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Water conservation is a pretty easy and obvious thing to do, right? I mean, don’t turn on the water sprinklers for your yard, don’t run the faucet when brushing your teeth, always do full loads of laundry. These are all handy dandy methods of conserving water, but the reality is that personal use of water is about 8% of all the water consumed in the world. That’s right, 8%. I knew that the number was pretty low, but when it comes to saving water, all we can do is our own individual efforts regarding how we use water directly, right? WRONG!

Everything we consume has a water footprint. Your car, cell phone, clothing, and food. When we think of water conservation, how many of us really consider this when we make our purchasing decisions? I know the reason why I didn’t really think of it was that it only comes up during really extreme and offensive situation. I have been boycotting almonds for a while now, because I think the California farmer who decided he/she was going to grow almonds is kinda a selfish and irresponsible douchecanoe. Plus they are almost all Republicans, obviously, because they only care about themselves and noone else. Water consumption is a perfectly good example of that. California a couple years ago was going through a devastating drought and these deranged knuckleheads had the audacity to insists that their way of life was more important than conserving water. For stoopid almonds. Don’t get me wrong, I like the almonds. They don’t give me joy, but they don’t cause me to become apoplectic with rage. It’s the morons who want to grow them in the friggin’ desert that just chafes my knee pits.

But other than that, it had to be really bad and during severe water shortages that I would pay any attention to water footprints. As big of a news junkie as I am, I am not certain why I didn’t know more about just what it takes to produce the things we take for granted. I didn’t really research what else was water intensive, partly out of fear. What if my favourite stuff was just basically a sponge for water? Would I have to give it up if I wanted to be a decent human being? For example, during my research for this post, I just discovered that it takes 142 gallons to produce a pound of peaches. Yikes. Rice? 403 gallons for a pound of rice! I’m Asian. I can eat a pound of rice as an appetizer. This is not good news at all.

Even if I had known it, I think my lens of belief would have been clouded by a bias of fait accompli that the stuff has already been grown and harvested, and if I don’t eat it, then it goes to waste and then look at all the water we really wasted! I owed it to society to eat all those peaches! And that belief was about as investigated as a white cop shooting a person of colour in this country, which means hardly at all.

What is 2500-5000 gallons? That is the amount of water to create 1 lb. of beef. I kinda love beef. I wish I didn’t, because I hate how cows turn into filet mignon and pot roasts. But man oh man do cows taste delicious. And there is where I learned something new. I didn’t realize just how much damn water it took for me to eat at Fuddrucker’s. Ignorance really is bliss, because now I have to go look at what the water footprint is for ALL my consumables and then some hard choices have to be made. But I already know that mashed up cow is no longer going to be a common dining experience for me in the future.  I eat about 3 lbs of beef a week, and I don’t get the crappy 2,500 gallons of water beef. Nope, I’m getting the black angus, Wagyu style, 5000 gallons of water beef. That works out to 7,800,000 gallons of water A YEAR that I am representing just on my beef consumption. That’s insane. And gluttonous. I don’t think it will be that much of sacrifice to get surf and surf instead of surf and turf. Besides, lobsters are in salt water, so I’m actually helping save the planet by dipping their useless carcasses in melted butter. Ah dammit, it takes 2044 gallons of water to make a pound of butter. That’s it. I’m eating twigs and my own fingernails. I need to lose a good 40 lbs anyway.

https://www.treehugger.com/green-food/from-lettuce-to-beef-whats-the-water-footprint-of-your-food.html

Growing up in Pennsylvania and having both parents be Penn State Alumni, PSU has had a very strong presence in my life. My first attempt at college was a disastrous experience in a battle of wills between me, the student, and Kutztown University. The largest issue was a fundamental disagreement over attendance policies. I felt that I shouldn’t have to go to class, and KU felt otherwise. I am sure you can guess who won that battle and I ended up going to NYC and beginning my career in financial services at the ripe old age of 18.

I recently found myself not hired for a job that I would have been very good at because I didn’t have a degree. The irony is that I am a recovering graduate professor. I taught international finance in Spain for almost 4 years. They seemed to be more than happy with my credentials as a Senior Vice President of the nation’s largest equity research firm at 26. So it is a little humbling that I am back in school pursuing my undergraduate degree given what I have done throughout my life. Nonetheless, the piece of paper is important, so here I am. I chose Penn State because it was highly ranked for online schools and I really wanted to be a legitimate Penn State fan instead of a poser. Plus my dad graduated summa cum laude in three years and I want to beat him by graduating in two with the same honorific. I’m a wee bit competitive : )

I currently work in Oil & Gas. It’s odd that a left-wing liberal like myself would be in such an industry. I can guarantee you that there aren’t many of us present. Choosing this major allows me to have a little more skin in the game and represent a better approach to doing business. I have learned so much regarding how we get out energy and the incredibly complex way we produce so much of the items in our daily lives that we simply take for granted. Petroleum-based products are literally all around us.

My hope is that I can combine my familiarity with current ways of producing energy with the education I will receive at Penn State to become a key player in directing a feasible and responsible shift towards alternative and renewable sources of energy.

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