Laura seems a bit confused....
-"I see water from the perspective of an IT-intensive investment that would become a real engine of commerce."
-"Water here is an asset to farmers. They???re so pressed in their economic model that environmental concern is not [impactful] to them. If there???s something more incendiary than raising water prices, it???s raising food prices. They???re desperately trying to lower the cost of their input to make that food....You can force them to do it, but you need to think of their economic model.You could make a world of difference if agriculture handled things better. But I just don???t know how."
-"Look at Google. It???s really changed the world in a lot of good ways. But they never set out to do that. You look at water, and you know you have to do more."
Laura, I suggest you are using the wrong model for looking at water. The big difference between water and, say, the internet, is that it is an essential part of every piece of the planet's ecology. If a widget in the human economy becomes too pricey, it drives competition to develop a cheaper alternative so folks will buy their widget instead of the more expensive one, and this is the process that drives the human economy. But with the planet's water, you cannot come up with an alternative, i.e. you can't substitute going to the movies for it. And, rather than seeing the environmental piece as a small wedge in your pie of customers, you need to put it as the source of your capital. Generally speaking, a healthy environment is going to translate to more water that has been filtered of more impurities. Look at the investment New York made in buying up lots of forests in the outlying river watersheds and you'll see what I mean.
If you start from the premise of ecologically based economics, you'll develop an economic model that will actually be sustainable instead of one that, like mining, is based on boom and bust.
