Jul 2, 2015
David Zetland is an assistant professor at Leiden University College, where he teaches various classes on economics.
David was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Natural Resource Economics and Political Economy at UC Berkeley (2008-2010) and a Senior Water Economist at Wageningen University (2011-2013).
David blogs on water, economics and politics at aguanomics.com and gives many talks to public, professional and academic audiences.
David has two books The End of Abundance: economic solutions to water scarcity (2011) and Living with Water Scarcity (2014).
He received his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics from UC Davis in 2008.
Find out:
- if we should be worried more about a shortage of water or a scarcity of water.
- if we should learn from the oil industry and develop the technology-equivalent of extracting oil from oil sands and desalinate the ocean water?
- if we can tell whether we know the water footprint of a cow and if it’s different in California than Ireland.
- why water is actually free and what you pay is for the delivery.
- if there is an opportunity costs to acquiring water?
- why people living in the slums of India pay up to 50 times the price for water than those who have cheaper piped water.
- if a water monopoly is an effective market structure.
- if price competition in the market for water would result in the over-use of water consumption.
- about the water-diamond paradox.
- why David decided to do a PhD in economics after failing to get rich in the dotcom era.
- how David came to get his family name ‘Zetland’.
- about the coming ‘Water Wars’ and how it has already started.
- about Sao Paulo’s troubled water situation and how it’s creating water gang warfare on the streets.
- who we should assign the property rights to water.
- what David proposes to be the most effective way of managing water.
- how Singapore are becoming independent in creating their supply of water and are no longer depending on imports fro Malaysia.
- how Singapore are building technologies to recycle water from waste.
- why the ‘toilet-to-tap’ water recycling initiative has failed in the US but is working in Singapore.
- and much much more.
- Check out the shownotes page at www.economicrockstar.com/davidzetland
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