4 ms·
Why are you comparing the cost of the water to your house with the cost of beef at the source? You sure as hell aren't paying $1/lb for beef, and remember that
by Shog9 12y ago
Why are you comparing the cost of the water to your house with the cost of beef at the source? You sure as hell aren't paying $1/lb for beef, and remember that the water you're using in your shower has to be transported and treated before it can be re-used; it's not evaporating off your bathroom floor.
This seems like a really odd way to make a comparison, even if we accept that the value to you of a shower and a meal are roughly the same.
- SilasX 12y agoA few things: 1) I was conservatively assuming that the cost of the meat is due entirely to the cost of the water. In reality, it's even less. Taking the value of meat-in-the-city would make the estimate err even further in the wrong direction by attributing, to water, value that was actually added by transportation. 2) For city dwellers, I wasn't using the actual cost paid for the water, but the (approximate, much-higher) amount they would way if push came to shove, in order to estimate the relative utility destroyed by people cutting back on showers compared to farmers producing less water-intense output, and thus how misguided are the campaigns to get people to cut back what are already high-value uses of water.