Water is something most of us take for granted. We let the spigot run without giving it a thought.  With regard to the environment, we take many things for granted or perhaps many of us choose to remain ignorant.

It is difficult to listen to the news without some mention of global warming or climate change as it is now often referred to. Even watching the Super Bowl we were treated to a clever commercial involving the environmental police. Perhaps, we have become so inundated with discussions of the environment we turn a collective deaf ear.

Steven Solomon has just published his most recent book, Water, The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization. If you are at all a student of history you will find this a fascinating read simply for its entertainment value. There is so much more to it than entertainment, however.

Even for those of us who have picked up the environmental mantle and made such items as the diminishing water supply something to focus on and rail about, this book offers so much insight into the most elemental force that has determined the path of civilization.

“It is earth’s most potent agent of change,” writes Solomon. “Water in Ancient History,” Water and the Ascendancy of the Wet,” “Water and the Making of the Modern Industrial Society,” are beginning chapters in a study of water and its impact that, if nothing else, will make your jaw drop.

There is a bumper sticker many of you have probably seen – Extinction is forever. It addresses a very real problem that is directly related to ecosystems and their destruction.

Global warming skeptics and proponents of the use of fossil fuels – themselves fossils – often discuss the cost to switch to renewable energy sources. Yes it will cost to switch and their will be job losses, although there should also be job creation, but these proponents never seem to consider the economic factors having to do with the destruction of the planet.

If the world we live in is a gift from the almighty and the resources provided are limited, the destruction of any living specie is a tragedy of monumental proportion. Not only does each individual specie support the ecosystem it is a part of, losing the hereditary germ deprives future generations of the necessary antidote to who knows what disease. Morally speaking this can not be right, but morality aside, this is just plain foolhardy.

It costs to build solar paneling or wind turbines just as it costs to pump oil, dig coal and harvest a rain forest, but over harvesting a rain forest will cause it to burn down whereas a healthy rain forest will not burn down. As one of nature’s pharmacies is destroyed this becomes catastrophic from a purely economic point of view.