While energy is the vanguard of today's sustainability discussions, savvy sustainability advocates recognize that water will soon equal (or even eclipse) energy as the leading and most urgent environmental issue.

To learn more about global water risk and security, Green Builder Media conducted an interview with Charles Fishman, award-winning reporter and author of The Wal-Mart Effect and recently released The Big Thirst: The Secret Life & Turbulent Future of Water, a book which explores our relationship with water.

Fishman's message was simple and clear: We are at a vital crossroads between water risk and water innovation.

"We've been living in a 100-year-long golden age of water in the developed world," says Fishman, "a century in which water has been safe, unlimited, and essentially free." He asserts that the age of water ignorance is over, and that the greatest challenge and opportunity of our modern era is to redevelop our approach to water consumption, conservation, and quality.

Fishman cites population growth, economic development, and climate change as the most important drivers that will irreparably change our relationship with water. As we add 2 billion thirsty people to our population over the next 40 years who aspire to achieve a Western quality of life, water demand will increase dramatically for everything from food production to daily household use to electricity generation (U.S. electric power plants are responsible for 49% of our total national water use each day).

As the climate changes, locations in which we have constructed our cities and infrastructure—areas that once optimized historical precipitation and water flow patterns—will experience greater extremes of drought and flooding.

Fortunately, after his extensive investigation into the use of our precious water resource, Fishman is confident that we'll have plenty of drinking water in the future, but, he says that "it won't be unlimited, won't water our lawns with it, and it won't be free."

While 70% of water used worldwide is allocated to farming and agriculture, business has an imperative role to play in the development of a comprehensive strategy for effective water stewardship. IBM is an excellent example of a company that is already leveraging "water productivity" as a competitive advantage, decreasing water usage 30% while increasing chip production by 30% over the past ten years (for every $1 in water savings that the company has realized, it has saved an additional $4 in energy, chemical, and filtration costs.)

"Especially at this moment, when water issues aren't well understood or appreciated, the companies that move quickly to include water as a strategic element in their thinking will receive great advantage," says Fishman.

The companies that are able to transform water productivity problems—including developing a real understanding about how they access water, the quality of that water, and the risks involved with potential water scarcity—into forward-thinking water profitability solutions, will be the ones who thrive.

Fortunately, Fishman asserts that "we don't need new technology, we don't need huge investments in capital, we often don't even need more money or more water. Most water problems can be fixed with the resources, and the water, we have on hand."

Want to learn more about water and other important sustainability issues? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news.

Have ideas about how we can sustainably revitalize our economy? Write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.

Imagine for a moment that you're on a cruise ship. You've just learned that the ship is sinking, and you know how to make lifeboats. There are three types of passengers on board. The first group is in denial—they don't believe the hype and have gone back to the bar to enjoy their evening. The second group has become paralyzed with fear—they're sitting on deck chairs staring out at the ocean like deer in headlights. The third group has come to you for instructions on how to make lifeboats. Which group are you going to focus your attention on?

Earlier this week, it was reported that housing starts hit their lowest level since World War II. That news, compounded by rampant natural disasters, extreme weather, and rapid ecological decline, makes for a rather bleak economic outlook.

Like with our cruise ship analogy, we have a choice about how to respond. We could go back to business as usual and wait for things to return to "normal." We could easily allow ourselves to become stunned into apathy or even surrender. Or, we can muster the strength, courage, and hope to develop entrepreneurial solutions that will alter the course of our future.

Economic growth requires jobs, no doubt. The construction of one home results in the equivalent of three jobs for an entire year. The lack of construction of new homes has halted our economic growth, and the trickledown effect has led to a dramatic reduction in the homebuilding industry workforce (from 1 million workers in 2006 to 500,000 in 2010).

But the solution is not to sit on our hands, waiting for someone else, or the government, to bail us out. Opportunities abound, we just need to ferret them out.

Can we regain financial stability, as well as desperately needed jobs, if we focus our attention on revitalizing urban neighborhoods, transforming suburbs into self-sufficient communities, and converting areas like the rust belt into high tech, clean energy corridors?

It seems that we have lost control of the world we have created. We can't solve our deeply entrenched problems simply with incremental substitution—the change we need will require exponential overhaul.

In a country where our financial growth model is predicated on endless natural resources, downsizing and scaling back our daily activities may not feel like forward progress, but the road to recovery is paved with innovative solutions for localizing economies, powering down our lifestyles, reducing our commutes, and cultivating as much land as possible for organic farming.

Did the relative comfort of the 1990s and early 2000s take away our edge? Have we become too afraid of the unknown to take action? Or do we still have the political will and personal power to reinvent our future? It seems to me that a future that we consciously create with the full engagement of our society will be better than the one that we're currently facing, which leads to nowhere but collapse.

Want to learn more about important sustainability issues? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news.

Have ideas about how we can sustainably revitalize our economy? Write to me at sara@greenbuildermag.com or follow me on Twitter @SaraGBM.

The daily news has become disturbingly reminiscent of a cliché (and poorly written) apocalyptic horror novel. Yesterday alone brought reports of more revolt in the Middle East, massive E-Coli outbreaks from food contamination in Europe, and the lowest housing prices in the U.S. in a decade.

It's not actually the social upheaval or political unrest that alarms me the most (even Thomas Jefferson said that we need a revolution every generation in order to preserve the vitality of our liberty and freedom). Rather, it's the relentless and seemingly endless series of deadly natural disasters that we have absolutely no control over nor any way of forecasting their timing, location, or intensity.

While it's easier to accept the probability of major weather events in places with names like Tornado Alley, the super-cell rotating thunderstorm that caused a pathway of destruction in Springfield, MA earlier this week was shocking at best and terrifying at worst.

Combine these intensifying natural disasters with 9% unemployment, 2.25 million home foreclosures, soaring food and gas prices, and a possible downgrade to the U.S.'s credit rating, and it's nearly impossible to envision any kind of near-term national economic recovery, regardless of who is in the White House.

Our economic problems are deep and structural. But we're in the greatest age of human development, and Americans are nothing if not entrepreneurial, time and time again displaying the resilience, courage, and ingenuity to deal with troubling times and grueling situations.

Nevertheless, as the saying goes, Mother Nature always bats last, and she always bats 1,000. She doesn't care that, in order to fix our national economy, we must retain our capital within our borders by increasing domestic energy production and reducing our trade deficit with China. She has no mind for economics or politics. Her concerns, namely physics, biology, and chemistry, are more elemental.

After this exhausting barrage of extreme weather events, I can't help but wonder—how far does Mother Nature have to go before we're convinced that the natural and built environments must exist in greater harmony? How long does the tragic trail of personal and financial devastation have to become before we comprehend that it's time to transform our civilization?

Want to learn more about important sustainability issues? Visit www.greenbuildermag.com, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @greenbuildermag for regular updates and breaking news.