The Atlantic put together a predictably smart piece (“Can the Planet Be Saved?“) which asks scientists and thinkers what they feel most despairing and most hopeful about at year’s end. The first entry, by University of Arizona Law and Public Policy Professor Robert Glennon, speaks to a challenge made stark by the California droughts that worsened in 2015: water security. Our concept of H₂O is baffling, as it’s priced cheap (and often wasted frivolously) yet along with oxygen the dearest thing. An excerpt:

Reason for despair: I despair that we don’t consider water to be scarce or valuable. A century of lax water laws and regulations has spoiled most Americans. We turn on the tap and out comes as much water as we want for less than we pay for cable television or cellphone service. When most Americans think of water, they think of it as similar to air—as infinite and inexhaustible. In reality, it’s both finite and exhaustible.

Because we don’t respect water as remarkable, we use needless quantities for frivolous purposes, such as growing grass in the desert. And because we don’t pay the real cost of water (only the cost of the infrastructure to provide it), we remove the incentive to conserve. Perhaps most important, our innovation economy has encouraged engineers and inventors to create water-saving technologies that extend our supply; but the price of water is so low that few of them have viable business plans.•