"Liquid Assets," CNBC Programme

Last evening CNBC broadcast "Liquid Assets - The Big Business of Water - 'The host explores the coming water crisis as fresh water becomes harder to find.'" As is often the case with television specials, it tried to cover too much territory in just an hour, but most of its contents were reasonably presented. It could have been edited to omit the the section on bottled water and the repellant comic Black whose obnoxious presence merely ate up time that could have been better devoted to other issues. Bottled water is significant as a matter for concern, but it really deserves a separate discussion, for it is not directly related to most of the other issues the programme raised when less than an hour is available.

That said, the documentary pointed to some of the key issues in the current water situation, including population growth, improvement in living standards and climate change leading to a growing demand for water, competing demands for scarce supplies in arid areas, and questions about how the distribution of increasingly scarce water supplies should be decided. In the coming weeks we shall look at most of those issues and in rather greater detail than a one hour television show (actually only about 45 minutes when advertising is removed) can offer. If you missed "Liquid Assets" and CNBC or some related television channel broadcasts it again, I strongly recommend devoting an hour to viewing it.