From my viewpoint out here in the countryside, I see the two nearest cities, Lacey and Yelm, growing at a great rate. There are new housing developments everywhere as people seek lower housing prices than those in the big city (Seattle) and the local smaller cities seek to increase their tax revenues. But a common worry is that the available supplies of fresh water from aquifers cannot sustain the rapidly growing populations. The cities are thinking about imposing development moratoria and publicly wonder where the drinking water will come from in the future.

Yet, we live near a huge water source, Puget Sound. It is, of course, salt water, so no one here thinks about it as a source of drinking water. Desalinization is a word you never here around here. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is the general anti-technology bias of the environmentalists.

But a new research finding, by researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, could dramatically change the situation. The Technology Review report states:

A water desalination system using carbon nanotube-based membranes could significantly reduce the cost of purifying water from the ocean. The technology could potentially provide a solution to water shortages both in the United States, where populations are expected to soar in areas with few freshwater sources, and worldwide, where a lack of clean water is a major cause of disease.

The new membranes, developed by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), could reduce the cost of desalination by 75 percent, compared to reverse osmosis methods used today, the researchers say. The membranes, which sort molecules by size and with electrostatic forces, could also separate various gases, perhaps leading to economical ways to capture carbon dioxide emitted from power plants, to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.

A 75 percent cost reduction. Well, even if that’s only a wild guess, it seems that more technology rather than less is the ultimate answer to environmental problems. The problem is how to get the government/environmentalist gang, with its narrow focus on regulation as the solution to problems, off our backs and allow human ingenuity and creativity to work freely to solve our problems.