Played by Christian Bale in the movie adaptation of Michael Lewis’s The Big Short (2015), Michael Burry is famous for having called time on the subprime lending market years before anybody else – profiting hugely in the process. Yet, the film’s sting in the tail comes just before the credits, as a quote flicks up on the screen noting that nowadays:
This may seem surprising. But the Western world is slowly drinking itself dry. Think of a cup of coffee. A delicious cup of Joe requires 140 litres of water to travel from bush to table. That’s nothing compared to beef though, which requires 15,415 litres per kg[1], about the same as a single T-bone steak. Or if you flip it around, it takes roughly the water from two Olympic swimming pools to produce the meat from just one (largish) cow. All this consumption, from our morning coffees and steak dinners to the showers we have, means that the average American alone uses 575 litres of water a day.
For a planet that’s 71% covered in water, the gap between clean, accessible freshwater (less than 1%) and all the other types, however, is stark. Agriculture and food take up 69% of the world’s water resources. And this is set to only grow, both as a response to population growth, as the world hits 9.7 billion in 2050[2], and the increased wealth of that population, whose rise out of poverty leads to a demand for more ‘luxury’ foods, such as meat.
This continually increasing need will draw on aquifers that have been in decline since 2003, especially in areas of the world where water scarcity is already an issue. NASA has discovered that 21 of 37 of the world’s aquifers are currently being depleted[3]. Other freshwater sources, although not being drained are rapidly becoming polluted beyond repair. The Chinese government, for instance, admits that roughly 80% of the country’s surface groundwater is not fit for drinking, 90% of groundwater in urban areas is contaminated, and that 40% of its rivers are too polluted to use for either agricultural or industrial use. Jacques Cousteau long ago pointed out that, “water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”
https://www.killik.com/the-edit/why-michael-burry-is-investing-in-water/
