Freshwater Jaws
I used to work with Waves For Water, a non-profit with the sole objective of getting clean drinking water to everyone that needs it. The stat we often used to share to communicate the severity of the world water crisis was that that there were 1 in 6 people that lacked access to clean drinking water. There was a lot of work to do.
Lately, I've been reading The Uninhabitable Earth, a book that outlines the repercussions of our planet’s warming, including a further diminishing of freshwater around the world. It quotes scientist Peter Gleick, who says, “If climate change is a shark, the water resources are the teeth.”
What feels like a layer of armor in a sea of big grey fish, however, are companies like Zero Mass Water, which “uses the power of the sun to extract an endless volume of clean, reliable drinking water from the air.” Basically, it’s a sophisticated dehumidifier that sucks water out of even the driest of climates and puts it into your cup to drink. (This is the podcast where I first learned about it.)
Will tech advancements like these stop climate change? Of course not. Should we continue shifting our habits to combat the warming earth? Absolutely. But we need victories like this to keep us hopeful in a discouraging world. To get up every day and do our best. To keep swimming, even when we know there are sharks.