governments just don't get it … case study

In 2007 the Victorian Government decided to build a desalination plant to help 'future-proof' our state against water shortages.
It resolved - in advance! - to build this plant irrespective of community concerns and environmental impacts.
Over the past 12 months or so, Victorian consumers - residential and commercial - have reduced their 'freshwater' consumption by 22%; these savings will only increase.
This new-found thrift is largely negated as …
(1) incalculable volumes of water leak from tired and broken distribution infrastructure which is patched up on an ad hoc basis by a small number of underresourced maintenance crews;
(2) our government continues to advocate the sale of our groundwater to private enterprise (primarily for bottling for the retail market) at discounted rates, bloating their already hefty revenue streams.
Impressive, huh?

Reprocessing sea-water, especially using creaky old fossil-fuel technology, generates massive amounts of greenhouse gases.
Even if the project adopted 'clean' technology to capture and recycle / store this waste (which would add to the cost in dollar terms), it's a fact that vast quantities of fuel will be used up to satisfy the market 'demand' for fresh water.
Even from an 'accounting' perspective, desal water is many times more expensive to acquire, manage and deliver.
Perhaps someone could explain to me how this plan 'future-proofs' our state against greenhouse effects and energy shortages?

The desal plant is currently costed at three billion dollars.
Given governments' long-standing proclivity to under-budget and faff around with our money I'm guessing a bottom line of six billion when it's completed - but let's stick with the estimate.
I can go out and buy a good-quality 5000 litre rainwater tank for A$1300 - retail. (Well, I could if I had the money.)
If the government issued a tender a for million of these, they would probably cost the taxpayer around $300 each.
$300 x (say) 1 million households (in Victoria) = $3 billion. Same as the desal option.

Yes, I'm suggesting that our government 'gives' every household in Victoria a 5000L rainwater tank.
If a householder can afford to 'upsize' for more storage, they can pay the difference.
Likewise, the end-user pays for the associated infrastructure to connect to distribution points.
In both cases, the aforementioned economies of scale will apply.

I'm not claiming this initiative is perfect.
Manufacturing and distributing these tanks will cast a long 'greenhouse' shadow.*
5000 litres of storage will not make most households self-sufficient for water.
Yet the nett potential benefits are massive! …
High-quality drinking water, as opposed to a lifeless collection of reprocessed molecules.
Minimal infrastructure; minimal maintenance (all at absolutely no cost to the taxpayer).
A strong incentive for end-users to optimise every drop of the precious resource 'they' collected and now own and manage.

Will it happen? Not without some fresh thinking. Not without (excuse the cliché) a paradigm shift: a concession by our lawmakers that it's OK to hand back a measure of control to citizens.

As things stand, they just don't get it.

* I'm guessing that a blanket ban on retail bottled water would completely offset the carbon footprint of a million large plastic tanks - but that's another discussion.

governments just don't get it (part 1)

The tagline (sub-heading) above says "think globally, act locally … ACT GLOBALLY".
In my first post, I limited this theme to my business plan; however, it imbues pretty much every waking moment.
What does it mean?
Well, in a strictly scientific sense, everyone on the planet is connected.
Even if we weren't all distant relatives (which we are), and suspending - for the time being - my personal belief in equal 'rights', we share the same pool of resources!
Some of the air you breathe right now was expelled by someone on another continent at some time and partially or completely reprocessed before it eventually came in your window and you sucked it into your lungs.
Similarly, the food I eat and the liquid I drink contains the waste of someone, alive or dead, ten thousand miles away.
In the future, our waste products will help someone else survive.
Matter and energy are to some extent interchangeable, but the system we live in - our planet, our atmosphere - is pretty much closed.
We can't use up these resources. We can't increase them either. All we can do is convert them. Or leave them alone.

OK, so our pool is limited and we all live in the same closed system.
So what?
Quite simply, a minority of our 'family' is fucking things up for the rest and it's time we stopped them.

All cultures have developed measures to control or limit antisocial behaviour to some extent. I'm not claiming any of these is perfect (or even 'correct') but there's something in human nature that abhors cruelty, unnecessary violence, vandalism, thievery, dishonesty and so forth.
Laws, accountability, enforcement and punishment are tools invented by humans to 'protect the greater good'.

Now, I don't have much time for conspiracy theories, but it seems to me that these well-intended codes of behaviour rarely apply to protect the entire system we all share - only to tiny, disjointed bits of it.
Furthermore, looking at our planet from a distance, metaphorically speaking, there appears to be an inverse relationship between damaging behaviour and accountability.
Some individuals are allowed - even encouraged - to shit in our pool.
Some countries have assumed the right to occupy a disproportionate space in the pool.

I haven't mentioned 'governments' yet, because I wanted to provide some context.
In my experience, governments are comprised of followers - not leaders. (I'm happy to concede the exceptions - there aren't many).
They are good at supervising and controlling their constituents (usually via prohibition), they are exceptionally good at taking money from people and disbursing it (sometimes for the greater good - often not), they are 'adequate' at managing existing structures (as opposed to creating new ones) and they are truly excellent at acting swiftly to increase their own power.
But they're hopeless at innovation!
Any genuinely 'fresh' approach by a government - good or bad - is not driven by politicians but by lobbyists.

This is a good time for me to take a break, for the waters will get very muddy very quickly.
In the meantime, here's a handy hint. Do you suspect a government 'initiative'? Follow the money trail.