DOH! ALERT King Of Sweden: Ban Baths To Save Energy You know the enviroweenies have gone off their rockers when someone like the King of Sweden advocates for banning baths: Are we sure this was in jest? After all, the man was simply used to a shower rather than sitting in a tub. There is a matter of optics, and perception, and then there is the matter of reality. Hot water is heated the same using the same amount of electricity or natural gas no matter which washing venue is used. Low flow shower heads, which we assume the king would be using, put out 2.5 gallons of water per minute. So, for a five minute shower (brief, by many standards), the bather would use 12.5 gallons. In the United States, a typical bathtub holds about 24 gallons of water. Given displacement when a body is submerged in the water, not many people are prone to filling up the tub beyond about halfway. So, really, which method of bathing uses more water and therefore energy? Dont answer that. The question remains, was this question from an avowed environmentalist really asked in jest, or was he planting the seeds for one of the movements most ardent desires: to see humanity bathing less often in order to keep clean water from running out. (Note there was no mention of hot tubs or jacuzzis which keep the water recycling, but use an unbelievable amount of power to run the jets and keep the water hot.) But stillGood King Carl XVIs thinking out loud is rather intriguing since the push for not bathing in western Europe just after the Renaissance was supposedly one of the contributing factors in the last major plague. A whole lot of people died in that one. (The Church, actually, is somewhat at fault for this as bathing had been done in public bath houses prior to that time. Something about no shame in public nudity. When the plague hit in the 16th century there was a push to close the bath houses, which may well have made things worse. One of many steps that the Church took that ended in disaster. The path to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.) So, did the King of Sweden really mean for us to quit taking baths? Since he didnt mention showering, it doesnt matter exactly. There will still be a way to batheeven if we have to be quick about it. Dont know about any of the readers out there, but the clean, city water being piped into this house comes right out of the Mississippi River below the confluence with the Missouri. Its filtered for DAYS in one of the great civil engineering marvels of our time, the Chain of Rocks water treatment plant. Dont think well be running out of clean water any time soon. 