

Blue gold is not only precious, but it is also critical to our existence. If climate change is going to create more droughts, not only we will be running out of water for drinking, but we will be running out of foods (agriculture uses most of the water), out of fuel (current harvesting of oil from the ground uses lots of water) and running out of industrial activity (industry uses lots of water). You can tell this is just a logical deduction, no scare mongering - massive stress to our living conditions beyond our imagination will start to manifest itself - at least to those who have the least bargaining power in the world.

So what is the solution? If you and I can't think of one, it's fine. Invest in water related businesses, innovations. (it has better be done fast as G2, namely U.S. and China is already under severe stress with water) and let the scientists and innovators of the world be channeled, gravitated to solutions that will resolve/alleviate the shortage of the other kind of gold, Blue gold.

Blue Gold