Benjamin Franklin Quotes
When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.
Benjamin Franklin, 1706-1790, Member of the Continental Congress & the Constitutional Convention, Governor of Pennsylvania, President of the Pennsylvania Assembly, U.S. Minister to France, Postmaster General of the American Colonies, Quoted on Do One Thing, http://www.doonething.org/quotes/water-quotes.htm
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The major reason for not yet harvesting waste is the labor, caital, and energy costs of recycling relative to the value of the resource is too high. Technology improvements and greater shortages continuously change the equation in favor of harvesting more and more resources.
Even before the drought the California (and other Western States’) water distribution system has been unfair, inefficient, wasteful, and irrational. There is only so much to go around and the demand it greater. Farmers sometimes pay only 1 percent of the cost the state incurs for the water they us. And far less than poor city or suburban dwellers. Few California farmers use the efficient drip irrigation system developed in Israel. Some farmers get most of the water they want while others get nothing. The taxpayers in the rest of the country pay for the California cheap water while they themselves pay many times the cost of the water. Ironically, Conservatives who almost always want market based solutions oppose it in the case of water as then the large corporate farms would not have the huge water subsidy that they have now.
Many people when they first read this quote assume that it came from some counter-culture radical. It did, but he was a President of the United States.
This was a common refrain by 2005, but this was written 80 years before that. Few had this prescient vision.
Most environmentalists limit the vision of their solutions to using less of our precious natural resources which is very important but just as important and perhaps more so in the long run is increasing the supply of these resources. Food is an example. The major reason that there is no serious food shortage world-wide is that we have increased the productivity of agriculture requiring less labor, less water, less fertilizer, less land, and less dependency on weather. Distribution has also improved, but there is no very good way of distributing something for which there is a great shortage.
Commenting on a drought that threatened the New York State's water supply:
There are many American communities where this is the case. However there are others where there is not enough water (especially in drought conditions) for the large agricultural use and a growing population. In Denver, they have enough water, but not a sufficient infrastructure to distribute the water to all.
Benjamin Franklin FRS FRSA FRSE was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A polymath, he was a leading writer, printer, political philosopher, politician, Freemason, postmaster, scientist, inventor, humorist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As an inventor, he is known for the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove, among other inventions. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania.
