If surface water can be compared with interest income, and non-renewable groundwater with capital, then much of the West was living mainly on interest income. California was milking interest and capital in about equal proportion. The plains states, however, were devouring capital as a gang of spendthrift heirs might squander a great capitalist's fortune.
Interpretation
The quote compares water resources to financial income, highlighting unsustainable practices in resource management.
In this quote, Marc Reisner draws a parallel between the depletion of water resources in the American West and financial management. He suggests that while some areas manage their resources like prudent investors, others are recklessly consuming their finite resources as if they were infinite. This serves as a critique of the unsustainable practices that jeopardize the environment and future resources.
In practice
In a speech about sustainable development, one could use this quote to underline the importance of responsible resource management.
The lakes are something which you are unprepared for; they lie up so high, exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around some jewel of the first water, - so anterior, so superior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even now civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be.
Every blade of grass, every insect, ant, and golden bee, all so amazingly know their path, though they have not intelligence, they bear witness to the mystery of God and continually accomplish it themselves.
The recent upsurge of public concern over environmental questions reflects a belated recognition that man has been too cavalier in his relations with nature. Unless we arrest the depredations that have been inflicted so carelessly on our natural systems-which exist in an intricate set of balances-we face the prospect of ecological disaster.
Every natural object is a conductor of divinity and only by coming into contact with them... may we be filled with the Holy Ghost.
The message is simple: love and conserve our wildlife.
If you can't be in awe of Mother Nature, there's something wrong with you.
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