Scarcity and Abundance

Roberts also discusses a nearly waterless washing machine:

“The Xeros washing machine uses only one cup of water. This is in comparison to 27 gallons if your washer was manufactured after 1994 and loads from the front, or 40 gallons if your washer is a top-loader.”

“The Xeros machine, with its single cup of water and a pinch of detergent, works by circulating about 1,000 plastic chips to clean laundry. Simply throw in the clothes and a cartridge in the back of the machine dumps about 45 pounds of these plastic chips into the load. When the water is done dissolving the dirt, the chips absorb the water, eliminating the need for a rinse cycle. Then the chips disappear into a grill at the bottom of the machine, to be reused about 100 times before they need to be recycled or disposed of.”

For the socially conscious investor, Marquit writes about investing in Bio-refineries:

“It used to be that biotech referred mainly to big pharma, however energy giants now want in on what many feel is the upcoming biotech revolution. The next big thing could be ‘bio-refineries’ that produce alternative energy for mass consumption.

Right now, most of the excitement is focused around cellulosic ethanol, which takes conventional ethanol to the next level. Such a process would involve using living components, enzymes and microbes that have been bio-engineered, to speed up key processes in the manufacture of biofuels. However, the process is quite a ways from coming to fruition.

Like many other alternative energy investments, this cellulosic ethanol idea presents risk. Investing directly in bio-refineries may not be the best option for individual investors. However, finding an established company that is investing in alternative energy could be a good move. You get the benefit of an established company, while at the same time setting yourself up to profit if the company's alternative energy investments pay off.”

And in seeing the shortage of drinking water, not as a crisis, but as a trading opportunity, Eben Esterhuizen provides a different recommendation for the socially conscious investor:

“Yes folks, this looks like the easiest trade of the century. You've probably heard about the scarcity of clean water and the impending ‘water crisis,’ so I'll only give a brief description of the problem: Just like oil, we have a finite amount of clean water. The world's population is exploding and urbanization is on the rise, meaning that more water is needed for agriculture, sanitation and industrial processes. Paranoid environmentalists have been flooding the Internet with stories of a dark and not-too-distant future where global warming leads to desertification, where desertification leads to reduced clean water, forcing nations to go to war over water resources, and man's appetite for self-destruction leads to the collapse of civilization.

But don't worry. Speculators will save the day.

We have been wasting water because it's so darn cheap, and market-based incentives are urgently needed to use water more intelligently. That's where the speculators join the party - once their greed elevates the price of water, people won't waste water, and money can be raised to develop water infrastructure. To borrow a phrase from Gordon Gecko, ‘Greed is Good.’

For example, agriculture accounts for 70% of the world's water use, and many farmers enjoy subsidized water. As a result they don't have much incentive to use water more efficiently, and we all suffer. And cheap water undermines the need for investment in water assets, which means that water demand will increase faster than water supply. If you don't have a market mechanism setting the prices, you have irrational pricing and environmental damage. Proper pricing will inspire proper water use.

Substitutes for water will make more sense as the price of the commodity rises. We might develop chemicals to use in our toilets instead of flushing water, or we will invest in technology to cost-effectively desalinate seawater. Nasty speculators manipulated oil prices, forcing us to use energy more efficiently and invest in substitutes like solar and wind power. Who knows what substitutes we would invent once speculators start manipulating water prices?”

Scarcity is a looming threat to our overextended planet, and those most equipped to curb the dwindling of our natural resources would often rather deny the problem than propose or implement a solution. But there always will be solutions, and as long as sites like ThePanelist.com exist, we will provide an open forum for environmentally conscious idea exchange.