AMES, Iowa -- As concerns about drought continue, the author of one of Amazon's Best Books of 2011 will speak at Iowa State University about our strange and complex relationship with water and explain why we've reached the end of the era of easy water.
Charles Fishman will present "The Big Thirst" at 8 p.m. Monday, Feb. 25, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. His talk is the keynote address for the University Symposium on Sustainability and part of the university's Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness and the Environmental Imagination, and the World Affairs Series. It is free and open to the public.
Fishman's book, "The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water," explores the politics, economics and culture of water, and our complex relationship with the precious resource. He maintains that we must begin to rethink how we approach, manage and use water in much the same way that we've begun to reimagine our relationship with food. He explores the many creative advances underway in water productivity — from harvesting rainwater to corporate innovations at companies such as IBM, General Electric and Royal Caribbean. Despite our big thirst for water, Fishman believes impressive breakthroughs will come through such creativity. But, he says, we first must change our water consciousness.
While reporting about water to write "The Big Thirst," Fishman stood at the bottom of a half-million-gallon sewage tank, sampled water directly from the springs in Italy and Maine, and carried water on his head for about two miles with Indian villagers.
Fishman is an award-winning investigative and magazine journalist who spent the last 20 years trying to get inside, understand and explain organizations from NASA to Tupperware. A former metro and national reporter for the Washington Post, Fishman has been a senior writer at Fast Company magazine since 1996. He is the author of "The Wal-Mart Effect," which was named a book of the year by The Economist. Fishman has won numerous awards, including three of UCLA’s Gerald Loeb Award, the most prestigious award in business journalism.
Fishman's presentation is co-sponsored by the colleges of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences; Humanities Iowa; the Iowa Water Center; the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment; Iowa State's Office of Sustainability; World Affairs: and the Committee on Lectures, which is funded by the Government of the Student Body. More information on ISU lectures is available online at http://www.lectures.iastate.edu, or by calling 515-294-9935.
