A DRY ARGUMENT

You wade through the news today and I feel like I have suddenly stepped right into ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’.

As Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote: ‘ Water, water, everywhere, and all the boards did shrink; water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink’.

Is that’s the way it’s going to be?  Climate change, global warming, water restrictions. The Herald Sun this morning even screams ‘Guzzlers’ in a huge Page One headliner attacking  Water Wallies.

And the story, by Ellen Whinnett, says ‘Shopping centres, jails and hospitals are among the state’s top 200 water guzzlers, according to a previously secret list obtained by the  Herald Sun.’

To which my immediate reaction was: No shit, Sherlock.

But it gets worse the newspaper exclusive names and presumably shames the top 200 companies alongside another headline which says Waste Down the Drain.

The paper says ‘ the water was used to cool air-conditioners, make soft-drinks, beer, cheese and plastics, and –listen to this…. this is sinister -- to provide showers and toilets for hundreds of thousands of hospital patients and jail inmates.’

They’ve got me. I’m guilty. I’m a selfish, self-centred wastrel. There I was undermining this very country’s future all of last week lying flat on my back in hospital with septicaemia. And yes, yes, I used, water. I managed to drag my drip on wheels into the shower. And I flushed the toilet. And the nurses washed their hands . And the Cabrini Linen Service makes the Top 200 with my help because I had fresh hospital wraps, and towels and sheets.

I mean, hell, what’s a little golden staph between friends, if we can save a bit of water?

But there were other culprits. Like The Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, and the Epworth, and the Royal Children’s and the Royal Women’s and St. Vincent’s.

Even Melbourne Water makes the biggest users list. What a surprise. And what do they expect big business to do. Shut down? Sack half the staff and say ‘sorry, we have to save water’?

Buried in the story is the fact that these 200 water guzzlers actually used only 1% of the total consumed in Victoria last year and in the past five years have saved more than seven and a half billion litres a year.

And you know, with all the argy-bargy about carbon footprints and global warming , I am not surprised by a poll in the Sydney Daily Telegraph. It showed 38 per cent thought the Kyoto Protocol was a treaty ending WWII. And 14 per cent thought Kyoto was a Japanese banquet dish. I wonder if they serve water with that.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2007