As the record-setting and dangerous drought in California has made its way into our national conversations, many of the related stories have highlighted the role that a certain kind of elitism has played in exacerbating (if not contributing to) the state’s water shortage. I’m thinking about the central presence of bottled water in such stories, including Starbucks’ recent announcement that it will be moving its bottled water facilities out of California; the move makes sense, but also highlights the fact that Starbucks has bottled water facilities. Which is to say, if such stories (along with those about Nestlé’s bottled water operations in California) are partly about the damaging footprint of multinational corporations, they’re also about the demand among certain American communities for bottled water that is costly in every sense.
Or take the recent stories about how much water it takes to produce a single almond, for another example. Given the almond milk craze, one driven not so much by lactose intolerance as by particular kinds of organic, alternative food preferences and lifestyles, it doesn’t seem entirely hyperbolic to say that such 21st century culinary fads have indeed contributed to California’s water shortage.
Bottled water and almond milk don’t represent identical cultural trends, to be sure. But both could be contextualized as two recent stages in the long history of an elitist American environmentalism, a high-minded search for a more pure and healthy relationship to our resources that has mostly been available only to those with the wealth and opportunity to pursue it. The proponents of such environmentalism may have not themselves expressed such elitist sentiments, but their emphases and goals have often assumed a certain privileged position nonetheless.
Yet while such an elitist trend has indeed comprised a certain portion of our environmental movement and its concerns, to focus on this strain would be to elide a far more central thread, one which provides its own vital contexts for California’s water shortage: the consistent presence of democratic, inclusive ideals at the heart of American environmentalism.
The 19th and early 20th century’s most vocal environmentalists consistently argued for and embodied this democratic perspective. It can be found at the heart of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854), as in the famous “sleepers” section of the book’s “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” chapter. In this complex extended metaphor, Thoreau links the “sleeper” ties over which the nation’s new railroads run to the workers whose labor and lives built those rail networks, and over whose symbolic, sleeping bodies the trains now run. It is precisely to “wake up his neighbors” to the presence of such sleepers in our society and community, as much as to wake ourselves up to the natural world all around us and the lessons it has to teach, that Thoreau advocates for the environmental project he hopes to model in his time at Walden Pond.
In his own life and writings, as well as his advocacy for the conversation of natural spaces throughout America, John Muir extended and deepened this democratic environmentalism. “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,” he argued in his book The Yosemite (1912), “places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” And in making the case for Our National Parks (1901) at the outset of their existence, Muir added that “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful … as fountains of life.”
Many Americans did not have the ability or opportunity to travel to such sites, however, and so a group of contemporaries of Muir’s, led by renowned landscape architect and conservationist Frederick Law Olmsted, initiated the City Beautiful movement. Building on the successes of urban spaces like New York’s Central Park and Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, the movement aimed to bring natural beauty to America’s cities, in public spaces that could be enjoyed free of charge by all citizens. Emblematic of the movement’s lasting successes are spaces as distinct as Boston’s Emerald Necklace, San Antonio’s Riverwalk, and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, each utilizing distinctive features of the city to link these urban spaces to the beauty and power of the natural environment.
It’d be easy, and not inaccurate, to link California’s water shortage to the attitudes that privilege pricey bottled water and almond milk over free, accessible, shared public resources. Yet if we focus instead on the pioneers whose efforts created American environmentalism, from the above figures to Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, and other 20th century greats, what we see is that the movement has consistently prioritized public access to our natural beauties and necessities. Now more than ever, such an attitude toward our resources, natural as well as social, is more vital than ever.
Ben Railton is an Associate Professor of English at Fitchburg State University and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
I find this “elite” bashing rather fatuous. In the first place, framing this issue as one of bottled water vs. preservation of and access to outstanding natural resources is ridiculous. The connection simply isn’t there.
I live near Yosemite, and I have always loved the place. I use bottled water when out and about, since it’s much more accessible than public drinking fountains. I don’t patronize Starbucks, since I hate coffee. But these are all separate issues.
I also consider the organic/natural food craze to be fatuous, and I avoid stores like Whole Foods - too expensive. But if someone prefers almond milk to bovine milk - fine, go for it. Surely almond trees require less water to support than cows, no?
The second point is: how much of California water consumption is “wasted” on bottled water and almond trees, compared to other forms of agriculture - especially cattle/dairy farming? The real problem is that “free” markets work very poorly in many cases like this. The “water rights” situation in California and much of the West means that “owners” of such rights pay far less than market value for the water. If it were priced properly by the market, wasteful uses would easily be controlled. Yeah, everybody would pay more for their vegetables, cotton shirts, and almond milk. But isn’t that better than quickly running out of water entirely in many places?
That was a whole lot of empty bullshit. Wasted a lot of my time reading through it twice, slowly, trying to get a salient point out of it.
Bottled water caused the California drought and something something about communal resources and green spaces that people should share.
What? The? Fuck?
This is a bit off the wall. There is bottled water and there is bottled water, after all. When our son was born in Paris, the doctor told us he could have Evian water without having to boil it. He never had a problem. Such water is called ‘mineral water’ for a reason: bottlers had to label the quantities of the minerals each bottle contained.
Back in the US, in the same period, something called “Black Mountain” water was found to be highly contaminated and full of germs.
I believe the Europeans used to have strict standards for bottled water, which is usually from spring and artesian wells. Yet when I was recently in the Rome airport, the only water available was Nestlé’s which was pretty much tap water with a label on it.
I live in S. CA and I drink .5 gal. of water more or less every day. The water that comes out of my tap tastes like someone’s well swum in pool. No wonder people drink soda or coffee or whatever. I drink bottled water and recycle the bottles/jugs. My preferred water is Sparkletts. I believe it’s bottled in LA by starting with LA tap water, running it through reverse osmosis machinery and adding back various minerals for taste. We should probably install our own reverse osmosis system here at the house, but which one and how would it taste? Considering that water is pretty much the only thing I drink, it has to taste good.
I’ve done a lot of traveling in the U.S. and Canada, and the water is different everywhere. In most places it tastes fine or close to fine. Some places are really good. Here it isn’t, so I don’t drink it if I don’t have to. I don’t think that’s elitism.
Drought is the absence of precipitation and waste is just waste. The two are marginally related but not even arguably the same.
California, SoCal that is, is mostly desert that has been pumping in water for many decades. This is nothing new. We had rationing as far back as I can remember and the arguments regarding the lush lawns and golf courses in Palm Springs and Palm Desert (the low desert) got very heated, haha. So, California will likely always be in shortage status because of its reliance upon importing so much water.
The deal is that it has been taken for granted for far too long and this drought has come on far too fast for the locals to absorb what they are truly dealing with. Climate change is not localized nor an eye for an eye sort of thing. The east coast for instance is practically drowning in excess via all forms of moisture and the southwest is drying out like an old prune. The happy places are moving with the change of the overall climate. If the climate dictates that you can no longer play golf on thick green grass in the Death Valley, then there is a choice to be made.
Do you want to bathe, clean clothes/dishes/other essentials and drink fresh water or do you want green grass and humidity induced deserts? The times of excess are over, not coming to an end but totally over. All resistance at this point will only exacerbate the problem.
Infrastructure becomes so much more important as the inefficiencies waste the precious resources that are available. Prioritizing usage and improving the whole chain of delivery and storage are huge efforts that must be made. Water supersedes just about all else and that reality is chapping many a hide right now, literally.