Analysis 4: The Big Thirst

Cassie Bence

Mr. Zarwell

Global Scholars Seminar

February 12, 2012

Where Did All the Water Go?

            In his book, “The Big Thirst,” Charles Fishman focuses one chapter on ‘Who Stopped the Rain’ or more accurate, who is taking all the water and using it. He observes a man Laurie Arthur, who lives in Australia, whom owns a rice farm. He argues that Arthur the rice farmer is both a, “water baron and a water prisoner” (185). When Arthur gets enough water, which is usually six thousand mega liters a year, he can grow enough rice to feed his whole town of 100,000 people. Fishman finds that there is a problem with him using that much water. The large outtake of six thousand mega liters from the Toowoomba reservoir creates a scarcity of water for the others in town. Fishman explains how the reservoir when found was very full but now it is depleting at a fast rate as the farmers consume the majority of the water for irrigation.

            Fishman further explains with sympathetic language that it is not Arthur’s fault per say that there is a water scarcity, he is not the only one using it, everyone together is overindulging. He tries to not point a finger when expanding on the fact that maybe Arthur shouldn’t be farming rice that needs lots of water in an arid region. He then asks if we can blame Laurie Arthur for a lot of water depletion when he has the largest rice production in the world and feeds all of us. Fishman reveals that it is not just Laurie Arthur who will be running out of water from consumption. Other farmers down he irrigation system are loosing water, and dams on which the Murray River depends on are running low. Fishman finds that it is just hard to not see the “water gluttony of the farms upstream,” in this chaos (189).

 Fishman argues that humans are basing their whole lifestyle around, “an assumption of water abundance” (191). He finds that rice farmers in total consume1.7 trillion liters of water a year. Still it’s not just the farmers who see water as an ever-giving source. Metropolitan Melbourne requires 400 giga-liters a year for its residents. He points out, “Every drop of water in the river is owned by someone,” (195) we cannot put blame on one person. Instead, he is blaming humans over all for how we are advancing on the Earth using as much of everything that we can get our hands on.

Fishman is right that humans as a whole are overindulging. The economic expectations of humans, farmers in this case, force them to overuse water in order to produce the largest yield to feed the world. Getting rid of large farms that ‘overindulge’ in water will not fix the water problem. All humans need to start making sacrifices to replenish the water supply so there is still water left or the others on the bottom of the economic chain.  

Works Cited

Fishman, Charles. The Big Thirst. New York: Free Press, 2011. Print.