The incredible folly of the hose-pipe ban.

Recently, several counties in the UK have been hit with this ridiculous ban. Why do I call it so? Because you will feel the same once you discover how we are wasting most of the available water we have.

First, let’s clarify how much water on Earth we can actually use. Only 3% of all water on Earth is freshwater (the type of water that most sentient beings in our world need to survive on). The rest is saltwater which would ultimately kill us through dehydration if we relied on it.

Out of that 3%, two-thirds is locked in snow and ice, which are inevitably melting into the salty oceans. That means we can only truly use 1% of all water on Earth – ‘precious’ is an understatement.

Now, there are only 2 ways to obtain it – via surface water (rivers, lakes and artificial reservoirs), or accessing groundwater (aquifers). Both of these life-giving sources we have now severely disrupted.

Firstly, we have almost completely depleted every major groundwater aquifer on the planet. Trillions of gallons that took a millenia to accumulate, we have extracted and used up mostly within the last 50 years. The natural water cycle of a living planet irreversibly interrupted by human activity. So where is it going? Are we grabbing more than our species’ fair share?  

Well, around 5% of freshwater extracted has been employed for our basic needs of survival and health. However, more than 55% of this precious resource has been extracted by industries that profit from the breeding, raising and murder of trillions of enslaved mothers and babies, by selling their stolen milk, eggs and bodies to a human population that still believe that this normal, natural and necessary.

To give you an idea of how wasteful this injustice is, consider this:

– it takes 400 gallons of drinking water to produce a single egg (enough to fill a family-sized hot tub).

- It takes 1000 gallons of water to end up with 1 gallon of stolen milk from a grieving mother cow, and an average of 1300 gallons to produce a pound of cheese (coagulated bovine baby food)

- it takes 4000 gallons to produce 1 hamburger (which is more than what the average Congolese uses in a year)

- And 2000-57000 litres of water to ‘produce’ 1 kg of ‘seafood’

This mind-numbing wastefulness would still be acceptable to some, if it wasn’t for the fact that this ‘legalised’ genocide is also completely unnecessary for human health and survival.

Declared time and time again by the largest health organisations in the world, humans can thrive on plantbased nutrition (using 10-100 times less water compared to the animal body parts mentioned, which in fact are consistently implicated in increasing the risk of heart disease, diabetes and certain cancers).

Besides being the leading cause of freshwater depletion, this animal-enslaving industry (euphemistically referred to as the meat, dairy, egg and fishing industries) is also the leading cause of deforestation, ocean death and soil depletion. Easy to fathom when you realise that they are already using more than 50% of the ice-free land area of the planet for grazing families and growing their feed, prior to pushing them into the houses of slaughter.

This triple-assault by the killing machine, compounded with being one of the largest emitters of methane and nitrous oxide (120 – 300 times more global warming potential than CO2), makes the animal-agriculture industry the leading cause of the climate emergency we are experiencing today.

And one of the most obvious manifestations of this climate breakdown is the heatwaves and droughts ravaging our planet – disrupting rainfall patterns everywhere. And in the UK, this disruption has meant significantly less collection of rainwater in the reservoirs we rely on.

Now we know why there is a severe water shortage, affecting most of Europe. Hence, in order to save our remaining freshwater so that we actually survive, what do you think the government should be banning?

Option A = The unnecessary and genocidal meat, dairy, eggs and seafood industries (which continue to extract most of our freshwater)

Or

Option B = The use of a hose-pipe to keep our small green space alive?

Always remember, having a job in government, does not necessarily mean that the person possesses adequate intelligence, selflessness or rationality to make decisions for the good of all. They are usually always influenced by corporations, who profit from massacring the planet and her children.

Question everything.

Challenge every injustice and stupid decisions they make.

And act like your life and love depends on it. Because it does.

The most powerful action we can take today, is to stop funding and enabling the animal-enslaving industries - with our purchases, savings, investments and daily decisions.

And normalise this non-violence by empowering every one you know to do the same.

Here is how - Check out Healing the world - Challenges to Action and contact me to customise your daily actions to heal our dying world.