The image above is the end title of Big Short (2015), a film about the U.S housing market collapse in 2008. Michael Burry (played by Christian Bale in the film) successfully predicted the housing bubble and the subsequent stock market crash that resulted in a worldwide economic recession.
Micheal Burry predicted the crisis by doing one thing and only one thing better than anyone else - reading numbers. He looked at hundreds of pages of numbers and saw a housing bubble waiting to burst.
“The small investing he still does is all focused on one commodity: water“
The man who bet against the seemingly bulletproof U.S housing market now bets on water. Why?
An analysis of 12 diverse U.S cities shows the combined price of water and sewage increased by an average of 80 percent between 2010 and 2018
Source: Roger Colton; Circle of Blue; Ohio Environmental Protection Agency; US Census data; American Water Works Association.
Looks like Michel Burry made a good bet; only this time he got the prediction right a decade before the surge in water prices.
Access to affordable safe water is not only a U.S problem. Some stats about water that shows how far we need to go to make clean water accessible to all people.
2.1 billion (29% of the world) do not have access to safe drinking water.
Unsafe water is responsible for 1.2 million deaths each year.
6% of deaths in low-income countries are the result of unsafe water sources.
The absolute number of people without access has fallen across all regions over these 25 years except Sub-Saharan Africa. The number of people in Sub-Saharan Africa without access to an improved water source has increased from 271 million to 326 million in 2015.
The improvement made in making safe drinking water accessible to the masses is now threatened by the looming climate crisis. It is estimated that By 2040, almost 1 in 4 children will live in areas of extremely high water stress.
There is a high probability of an increase in areas of extremely limited water resources due to climate change – leading to increased competition for water, even conflict.
Keeping all this in mind, we could consider some of the following action items to ensure access to safe water for everyone.
Voting for pro-conservation policies
Holding on to a property you own that has natural water resource
Sensible use of water
Shifting x% of your water consumption to harvested rainwater