Is Water The New Oil?

Read an interesting post today by Kim Miller on the Seeking Alpha website talking about the value of water. Traveling back and forth from Africa for several years truly drove home the value of this precious commodity and Miller makes the point quite clear when he surmises that it might be the next thing traded on an exchange:

"You can’t – at least not yet – buy water on any exchange in the world. As water supplies get tighter across the world, this could change. Water is the new oil – a precious commodity, increasingly harder to find, manage and distribute; and that supply is often subject to the whims of Mother Nature. Control of available water is subject to the whims of government. In some parts of the country, the availability of water is restricting the building of housing."

While Africans know all too well the value of water, Americans (at least North Americans) often take it for granted. Global warming has us focused on fossil fuels, but water will likely turn out to be worth much more "per barrel." I remember a couple years ago driving back to NY from DC in October during a freak heat wave and making an off-hand comment to a woman at a gas station that someday we might really have a severe drought, her response was "that's not a big deal for me 'cuz I don't wash my car and I drink soda." Clearly we need to do a better job educating people on the life sustaining value of water.