It's all posturing.
"It's extremely dubious on its face and vastly more expensive than they think or are telling anyone," Deudney said. "It strikes me as an insane use of dollar resources to squeeze a little water out of these craters. We are facing growing droughts from climate change here on Earth."
Yikes, what a moron. Does anybody really believe they want to get water on the moon to relieve drought on earth? That's just stupid. The water on the moon is to be used for rocket fuel and as such it will be extremely valuable because lifting anything out of earth's gravity well is so expensive.
....
They're not talking about shipping water to Earth.
They're saying rather than spend money sending equipment to the moon to gather water, we need to worry about the water availability on Earth.
Even the paragraph before you quoted shows that person knows it would be for fuel
Deudney said he was struck by NASA's moonbase enterprise, the notion of extracting water from shaded craters for rocket fuels. Indeed, that vision is on the shady side without independent experts looking at the feasible cost and consequences of such an enterprise.
There is at least one person who doesn't know what they're talking about, it's just you
It's not even really that valuable as rocket fuel.
Futurology