Soon enough, Presidential candidates will be talking about the need to break our dependence on foreign water. This is not a joke.
Americans spent more money last year on bottled water than on ipods or movie tickets: $15 Billion. A journey into the economics--and psychology--of an unlikely business boom. And what it says about our culture of indulgence.
If you do ask, if you trace both the water and the business back to where they came from, you find a story more complicated, more bemusing, and ultimately more sobering than the bottles we tote everywhere suggest.
If you bought and drank a bottle of Evian, you could refill that bottle once a day for 10 years, 5 months, and 21 days with San Francisco tap water before that water would cost $1.35.
Americans went through about 50 billion plastic water bottles last year, 167 for each person.
Marika is making a bowl of grog, a lightly narcotic beverage that is an anchor of traditional Fiji society.
After visiting 45 aboriginal settlements over the past ten months, the inquiry found violence and child sexual abuse rife in every one.
The report shocked Australia. Its respected authors, Rex Wild, a prominent barrister, and Pat Anderson, an aboriginal health-worker, blamed alcohol, drug abuse, pornography, unemployment and a breakdown of aboriginal culture and identity for the horrors they uncovered. Ms Anderson said alcohol was “totally destroying” families and communities. “Something needs to be done to curb this river of grog.”
Let's hope we get aboriginal punks (of the old school) and not aboriginal jihadists. Maybe they'll go straight edge.
