Who cares what oil costs, have you bought water?

On the news this weekend everyone seemed pretty upset that oil had gone over $100 per barrel.  Some of the Sunday morning pundits were saying oil could be $200 by summer and to prepare for $4/gal gas.  This significant price increase seems so ominous.  Add to that all the political uncertainties playing out across the Middle East right now and it makes for a seeming obvious consequence if oil is something you use.   Like me, and likely you. 

Now the price of oil/gas/energy is upsetting.. UNTIL you calculate what Americans are now willing to pay for water.  That’s right, gas is cheap when you buy water by the pint/liter at the same convenience store.  And  we live in a society on a planet that is 80% water.  When the cost of water is more than oil (or certainly when it is 5X) we need to solve the problem or at least be aware of why we cannot solve it.  My little goal is just to make folks aware of it.

At the local convenience store at the end of my street, water is sold in 1 pint containers (.5 of a liter).  According to my grade school math, there are 8 pints in a gallon.  Thus, if water is $1 a pint, it would cost $8 a gallon.  And if there are 55 gallons in a barrel, then a barrel of water costs almost 4 times as much as a barrel of oil.  What, 4 times?  That seems absurd when water comes out of the faucet for free (sort of, but paid for already for sure). 

We as a society need to make more much informed choices if we want to control our destiny.  Stop paying for plasticized water would be a good first step.

God bless us all and Citizen Bill and his family.

And check out the original digital art. 

Post Number One - Rebirth.. Again!

Never shoot the messenger!

I started this blog as a forum to encourage discussion, debate and hopefully change.  It also provides for me a personal outlet to express and refine my many thoughts in all these areas without directly burdening my friends and co-workers.  All ideas and commentary are mine alone although everyone I know has impact.  However, while the discussion is all mine much of the “clip art” and “photos” were pilfered from the web since I have no skills in those areas.  I will  be happy to remove or replace any of these upon request and I apologize in advance for the liberty of my public access and use.   To the extent I may have “used” something I have made it a link to the original so please review that related material as well.  I am hardly the only guy with a blog, nor even close to being the blogster who is the most informed or prolific.

There once was an earlier CitizenBill blog that I did not keep up with.  Some of the ideas that were originally posted there will someday be repeated here (rest assured, stupid did not solve itself in my absence).  This blogging about the stupid could be more than a full time job so hopefully I can keep up with it this time.  If you have comments, encouragement, bitterness or venom, please be sure to let me know as I accept all challenges and will entertain all reasonable discussion and argument.  I hope that in some small way I can make the world a better place.  So says Citizen Bill.