where is the water?

“Awesome infogram” from old Wired Science blog about water distribution on this little blue planet. One stupid reference in the article however is this phrase “water footprint” as if we’ll be talking about water the same way we talk about carbon emissions. Not. “footprint” suggests something you leave behind, like an impression in the mud which fossilizes (the irony of the expression being us using energy sources like oil produced from fossil-compression and then terming the excessive use of such fuels as footprint) and leaving behind a legacy that others later will have to deal with. Water is not the same. Water is finite yes but its availability will produce “water anxiety” long before it produces a “footprint” (that term is more appropriate to the world of Dune circa the Children of Dune and the excesses of water in standing puddles on the desert planet – it is true, I am Dork).

Lake Mead behind Hoover Dam, slowly drying up. This, I guess, is a type of “footprint”.