Private thread: Can the humanities save cities and companies money?
Private thread: Can the humanities save cities and companies money?
And a wilderness poem
Earlier this week I was catching up on podcasts on a long bike ride and nearly choked on my Gatorade when The Daily came up in the queue. The episode was “Arizona’s Pipe Dream,” a report on the state’s recent ban on new construction that would rely on pumping groundwater. Groundwater is rapidly disappearing all over the U.S., but after years of heedless development, Arizona has reached the point at which the demand for groundwater — from existing homes and homes already approved for construction — will outpace the supply.
I thought I’d be hearing about more conservation measures, but instead the bulk of the episode was devoted to a proposal by IDE Technologies to build a desalination plant in Puerto Peñasco, along the Sea of Cortez, and then to run a pipeline 200+ miles north to deliver the treated water to Phoenix. Not only would this be obscenely expensive, the pipeline route would cut through a UNESCO site, El Pinacate and Gran Desierto de Altar Biosphere Reserve, the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, and likely the Tohono O’odham Nation Reservation. Not to mention all the private landowners that would get swept up by eminent domain.
All so developers in Phoenix could keep building homes.
The story reminded me of an icebreaker that I once used for my first-year seminar as a way to introduce the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability. After a quick review of the perennial water problems in places like L.A. and Phoenix, I’d divide the class into small groups to address this prompt.
You just won a $50 million grant to address the water shortage in the American Southwest. Where do you start? What initiatives might you propose? How do you spend your money to influence the most change?
My class usually included some aspiring engineers, and they unsurprisingly proposed desalination as a solution. And they were right: increasing supply is one way to solve the problem. But even a high school graduate can see the prohibitive cost associated with constructing a desalination plant large enough to address the problem. $50 million would be laughably insufficient. Then what do you do about maintenance? And who can afford to pay the premium for that treated water?
Some students proposed reducing demand through regulation, lobbying, and public education. Their thinking was that if people knew more about their impact, they might voluntarily limit their use. Or there could be carrots and sticks: economic incentives for conservation and penalties for overuse. $50 million could go pretty far in pursuit of these goals.
My engineers also suggested that $50 million could be invested in research: for more efficient means of desalination or water capture, for more drought-resistant plants, for gray water systems to recycle existing water. And we all agreed: a $50 million grant could make a real impact there, too.
The point was to illustrate how sustainability problems require many disciplinary approaches rather than a single narrow focus. I knew that none of the students would propose religion as a solution, so I’d usually ask why not. Religion is often the primary way that human societies feel connected to place. Creation stories and ceremonies are tied to places. Even the Judeo-Christian tradition, which sometimes takes a dim view of the earth as tainted by original sin, also tells many stories about moderation and the dangers of greed. The major cities throughout the Southwest are full of churches. There might be no more powerful mobilizing force than religion. How far might $50 million go toward coordinating an ecumenical conservation effort across the arid West?
I’d usually make one other point to wrap up discussion: that the water problems in the Southwest are not fundamentally about science or supply and demand. They are aesthetic problems. They stem from an imported European aesthetic that struggles to see the brown landscape as beautiful. The European bias is to make the desert bloom. There is no earthly reason why a golf course like Troon North should exist in a place like Phoenix. The fact that supply must meet this demand is the height of folly.
Could $50 million transform such a deeply rooted aesthetic prejudice? Could that money actually help people see the native desert as beautiful and manufactured landscapes like golf courses as obscene? I’m not proposing that art, music, and literature could singlehandedly correct the problem, but you’d only need a fraction of $50 million to fund an impressive campaign of public murals, television ads, music, and arts education to nudge the popular imagination away from the European ideal.
The fact that this would all be seen as indoctrination would assuredly complicate things. But I don’t think working people in Phoenix, even MAGA types, would be able to afford the price of pipeline water. The hubris of that project and the obvious benefit to the wealthiest Arizonans defies common sense. And eminent domain does not mesh very well with Don’t Tread on Me. There is a story to tell here that is not left-wing propaganda about loving the desert. Make Arizona look like Arizona again. Or something like that.
The fact that The Daily devoted 40 minutes to “Arizona’s Pipe Dream” with only cursory attention to the cultural and biological impact of a pipeline from Sonora to Phoenix mirrors E. Gordon Gee’s notion that creative writing and Modern Languages are non-essential to West Virginia University. But it’s not at all a stretch to suggest that aesthetics are relevant to Arizona’s water problem. The definition of what is beautiful in Arizona is the core of the crisis. How many billions of dollars would it save to change that definition and the demand that springs from it?
Which leads me to today’s private thread:
Do you agree that the humanities might play a meaningful role in addressing the water shortage in the American Southwest, or was I gaslighting my students for all those years?
If you agree with my premise, what other examples might illustrate the potential for humanities expertise to solve or assuage economic problems? Is it true that the humanities (art, religion, philosophy, history, languages, literature, theatre, film) might help cities and companies save money in other ways?
To participate in today’s discussion and read a wilderness poem related to the Arizona story, please consider upgrading your subscription. Big thanks, as always, to everyone who already has.