The President's Dilemma- Feature Documentary on Kirabatu

As the COP 15 Copenhagen climate summit is now under way I will try to bring information about the proceedings especially regarding water. Since language regarding water was taken out of the Barcelona talks write up it would appear that water issues are not being seriously considered in correlation to climate change as of yet. That is a huge mistake. I fear that this conference as others will be hijacked by corporate interests and politicians working in collusion to ignore the true urgency of the climate crisis in order to profit from it. However, as we see with this documentary to ignore the urgency of the effects of climate change is not only irresponsible but immoral.

More soon.

Time Warp: Water

You've never seen water drops like this. Amazing

Water Experts React To Barcelona Negotiations

Water Experts React To Barcelona Negotiations

Excerpt:

Water advocates and experts are convening in Barcelona to lobby climate negotiators to recognize intersections of water and climate, and for the inclusion of key water language in the working documents that will form the backbone for high-level meetings in Copenhagen in December. So far, they feel, their efforts have fallen on deaf ears.

The Global Public Policy Network, a group that includes the United Nations’ own water group and other water-related organizations, hosted a “water day” on Monday to coincide with the final build-up conference before the United Nations Copenhagen Climate Conference next month. Water experts say they are are deeply dismayed that all references to water have been stricken from the Non Paper 31—the draft text for Copenhagen. The organizations hope they can convince negotiators to re-instate mention of climate change impacts on water.

“Negotiators’ failure to recognize the role that water has in adapting to climate change could have severe implications for future levels of water security and ensuring more resilient systems for the future—in fact it risks undermining many of the objectives of the adaptation climate change discussions,” said Emily Benson, project manager for the Stakeholder Forum, in an email interview with Circle of Blue.

The forum, an international multi-stakeholder organization working on sustainable development, released a statement Tuesday about water “evaporating” from the climate change talks.

“The way that water is managed in and between countries will be a critical component for the success of any efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It will also be a vital consideration for many mitigation activities, including hydropower, agriculture and forestry projects,” the statement said.


“Even with the best mitigation strategies, water-related effects of climate change will come,” said Anders Berntell, executive director of the Stockholm International Water Institute. “The challenge for many nations is, how to adapt. Climate change is in effect water change, since it will be through water that the changes will be realized first and foremost.”

Other experts not at the forum were also worried about the exclusion of water.

“What’s the agenda if they’re not going to mention water?” asked James Workman, author of “Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought.”

“I think that’s short-sighted of negotiators, especially when you look at all the links between water and energy. I can’t quite understand where it’s coming from to just pull water out of the negotiating text,” Workman said.

One climate expert, also not at the conference, was surprised that negotiators were failing to mention something as fundamental as water in the treaty, and speculated that the text may have impinged on some ulterior interest.

“That water and climate are connected is not controversial—it’s one of the conclusions of the IPCC. However, the IPCC is strictly prohibited from being policy prescriptive. Contributors can discuss but not endorse specific policy measures,” said Dr. Stephen Schneider, a biological science professor at Standford University.

The IPCC did, however, release a technical report last year on water and climate change. According to the report, “water resource issues have not been adequately addressed in climate change analyses and climate policy formulations.”

As an issue, climate is not faring well in the United States where a recent national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed a decline in concern about climate change. According to the poll, 35 percent of Americans “see global warming as a serious problem,” down from 45 percent in April 2008.

Yet data from a Circle of Blue GlobeScan international public opinion survey found that water problems—scarcity and pollution—are the most troubling issue for people world-wide. Climate change has always ranked below water, according to GlobeScan data.

The poll surveyed 1,000 people in each of 25 countries, and probed 500 in each of the following countries on specific questions: Canada, China, India, Mexico, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Ninety-one percent of respondents indicated they think water shortages are a serious or somewhat serious problem. Eighty-seven percent indicated they are worried about increasing global freshwater shortages.

The amount of people concerned about freshwater shortages has increased five percentage points since 2003, when the opinion polling was first done.

end of excerpt
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To not include water as part of these negotiations will prove the parties involved are not serious about addressing the climate crisis. Water policy is central to an effective treaty as sea level rise, drought, glacier melt, and wetlands loss are all key to protection from storms, agricultural diversity, and life itself.

Just what are they thinking?

Melting Glaciers Jolt Smokestack China

Melting Glaciers Jolt Smokestack China

AS an expedition from Chinese state television worked its way across the remote Tibetan plateau earlier this year, the explorers were amazed by what they found.

The plateau has been called the world’s third largest ice store after the North and South Poles. Yet according to Chinese scientists, the “third pole” is warming up faster than anywhere else on earth.

The TV team found bare rock where glaciers had retreated. Lakes had dried up. Lush grassland had turned to desert. The livestock was dead, the farmers impoverished.

They brought back a visual lesson in global warming so stark that censors allowed the programme makers to broadcast a frank exposé. Their film attracted the attention of the Communist party’s leaders and has put climate change at the centre of a remarkably open debate in China ahead of a summit on the issue in Copenhagen next month.

It means that when President Barack Obama arrives in China next weekend he will find his hosts ready to talk about dozens of measures to slow the rate of global warming. He will not find them willing to agree to calls by rich countries for Beijing to accept a binding cap on carbon emissions — a condition that commentaries in the Chinese media have defined as politically unacceptable.

Any compromise might break an international deadlock and allow a treaty to be signed. However, even if that now looks unlikely to happen — and the United Nations official leading the talks accepts this — the fact is that China has woken up to the damage in an unprecedented way.

The speed and scale of change on the Tibetan plateau have made Chinese leaders react to something they understand — a potential threat to the future of China itself.

They are clearly seeking to mould opinion in favour of “greener” policies after decades of a highly polluting dash for economic growth that has poisoned China’s rivers and darkened its skies.

Last month, for example, researchers discovered that levels of black carbon in the ice core of the Tibetan plateau had soared since the 1990s because of smokestack industries and coal fires in millions of homes.

The plateau’s 36,000 glaciers, which once extended for 18,000 square miles, could vanish before mid-century if present rates of warming persist. More than 80% of them are in retreat. The overall area has shrunk by 4.5% in the past 20 years.

Most ominous of all, in the area that Chinese know as Sanjiangyuan, where three mighty rivers rise — the Yangtze, the Yellow and the Mekong — the headwaters run shallow and weak, threatening the water supplies for hundreds of millions of people.

“In the 1970s and 1980s, here was rich grassland and sheep grazed everywhere, but the weather has become hotter and drier,” a Tibetan herder, Sonarenqin, 39, told the TV crew.

“Five years ago my family had 300 sheep and 30 yaks. Now I have no sheep at all and merely a few yaks,” an 80-year-old Tibetan named Seluo added. “Our life has become so hard that we live on handouts.”

In the past 30 years the thawing of permafrost, a layer of soil that is usually frozen all the year round, has changed the landscape profoundly.

“There were 4,077 lakes and now 3,000 of them have disappeared,” said Xin Hongyuan, a geologist in Qinghai, which shares the huge expanse of plateau with the Tibet autonomous region and the provinces of Sichuan and Gansu.

“The snow is thawing and the snowline has risen from 4,600 metres to 5,300 metres. The Jianggendiru glacier, which is the main water supply of the Yangtze, has been degenerating fast since 1970, and when the glaciers shrink there will be a water crisis in the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.”

The Yellow river, for example, supplies water to a fifth of China’s 1.3 billion population and serves 50 big cities along its 3,395 miles.

In recent years it has sometimes slowed to a trickle. Once it virtually stopped flowing for 226 days, causing urban waterpipes to run dry and confronting downstream provinces with huge financial losses.

Qin Dahe, an eminent scientist and explorer, has been permitted to disclose alarming official assessments of the causes to Xinhua, the state news agency. “Owing to global warming, glaciers on the QinghaiTibet plateau are retreating extensively at a speed faster than in any other part of the world,” he said.

Temperatures on the plateau have risen by an average of 0.32C every 10 years since 1961, about six times as fast as in the rest of China. In Tibet, it is hotter than at any time in the past half century, while in the south and west of Tibet there is between 30% and 80% less rainfall.
end of excerpt.
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Just as a disclaimer: This is not a defense of China as their coal burning continues to contribute to the climate change we see... However, what will Obama say in China? He will tell them that they must agree to binding carbon emission caps even as they now work to do more to counter their emissions than the US is doing. While the U.S spends billions to build an Alberta Clipper pipeline to truck in dirty carbon laden tarsands crude from Canada, China is taking over the solar market. It is one thing to see the damage you have done and sincerely work to decrease what is contributing to it. Quite another to see it, know it, and yet continue to stall progress all while you are wagging fingers at others. Don't wonder now why the US cannot get global cooperation on necessary carbon emissions cuts. It's called walking the walk.

You Are Life; A Poem/ Blog Action day

My life sprang from you

your essence giving me breath

drops falling on my head

promising grace and spiritual oneness



Your loving arms embracing me

as I swam in your energy

my body an instrument of your light

my soul an emulation of your love



From birth to death

your lifeblood was mine

I drank you in

I lived through you

My respect undying


You are life
You are hope
You are love
You are Earth
You are me...

You are water.

The Global Water Crisis: Where Is Our Moral Will?

The more I read about this crucial issue the more incensed I become about this global crisis that is totally unnecessary because we have all we need to mitigate it. I also feel disillusioned about a global community that for the most part is not treating this with the urgency it deserves. Do we have to see corpses of children who died as a result of our human behavior before we act? Do we have to actually suffer the consequences before we realize we waited too long? Even though we were warned and have what we need to fix it? If we completely waste the finite freshwater resources we have on this planet we will destroy our own species. The idea that we could actually continue to destroy ourselves by behavior we know is detrimental to our survival is to me truly illogical. We have lost touch with the importance of water, and by doing so have lost respect for it. And that is what in great part is leading us to catastrophe if we do not act boldly now to save it.

Case in point:

In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore makes reference to the Aral Sea (also noted in the first chapter of his bestseller, Earth In The Balance.) The Aral Sea began shrinking in the 60's when the Soviet Union diverted the Ana Darya and Syr Darya rivers for irrigation, which was not even successful. Today the Aral Sea has shrunk 60% in surface area, and 80% in volume. It is polluted beyond recognition because of weapons testing, fertilizer runoff, and other industrial projects that have left it a bowl of toxic dust... And humans did this.

This is becoming a common tale around our world as our rapacious and wasteful behavior regarding this liquid of life is bringing us to the brink of global war over "blue gold." There is no doubt if you look across Kenya, Niger, Somalia, Sudan, and other parts of Africa, Asia, South and Central America, the Middle East (particularly Jordan, Syria, Iran, and including disputes over rights between Israel and the Palestinian territories) Mexico, and even between the U.S. and Canada and in our own country, that unless we become serious about facing this crisis which doesn't have to be a crisis, we will pass the point of no return. And regarding water we cannot and must not allow that to happen.

In my many entries on this issue, statistics regarding the current crisis, diseases suffered because of lack of sanitation or proper sanitation, desalinization, corporate privatization and its effects, and the need to declare water a human right globally without allowing it to become a commodity at the expense of the poor and sick have been discussed. I believe this issue goes to the core of who we are as human beings and so far I see that while many struggle to give hope, humanity as a whole is suffering in the moral will department and that baffles and saddens me. The climate crisis is also contributing to the shortage of water in Africa as droughts are becoming more severe and prolonged with disease, famine, and war the repercussions. And this is just the beginning of something that the world has been getting warnings about for over twenty years.

Again, much like the truth Mr. Gore and others have been trying to get out all of these years regarding our rapacious consumption of fossil fuels that is bringing us to the brink of Peak Oil, and the concentration of CO2 and other gases that are exacerbating the droughts and other effects we are now seeing by own hand, so too have the warnings about what we will reap regarding a global water shortage been viritually ignored by many governments and people who never believe it will reach the point where we will have to care. Well, we are there.

One other predominant issue in regards to water is that population is projected to increase within the next fifty years whereby two-thirds of the Earth's population will be living in towns and cities. That is absolutely staggering based on current population trends. The question then is: how do we control population growth (regarding informing people in underdeveloped countries about birth control and family planning) in these areas and provide sustainable solutions to the water crisis in the future if our moral will is already gone? Are efforts like desalinization truly then the answer? Or is it a bandaid rather than a solution? Desalinization is expensive and expends much in the way of greenhouse gases. Is it then a self defeating process only to once again be abused for profit? And what happens regarding the desalinization of ocean water that has a higher acidity level due to the consumption of higher amounts of CO2 and other gases that will be brought on by the very process we believe is saving us?

The point to this then is, why can't anyone see the answer staring us all in the face? THE ANSWER IS US. It is the same answer regarding this global water crisis as it is regarding the climate crisis. It will not be solved by desalinization or any other process if we continue to waste any resource we turn to. It has to start with us getting in the face of governments that refuse to give what people need to survive and collude to profit from their misery. It has to start with us standing up to corporations that would commoditize this resource that all must have as a human right. It has to start with us in our own lives becoming more responsible for what we use and how we use it. It has to come from our moral will to do our part in preserving the finite freshwater resources we have left on this Earth so that other drastic measures can be avoided.

The cost of us continuing to think otherwise is far too great. The answer is simple. If we won't take it upon ourselves to care for our planet, we betray it. If we don't do all we can globally to face this water crisis, we will cease to exist. Drastic you say? Perhaps to some. But then wars over oil have already done enough to bring us to the point of nuclear conflagration. Wars over water will most certainly be the point in my view that tips that scale the longer we wait to allow our humanity to shine through.

This post is part of Blog Action Day 2009 for Climate Change.

Blog Action Day

Guy Laliberte's Water For All, All For Water event from the ISS

Water For All, All For Water

For those who missed the two hour global event, Water For All, All For Water, you can now watch the broadcast in its entirety at the link posted.

It is a beautiful event that makes the importance and spirituality of water so clear. Some of the featured guests are former Vice President, Nobel Laureate Al Gore, Dr. David Suzuki, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Dr. Wangari Mathaai, and Maude Barlow. Also U2 performs as well as other musical guests from around the world.

It truly puts water into perspective.

You can also pledge support to preserve water at the site as well.

Coca Cola's Lies About Sustainability Have Gone Too Far

Coca Cola's Lies About Sustainability Have Gone Too Far

"They've gone from greenwashing to outright lying.

In 2007, facing growing opposition to its water management practices, particularly in India, Coca-Cola's CEO, Neville Isdell came up with a brilliant idea. The Coca-Cola company, he announced, will become water neutral, replenishing every drop of water they use, and therefore, as the suggestion went, Coca-Cola would have no impact of water resources around the world.

Voila! Problem solved, a company using 300 billion liters of water annually would have no impact on water resources. Sustainability doesn't get any better than that. The only problem was that Coca-Cola knew that water neutrality was impossible to achieve.

In a concept paper on water neutrality that Coca-Cola developed with others, it clearly stated that, "In a strict sense, the term 'water neutral' is troublesome and even may be misleading. It is often possible to reduce a water footprint, but it is generally impossible to bring it down to zero."

But minor details such as "misleading," "troublesome" and "impossible" did not stop Coca-Cola from using the term liberally and widely. And in India, where they have faced the most intense opposition (two bottling plants have been shut down), Coca-Cola went on a fast track, announcing that they will become water neutral by the end of 2009. It took a challenge by the India Resource Center and our allies during in December 2008 to get Coca-Cola to change its tune and to admit two months later that water neutrality is controversial and they will not use it.

"Please note that the terminology "water offset," like "water neutrality" is controversial ... Until a better terminology is identified and accepted by the broader water community, we are using the term offset." -- From Coca-Cola's "Achieving Water Balance through Community Partnership," February 2009.

But the marketing appeal of a concept like water neutrality, however impossible it may be to achieve, is simply to great for a publicity driven Coca-Cola to pass by. Sharing the opening plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Walmart two days ago, Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola's new CEO, blurted out that Coca-Cola will become water neutral by 2020.

Wait a minute. Is there something new from the "broader water community" since February this year that has enabled water neutrality to be possible and not controversial? No, there isn't, and trust me, we would know if there was because we keep a close watch on Coca-Cola and its shenanigans. Muhtar Kent's blurt is truly indicative of how Coca-Cola has approached its "water stewardship" initiatives."

end of excerpt
________

Here we go. Now companies like Coca Cola will want to make us believe that 'water neutrality' is actually something that can be achieved. Just how gullible do they think we are? And of course, they can promise to not use as much water, but that doesn't mean they won't still pollute the water. Offsets whether in carbon or water are simply corporate mechanisms devised to shirk moral responsibility and should be taken at face value.

India Resource Center: Campaign to Hold Coca Cola Accountable

First "clown" in space to show urgency of global water crisis

Guy Laliberté presents The ONE DROP Foundation from One Drop Foundation on Vimeo.

Space's First Clown Reaches International Space Station

Billionaire Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte arrives at the International Space Station and -- true to form -- dons a clown nose. During his brief tourist trip to the ISS, Laliberte plans to coordinate from the ISS a 120-minute, 14-city show on Earth featuring former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Peter Gabriel and U2.

Guy Laliberte, the billionaire founder of Cirque du Soleil, arrived at the International Space Station Oct. 1 and—to no one's surprise—slapped on a clown nose and began yukking it up with crew members of the space station. Laliberte is the seventh paying (reportedly $35 million) space tourist to travel to the station.

Laliberte blasted off into space early Sept. 30 aboard a Russian Soyuz craft along with Russian cosmonaut Maxim Surayev and American astronaut Jeffrey Williams. While Surayev and Williams are scheduled for a six-month tour of duty at the space station, Laliberte is returning to Earth Oct. 11.

"I'm adapting pretty good. I love that thing [the space station], but I ain't staying six months," Laliberte said in a video linkup between the space station and Russian Mission Control outside Moscow.

In addition to a weightless juggling show, Laliberte also said he plans to bring some levity to the usually somber space station operations, suggesting tickling the ISS' crew in their sleep and other hijinks.

But the big show is scheduled for Oct. 9, when Laliberte plans to coordinate from space a 14-city show on Earth featuring former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Peter Gabriel and U2 seeking to raise awareness through "artistic illustration of the humanitarian struggles and solutions associated with water." Laliberte is founder of the One Drop Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that everyone across the planet has access to water.

The event will take place simultaneously in Montreal; Moscow; Santa Monica, Calif.; New York City; Johannesburg; Mumbai; Marrakesh; Sydney; Osaka; Tampa, Fla.; Mexico City; Rio de Janeiro; Paris; and London and will be broadcast globally. In addition, the 120-minute show will be Webcast through the One Drop Foundation.

"The Earth will gaze up at the stars and resonate to the rhythms of artists and world-renowned figures who will demonstrate their commitment to water and pay tribute to this vitally important natural resource," states a press release from Laliberte."
________

I truly hope this awakens people to the urgency of this crisis. Without water there is no life on Earth. Perhaps seeing it from the ISS will be a humbling act for those of us who take it for granted here. I usually look down on the rich who do this as it being an extravagance. However, in this case since it was for such a good cause I support it wholeheartedly.

Water In Crisis: Future Wars?

I see the proliferation of talk regarding the water crisis now as I did the "awakening" so to speak regarding the climate crisis. We waited until the situation was so bad to even talk about it seriously. People have been warning us since the late eighties regarding water scarcity. I myself have been writing and talking about this for the last ten years. And yet, the amount of people without fresh potable water continues to rise. Can you imagine a world where 2/3 of the population is without potable water? This is the prediction for 2030 should current behaviors continue along with the effects of climate change, primarily in the form of drought.

And while this is indeed a serious prediction that has merit, I do also have to wonder just how much governments want this to get to a true crisis situation as the climate crisis, because it seems that using the climate crisis now to warn of conflict is good business for the war machine as well. Would governments actually use water scarcity to trim down the population of the world's poor? I just cannot understand why the human race can never join together in a common purpose to do what is right instead of allowing a crisis to deteriorate to the point where war has to even be an option!

I always believed that water unlike oil, is a resource that would actually bind people together in the end because of the MAD principle, meaning, that like nuclear war, countries would not wish to start wars over water because it would only wind up hurting their own people in the process. I don't know, perhaps I have too much faith in humanity even with all of my cynicism? However, there are solutions to this and the first and foremost one is changing our agricultural practices regarding wasteful irrigation, crop rotations, what crops are grown where and when; rebuilding and fixing infrastructure; stopping the proliferation of dams that siphon water from agriculture; reforestation; wasteful industrial practices and curtailing the use of water wasteful energy sources such as coal and nuclear that use large amounts of water; conservation which so many people seem to think is a dirty word; and the big one- declaring water a human right and standing up to privitization and commoditization of it globally. Desalination (which should be a last resort) should be used in the Middle East and is needed there. However, that does not mean they should get away with building more huge dams as well and using water as a political weapon.

Future wars over water can be averted if we look beyond to seeing the big picture and how not having it will effect us all equally.

Water shortage in southern Iraq threatens two million people

Water shortage in southern Iraq threatens two million people

And what is Turkey's solution to this crisis for the Euphrates River? Why build more dams to divert even more water of course. There is no "democracy" in any place where people are deprived of the basic necessities of life. So much for our "occupation." It's bad enough we forced Monsanto seeds down their throats to ruin their agriculture, but now they don't even have enough water to water the seeds. Why is it everywhere we go we bring nothing but misery to the people who live there? The Middle East is already an arid water scarce area.

They cannot afford to have climate change along with multiple dams and wasteful practices adding to their crisis. Once again, the sun shines bright in the sky and all people can think of is using water for electricity that they need to grow food and survive because it makes contractors and politicians rich, and can also be used as a political weapon as the Ilisu Dam in Turkey is one against the Kurds.Restore the Marshlands, give the seeds back to the farmers, tear down the unncessary dams in Turkey destroying history and being used as political weapons, and invest in solar power in this area to save water. These dams have displaced thousands of people and denied water to those who need it to live. It isn't as though the solutions aren't there, but of course they are always the solutions that make someone money that only matter.It is time for the Middle East to come into the sun.


Excerpt from article:

Martin Chulov in Nasiriyah, Iraq guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 August 2009
Two million people face life without water
Link to this video

A water shortage described as the most critical since the earliest days of Iraq's civilisation is threatening to leave up to 2 million people in the south of the country without electricity and almost as many without drinking water.

An already meagre supply of electricity to Iraq's fourth-largest city of Nasiriyah has fallen by 50% during the last three weeks because of the rapidly falling levels of the Euphrates river, which has only two of four power-generating turbines left working. If, as predicted, the river falls by a further 20cm during the next fortnight, engineers say the remaining two turbines will also close down, forcing a total blackout in the city.

Down river, where the Euphrates spills out into the Shatt al-Arab waterway at the north-eastern corner of the Persian Gulf, the lack of fresh water has raised salinity levels so high that two towns, of about 3,000 people, on the northern edge of Basra have this week evacuated. "We can no longer drink this water," said one local woman from the village of al-Fal. "Our animals are all dead and many people here are diseased."

Iraqi officials have been attempting to grapple with the magnitude of the crisis for months, which, like much else in this fractured society, has many causes, both man-made and natural.
Two winters of significantly lower than normal rainfalls – half the annual average last year and one-third the year before – have followed six years of crippling instability, in which industry barely functioned and agriculture struggled to meet half of subsistence needs. "For thousands of years Iraq's agricultural lands were rich with planted wheat, rice and barley," said Salah Aziz, director of planning in Iraq's agricultural ministry, adding that land was "100% in use".

"This year less than 50% of the land is in use and most of the yields are marginal. This year we cannot begin to cover even 40% of Iraq's fruit and vegetable demand." During the last five chaotic years, many new dams and reservoirs have been built in Turkey, Syria and Iran, which share the Euphrates and its small tributaries. The effect has been to starve the Euphrates of its lifeblood, which throughout the ages has guaranteed bountiful water, even during drought. At the same time, irrigators have tried tilling marginal land in an attempt for quick yields and in all cases the projects have been abandoned.

"Not even during Saddam's time did we face the prospect of something so grave," said Nasiriyah's governor, Qusey al-Ebadi. Just east of the city, the Marsh Arabs are also on the edge of a crisis – unprecedented even during the three decades of reprisals they faced under the former dictator.

"The current level of the Euphrates cannot feed the small tributaries that give water to the marshlands," he continued. "The people there have started to dig wells for their own survival. There is no water to use for washing, because it is stagnant and contaminated. Many of the animals have contracted disease and died and people with animals are leaving their areas." Nowhere is Iraq's water shortage more stark than in what used to be the marshlands. Towards the Iranian border and south to the Gulf, rigid and yellowing reeds jut from a hard-baked landscape of cracked mud.

Skiffs that once plied the lowland waters lie dry and splintering and ducks wallow in fetid green ponds that pocket the maze of feeder streams. Steel cans of drinking water bought by desperate locals line dirt roads like over-sized letter boxes. The Euphrates, once broad and endlessly green, is now narrow and drab...

end of excerpt.
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It matters not what part of the world you live in, or whether you are French, American, Israeli, Palestinian, Iraqi, Pakistani, etc. you have the right to clean water, food, health, and to be secure in the place you choose to live. War has provided NONE of those things, particularly for this region of the world, and it is now primarily the fault of the US that these people now suffer as well as the fault of other countries looking to gain from their misery.

It surely makes someone like myself not even have the motivation to continue to try to talk to people to make them see that poltiics, religion, and more than anything else, GREED (that spans all religions, non religions, and politics) has now deteriorated our world to the point where humanity is becoming obsolete.

When climate change along with all of these factors runs the Fertile Crescent, one of the most historically rich areas of the world and the cradle of agriculture dry how many who ignored these warnings due to their own apathy and prejudices will then start to care? Well, you will be too late then.

Flow-For The Love Of Water

This is part one of eight parts. Refer to the link here:

Flow-The Movie

to watch the other seven parts.

Please spread it around.

Thanks

Come visit my new Water Is Life Group on Current .com

Water Is Life Group

I now also curate a Water Is Life Group on Current.com/TV. This is a group that will report on the global water crisis, pollution, privitization, and all other aspects of water, its history, it's meaning to society, and it spiritual properties that give us life.

Feel free to go visit and if you are so inclined, you can join the group and converse on this important topic with other members.

Any vehicle we can use to get out this truth is a vehicle we must now use, especially in regard to water and its conservation.

Hope to see you there,

Thanks
Jan

Bottled Water Sucks

From the article:

I knew bottled water was a social ill but I didn't know how damaging it was until I saw an explosive and compelling new documentary called Tapped.

With style, verve and righteous anger, the film exposes the bottled water industry's role in suckering the public, harming our health, accelerating climate change, contributing to overall pollution, and increasing America's dependence on fossil fuels. All while gouging consumers with exorbitant and indefensible prices.

Claire Thompson summed up the problem well in her post on the movie at Grist:

"Not only is it [bottled water] a clear waste of resources (only 20 percent of plastic water bottles used in the United States are recycled, and far too many of the rest probably end up in the Pacific Garbage Patch), it's an incredible waste of money for consumers, who pay more than the price of gasoline for water that's marketed as "pure," but in reality is largely unregulated, full of harmful toxins like BPA, and far less safe for drinking than free tap water. (In fact, 40 percent of the time, bottled water is nothing but municipal tap water, freed from the government oversight that keeps it safe.)"
Watch the movie's powerful trailer.

The film's website lists where you can see the doc in the theater, and offers opportunities for hosting a screening of your own. (So far, it will be screened in a smattering of the coastal cities where you'd expect them to play.)
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It is time to stand up and fight these soulless corporate bastards who are out to steal your water. This film shows that spirit. A spirit we in America desperately need.

Water Is Life.

Egypt Blocks Nile Water Deal

Egypt Blocks Nile Water Deal

Will this area be a place of 'water wars' as climate change and population increases continue to place strains on water resources? Tensions are already flaring as Egypt claims it needs to have the water it was allotted previously due to the fact that it is the Nile alone that supplies the majority of its water. Whereas other riparian states have other sources of water and receive more rain. Is this a valid claim? Does Egypt not hold any responsibility for the water it uses, its population increases, nor its consumption and irrigation practices? What of the future as we already see many areas getting less rainfall and water evaporation taking place due to changes in climate?

Also, there are many dams built in this area that already decrease available water resources to agricultural areas and which have displaced thousands of people. I find it illogical that based on the predictions of future climate changes for this area, drought, and water usage that is wasteful as well as the many dams being built that cause diversion of water resources and environmental devastation that Egypt or Sudan can continue to give these same excuses for much longer.

More about the Nile Basin Initiative:

Nile Basin Initiative

Rich Nations Vulnerable To Water Disasters

Rich Nations Vulnerable To Water Disasters

Even after all that has happened and is happening globally regarding environmental factors and climate change, Americans are still under the impression that we are not vulnerable to that which now effects the developing world. I think this ignorance is what fuels much of the inaction regarding water issues and climate change in America. It needs to change. Now.

Colorado River Reservoirs Could Bottom Out By Mid-century

Colorado River Reservoirs Could Bottom Out

From article:

All reservoirs along the Colorado River might dry up by mid-century as the West warms, a new study finds. The probability of such a severe shortage by then runs as high as one-in-two, unless current water-management practices change, the researchers report.

The study's coauthors looked at the effects of a range of reductions in Colorado River stream flow on future reservoir levels and at the implications of different management strategies.

Even under the harshest drying caused by climate change, the large storage capacity of reservoirs on the Colorado might help sustain water supply for a few decades. However, new water management approaches are critical to minimize the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage by mid-century.

"This study, along with others that predict future flow reductions in the Colorado River Basin, suggests that water managers should begin to re-think current water management practices during the next few years, before the more serious effects of climate change appear," says lead study author Balaji Rajagopalan of the University of Colorado in Boulder (CU-Boulder).

The findings by Rajagopalan and his colleagues have been accepted by the journal Water Resources Research, published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU).

The Colorado River system is enduring its 10th year of a drought. Fortunately, the river system entered the drought in 2000, with the reservoirs at approximately 95 percent of capacity. The reservoir system is currently at 59 percent of capacity, about the same as this time last year, says Rajagopalan. Roughly 30 million people depend on the Colorado River for drinking and irrigation water.

The research team examined the future vulnerability of the system to water supply variability coupled with projected changes in water demand. They found that through 2026, the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage in any given year remains below 10 percent under any scenario of climate fluctuation or management alternative. During this period, the reservoir storage could even recover from its current low level, according to the researchers.

But if climate change results in a 10 percent reduction in the Colorado River's average stream flow as some recent studies predict, the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage will exceed 25 percent by 2057, according to the study. If climate change results in a 20 percent flow reduction, the chances of fully depleting reservoir storage will exceed one in two by 2057, Rajagopalan says.

"On average, drying caused by climate change would increase the risk of fully depleting reservoir storage by nearly ten times more than the risk we expect from population pressures alone," Rajagopalan says.

"By mid-century this risk translates into a 50 percent chance in any given year of empty reservoirs, an enormous risk and huge water management challenge," he says.

The river hosts more than a dozen dams along its 2,330-kilometer (1,450-mile) journey from Colorado's Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of California.

end of excerpt.



St. Thomas which was a city covered by Lake Mead due to Hoover Dam construction is now exposed due to recession of water levels. To some that may seem like justice because of what was done to St. Thomas originally because of the dam construction, but now this lake which is one of the largest has millions of people dependent on it for water. So now, those in this area who once lost all due to the water coming in may well see that again because of the opposite effect. This is a stark example of what population increases and climate change combined with waste can lead to. It should be a lesson to us all.

Facing The Global Water Crisis In Pictures

Facing The Global Water Crisis In Pictures

The defining moment of the 21st Century will not be securing another planet for us to live on. It will be how we meet this challenge on Earth. Can we get beyond the backbiting to keeping our eye on the prize? Or will our continued political, social, and religious differences keep us from the moral imperative? This is no joke. Water is becoming a scarcer resource for many people around the globe through waste, pollution, climate change, and privitization. By our hand.

Humans cannot live without water. So it should follow logically that if humans cannot live without water and potable freshwater is becoming scarcer that this would certainly be a crisis that is a matter of life and death. And yet, this issue hardly gets the attention it deserves.


Please look at these pictures at the link provided and realize that this is not about what is causing global warming/climate change and the petty political grudges that keep that debate from taking us to the necessary solutions to save this planet for ourselves and future generations. This is about seeing that future and visualizing what you know in your heart it should look like... and then making it happen.

Australian Town Set For World's First Bottled Water Ban

Australian Town Set For World's First Bottled Water Ban


Yes! Let's keep that going! Bottled water is one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated on the planet! And then we need to start working on plastic bottles in general that waste fuel, create carbon emissions that contribute to climate change, and cause massive plastic garbage swirls as can be found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

It is time to assess just what we are doing to this planet and realize our potential to change it!

Excerpt:

An Australian town was set to ban bottled water on Wednesday over concerns about its environmental impact, in what is believed to be a world first. Bundanoon, a picturesque rural town with a population of just 2,000, was expected to vote heavily in favour of the move with a show of hands at a public meeting later. "At the moment we've got a lot of community support behind it. We're confident the town is going to back it," said activist John Dee.

"We believe Bundanoon is the world's first town that has got its retailers to ban bottled water. We haven't found it anywhere else." Local opinion was incensed when beverage company Norlex Holdings announced plans to tap an underground reservoir in the town, truck the water up to Sydney and then send it back in bottled form.

"The company has been looking to extract water locally, bottle it in Sydney and bring it back here to sell it again," said Dee. "It made people look at the environmental impact of bottled water and the community has been quite vocal about it."

Dee, whose Do Something group was instrumental in a plastic bags ban in Coles Bay, Tasmania, said he hoped the ban would make people think twice about buying bottled water. "It's possible it will extend to other places. The main idea is to get people thinking about their usage of bottled water -- we're spending about half a billion dollars on it here in Australia," he said.

Water Key Element In Mideast Peace

Water Key Element In Mideast Peace

Excerpt:

'Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Israel must address the vital issue of water in the West Bank if meaningful peace talks are to take place. Israel's leaders said nothing, but Abbas had touched on one of the most sensitive issues in the seemingly endless negotiations, which have been in abeyance for the last few years, and one on which any expectation of a comprehensive settlement will probably ultimately rest.Israel's unilateral control over rivers and aquifers meant scarce water resources were not being shared equitably "as required by international law," he declared. "It is with dismay that I see 9,000 Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley utilize one-quarter of the water that the entire Palestinian population in the West Bank utilizes," he told the World War Forum in Istanbul.

In the largely arid Middle East, water is more valuable than oil and has been a source of conflict since time immemorial. As the world's resources, from oil to timber and minerals, dwindle, the prospect of more water wars in the Middle East in the decades ahead increase with each passing day. The crisis is deepened by rapidly expanding populations across the Arab world. This, coupled with industrial growth and a relentless drive for food self-sufficiency, is draining water supplies faster than they can be replenished. Global warming accelerates the damage.

Climate experts warn that one-third of the Earth's surface may be at risk of extreme drought by the end of the century, triggering mass migrations of "environmental refugees." Many of those will be in the Middle East and North Africa. The region has been hit by a severe drought for the last five years, making the water issue all that more critical, aggravating a dispute between the Israelis, whose own water resources are dwindling, and the Palestinians, who sit on a major aquifer under the West Bank that Israel covets as much as its ever-expanding archipelago of settlements.Israel views the water from the West Bank -- as it did the water it siphoned off from the Litani River in Lebanon during its 1978-2000 occupation of that country's southern zone -- as vital to its national security. The Palestinians will not be able to sustain a viable independent state without water.
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How hard is this for Israel or any oher country to understand? Water is the lynchpin to peace.

Large Dead Zone Predicted For Gulf Of Mexico This Summer

Large Dead Zone Predicted For Gulf Of Mexico This Summer

Excerpt:

'A team of NOAA-supported scientists from the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, Louisiana State University, and the University of Michigan is forecasting that the "dead zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas in the Gulf of Mexico this summer could be one of the largest on record.
The dead zone is an area in the Gulf of Mexico where seasonal oxygen levels drop too low to support most life in bottom and near-bottom waters.

Scientists are predicting the area could measure between 7,450 and 8,456 square miles, or an area roughly the size of New Jersey. However, additional flooding of the Mississippi River since May may result in a larger dead zone. The largest one on record occurred in 2002, measuring 8,484 square miles.

Dead zones are caused by nutrient runoff, principally from agricultural activity, which stimulates an overgrowth of algae that sinks, decomposes, and consumes most of the life-giving oxygen supply in the water.

The dead zone size was predicted after researchers observed large amounts of nitrogen feeding into the Gulf from the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers. The rivers experienced heavy water flows in April and May that were 11 percent above average.

"The high water volume flows coupled with nearly triple the nitrogen concentrations in these rivers over the past 50 years from human activities has led to a dramatic increase in the size of the dead zone," said Gene Turner, Ph.D., a lead forecast modeler from Louisiana State University.

This forecast helps coastal managers, policy makers, and the public better understand and combat the sources of the dead zones. For example, the models that generate this forecast have been used to determine nutrient reduction targets required to reduce the size of the dead zone.

This hypoxic, or low-to-no oxygen area, is of particular concern because it threatens valuable commercial and recreational Gulf fisheries by destroying critical habitat."

End of excerpt
_________
It isn't enough that we are killing the land and air with toxic waste and poisoning our food with an overuse of pesticides and herbicides... we are now literally sucking the life out of our water. Hypoxia is the phenomenon we now see in the Gulf Of Mexico, which is a lack of oxugen in the water whicha lso effects marinlife and which also effects many bodies of water worldwide.

And we, humans, are doing it. In our zeal to make lots of money that we think we can actually enjoy in a poisoned world where our health and the sustainability of our planet is threatened, we have lost touch with our true purpose as stewards of this planet. Pesticides, herbicides, CAFOS, climate change, and the relentless lobbying of the brokers of these poisons to politicians are all part of the vicious circle we now are part of.

Turkey Boosts Iraq Water Supplies

Update to previous report: Turkey Blamed For Looming Crop Disaster

Turkey Boosts Iraq Water Supplies

Somewhat good news considering the drought Iraq is currently in. Although, considering they are also growing Monsanto seeds, I don't know how truly prosperous Iraqi farmers will be now.

See here:

Mutant Seeds For Mesopotamia

Drought and Desertification Worsening In Tibet

Drought and Desertification Worsening In Tibet

"Rising temperature and deforestation have intensified drought and desertification in Tibet, China's state media said.

Drought conditions have hit 33 counties in five of the six prefectures in Tibet, affecting 15.3 percent of the Tibetan plateau, Xinhua said, quoting the regional drought relief and flood control headquarters.

According to the report, the drought has also killed 13,601 head of cattle.
Nine meteorological centers in Tibet have not seen substantial rain for 226 consecutive days, Zhao Yiping, head of the Tibet Regional Meteorological Bureau said.

The drought has also been worsened by higher than normal temperatures. Tibet has experienced temperatures 0.4 to 2.3 celsius degrees higher than normal years, Zhao said.

The report by Xinhua news agency follows a warning by China's top weather official last month that Tibet faced a growing threat of drought and floods as global warming melts its glaciers.

The head of the China Meteorological Bureau, Zheng Guogang, last month was quoted by Xinhua as warning that global warming was accelerating glacial shrinkage, causing Tibet's lakes to swell.

"If the warming continues, millions of people in western China will face floods in the short term and drought in the long run."

Moreover, desertification is spreading by 39,600 hectares (98,000 acres) annually in Tibet, an official at the regional forestry bureau was quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency."
end of excerpt.
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Reported by Chinese media. Yes China, but keep building those dams.

______________
China Wants 20 More Dams On The Headwaters of The Yangtze.

WHAT ARE THEY THINKING? Really. Glaciers are melting faster than predicted. Lakes are swelling which have already caused flooding in villages in the Himalayas. And once the glaciers are gone with temperatures rising and the water trickling to almost nothing, what good will those dams have done? Let the water flow naturally and use it's natural power to harness electricity. Use the power of the sun. Let the water flow to sustain the people and allow them to grow food. These dam and damn schemes are only for profit and control. In a time when drought is now a threat not only to agriculture and the climate but to life itself, it is irresponsible and immoral of the Chinese government to continue plans for all of these dams.

Question Gavin Newsom

Question to Gavin Newsom on California drought /desalination

Current Green is asking questions of Gavin Newsom, mayor of San Francisco who is running for Governor. Water Is Life submitted the question above regarding the current California drought and desalination. Current Green will be carrying the interview on their station on June 11 at 12 noon. You can get all the information about it at the link.

160 Syrian Villages Deserted Due To Climate Change

160 Syrian Villages Deserted Due To Climate Change

DAMASCUS (AFP) – Some 160 villages in northern Syria were deserted by their residents in 2007 and 2008 because of climate change, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The report drawn up by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) warns of potential armed conflict for control of water resources in the Middle East.

"The 2007/8 drought caused significant hardship in rural areas of Syria. In the northeast of the country, a reported 160 villages have been entirely abandoned and the inhabitants have had to move to urban areas," it said.

In Syria and also in Jordan, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, "climate change threatens to reduce the availability of scarce water resources, increase food insecurity, hinder economic growth and lead to large-scale population movements," the report said.

"This could hold serious implications for peace in the region," the Canada-based institute said.

The study, financed by Denmark, predicts a hotter, drier and less predictable climate in the Middle East, "already considered the world's most water-scarce and where, in many places, demand for water already outstrips supply."

Oli Brown, who co-wrote the report with Alec Crawford, said: "Climate change itself poses real security concerns to the region. It could lead to increased militarisation of strategic natural resources, complicating peace agreements."

"Israel is already using climate change as an excuse to increase their control over the water resources in the region," he said.

In the study's conclusions, Brown and Crawford said: "As a region, the Levant produces a tiny fraction of global emissions -- less than one percent of the world total.

The exception among Levant countries is Israel, "whose emissions -- 11.8 metric tonnes per capita -- exceed the European average of 10.05 tonnes," they said.

"This may exacerbate the existing deep mistrust of the West, including Israel, which would be seen as causing a problem that it is unable or unwilling to resolve," they said.

The study also revealed the challenge posed by population growth.

"The combined population of the Levant will grow to 71 million by 2050 from 42 million in 2008" with major implications for water demand, food supply, housing and jobs, it said.

snip

"Rainfall shrank by 10 millimetres (a year) between 1956 and 2006 while temperatures rose by (an average) 0.5 degrees Celsius, though below the worldwide average of 0.6 degrees," Syrian meteorologist Khales Mawed said.

The IISD predicts even modest global warming would lead to a 30-percent drop in water in the Euphrates, which runs through Turkey, Syria and Iraq, while the Dead Sea would shrink in volume by 80 percent by the end of the century.
______________
The King of Jordan stated that the only thing he would go to war for was water. If a water policy is not agreed to with Israel also having to treat Gaza and other areas more equitably regarding water distribution, that war may come sooner than we think. And actually, that is what the current ongoing war is partly about as it is. It is my contention that the Israeli government wishes to place their settlements right over the two largest acquifers in this area in order to control the water supply. And with climate change and massive pollution taking its toll on the water in this region, I can see nothing but war associated with such a move.

Previous entry:

Case of Gaza: Water Scarcity and Conflict

It's always been about the water.

Come visit on Current.com/TV

Sustainable Agriculture Channel On Current.com/tv"

I am now the Curator of the Sustainable Agriculture Channel on Current.com/tv. Please join me if you are interested in conversations/action items about sustainable agriculture as it relates to environment, industrialization/GMOS, health, and also its relationship to water and water scarcity. This is the most important problem we will deal with in the 21st century with population increases, climate change, and economic turmoil.

China To Displace 330,000 People For Water Project

China To Move 330,000 People For Water Project

About 330,000 people in central China are to be evicted from their homes to make way for a reservoir that will form part of a massive water diversion project, state media said Sunday.

More than two-thirds of the people in Hubei and Henan provinces would be relocated to about 50 nearby counties and cities, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Zhang Jiyao, head of the project, as saying.

Zhang did not say where the remaining 100,000 would be placed to make way for the Danjiangkou Reservoir, part of the multi-billion-dollar North-South Water Diversion Project. The project aims to bring water from the nation's longest river, the Yangtze, to the parched north of the country, which is plagued by droughts.

Xinhua has previously said that by 2010, when part of the project will have been completed, up to one billion cubic metres of water will be diverted to Beijing annually.

According to the project's website, the relocation of the 330,000 people is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.
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Discontent over China's huge water scheme


I am really exasperated in continuing to read about the proliferation of dams not only in Asia but also in Africa. As we have seen from every example of a dam being built in these areas, it does nothing but displace people, cause environmental devastation, and threaten agriculture thus exacerbating the very conditions already plaguing farmers in China now. I sometimes really do find myself speechless.

My previous entry on Three Gorges Dam with comment:

Three Gorges Dam-Hydropower At A Huge Human Cost

I have to honestly state that I am sad regarding human behavior today. We see the crisis and yet we continue to shield our eyes from it thinking business as usual is going to solve it when it is really a paradigm moral shift that must occur in our consciousness that will bring us the answers. In short, we have forgotten what it is to be human (if we even know what that means) and instead only care on the whole about survival at any cost (which is really not survival) instead of survival in balance with peace and ecological consciousness.

Water is our lifeblood not a commodity to be used carelessly without regard for the consequences. I think China is learning that lesson the hard way.

Spirit Of The Earth

We must find it again. It is in the sun that warms us, the air that gives us life, and in the water that flows as the blood of our planet. This is the way to sustainability and peace.

Turkey Blamed For Looming Crop Disaster In Iraq

Turkey Blamed For Looming Crop Disaster In Iraq

Iraq faces an agricultural "disaster" this summer if Turkey continues to retain waters from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers which have sustained Iraqi agriculture for millennia, experts say.
The controversy over the sharing of the mighty rivers at the root of Iraq's ancient name of Mesopotamia -- meaning "between the rivers" in Greek -- is almost as old as the country itself.

But for Baghdad, the current shortage demands an urgent response from Turkey.

The reserves of all Iraqi dams at the beginning of May totalled 11 billion cubic metres (388 billion cubic feet) of water, compared to over 40 billion three years ago, although rain has not been below normal levels this winter.

The Euphrates is the most worrying situation.

Reserves at Haditha dam in the country's west, the first on the river, amounted to just 1.5 billion cubic metres on May 1, compared to eight billion two years ago.

"If the water level in the Euphrates continues to decrease, there will be a disaster in July because it will not be possible to irrigate crops," warned Aoun Thiab Abdullah, director of the National Centre for Water Resources.

"The drought will cause displacement," he said, noting that Iraqi agriculture depends on river water for 90 percent of its irrigation.

The negative impact on farming is already being felt in some provinces, including Najaf in the south that has banned its farmers from planting rice because it requires heavy irrigation.

"We will focus this year on the provision of drinking water and irrigation for other crops demanding less water," the director of the Centre for Water Resources in Najaf, Modhar al-Bakaa, told AFP at a water seminar.

The situation worsens as one moves down the Euphrates, according to Karim al-Yakubi, chairman of the agriculture and water committee in Iraq's parliament.

Yakubi said he fears an environmental disaster in the marshes of Nasiriyah farther south and notes that the lower water quantities increase the salinity of the river.

Iraqi experts say the problem is the many dams Turkey has built over the past 30 years to irrigate its agricultural lands in the southeast. These dams allow Turkey to regulate the flow of rivers according to its needs.

The flow speed of the Euphrates, which runs from Turkey through Syria, is currently only 230 cubic metres (8,100 cubic feet) per second, down from the 2000 level of 950 cubic metres per second.

end of excerpt.

Mutant Seeds For Mesopotamia

Hmm, do you think Monsanto thought about this when they forced Order 81 on Iraqi farmers thus forcing them to plant their GM terminator seeds, and calling their centuries old natural seeds the "infringing varieties?" Apart from the water issues that clearly now put Iraqis at a dangerous crossroads regarding their ability to feed themselves, you now have Monsanto growing their evil in Iraq. You really must read this article. It will blow your mind. After all of the times we heard "we went there to give them Democracy", you now see Democracy was not at all the reason for the US govt. invading Iraq. Corporate profit at the point of a gun was the reason, and Monsanto is now just one multinational reaping the profits.

Here are some of my previous entries regarding dams in Turkey/Iraq:

Germany Suspends Funding For Ilisu Dam Project

The Ilisu Dam Controversy

Lake Mead Is Drying Up

LAKE MEAD IS DRYING UP

Excerpt:

The combination of a changing climate and a strong demand for the lake’s remaining water has resulted in 100 foot drop since 2000. While that’s just 10 percent under the lake’s high water mark in 1983, Lake Mead is like a martini glass—wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. That 10 percent dip represents a loss of half Lake Mead’s water supply in nine years, from 96 percent capacity to 43 percent.

Anyone who’s gone on a diet knows this simple equation: if you burn fewer calories than you eat, you’ll gain weight. But like a cheating dieter in Superman’s Bizarro world, the Western United States has been sucking more water out of Lake Mead than the dwindling Colorado River can provide to replace it. When output is greater than input, the reservoir shrinks.

And it continues to shrink. Lake Mead’s water level fell 14 feet last year, and the Bureau of Reclamation has projected the level will drop 14 more feet this summer. That will bring it perilously close to 1,075 feet, the point at which the federal government can step in and declare a drought condition, forcing a reduction of 400,000 acre-feet drawn from Lake Mead per year. A typical Las Vegas home uses a half acre-foot of water per year, so such a reduction would be equal toturning the tap off for 800,000 households.

In 2008, the Scripps Institute of Oceanography issued a paper titled “When will Lake Mead go dry?” which set the odds of Lake Mead drying up by 2021 at 50-50. No more water, no more electricity, no more pumping power.

“Today, we are at or beyond the sustainable limit of the Colorado system,” concluded the paper’s authors. “The alternative to reasoned solutions to this coming water crisis is a major societal and economic disruption in the desert southwest; something that will affect each of us living in the region.”

Conservation efforts are helping (Southern Nevada has significantly reduced its draw from 325,000 acre-feet a year in 2000 to 265,000 acre-feet today) but the Colorado River remains “oversubscribed.” Millions of acre-feet are sent to California, Nevada, and Mexico annually, draining Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell faster than they can be replenished. Conservation solutions include “grass buyback” programs to encourage people to install drought-tolerant landscaping, tax incentives for pool-covers, and inevitable rate hikes.

Frustratingly, Las Vegas residents tried to pass a bill that would allow homeowners to install graywater systems but the Southern Nevada Water Authority blocked it, offering up a piece of fuzzy math as a defense. Las Vegas Valley is alloted 300,000 acre-feet of water per year from the reservoir. The water that goes down drainpipes in Las Vegas gets pumped 12 miles back to a reclamation plant near Lake Mead. This returned water counts as a credit toward getting more fresh water from the lake. The Water Authority says if people start using graywater to water their lawns and gardens rather than using drinking-quality water, their lowered water bills will dissuade them from conserving water. In other words, the Water Authority believes that legalizing graywater will cause people to use more fresh water and return less dirty water to the reclamation plant.

One of the more radical proposals involves pumping water from the eastern United States (where many regions are suffering the consequences of flooded rivers) over the Rockies to the West. In a Las Vegas Sun interview on May 1, Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, said, “We’ve taken water from the West now for a hundred years, maybe it’s time to start taking water from the East, rather than from the West.” Another speculative proposal lies beyond the shores of California, where there’s an ocean of water available for desalinization. In April, the California Coastal Commission approved the West Basin Municipal Water District’s plan to build a desalination system in Redondo Beach that can desalt 100,000 gallons of seawater per day.

The power requirement for either proposal—desalting seawater or transporting water over great distance—is enormous. But if the only other alternative is a mass evacuation from the western United States, what other choice do we have?
__________
Here you have it. Look long and hard, because this is our future if our moral will is superceded by status quo business as usual behavior. In order to not only save our water but ourselves a paradigm shift is now in order. It will require a new behavior brought about by a totally new mindset in line with a moral will to do what is right for the future instead of only thinking of the present and wanting what you want when you want it. It will involve the human species finally coming to maturity. The question is, is that possible now? Because if not the three alternatives listed in this article which are the reality of it are only bandaids on a moral wound that will then never heal.

What is happening to Lake Mead is a direct result of human greed and apathy. We have no one to blame but ourselves. The first step in mitigating this crisis is to admit that, and from there we can work on solving the problem. Unfortunately, human pride dictates that we always find another source for the blame to absolve ourselves from our selfish wasteful behavior. In doing so it gives us license to continue said behavior safe in the knowledge that we can still have what we want when we want it... until the well runs dry. But of course, then we will just find another source to ravage to get what we want, and then another, and another... not thinking that sooner or later that too will run dry.

In writing about the global water crisis over these years I have seen that this is about more than even political will, bills, and budgets. This goes to the very core of what we are as humans. This is political, yes, but it is also moral, spiritual, and ethical, and unless we reconcile to that the political will not follow. How can we continue to degrade the very resources that give us life with such abandon? How will we ever look our children in the eye and say to them that we knew that our wasteful behavior would bring us here but we just didn't care because we thought someone else would fix it?

Well, as we see here we are finding that the only ones who can fix this are those who have made it. Therefore, how is this fixed? Moving water from the Great Lakes to be wasted? Absurd and expensive and sure to start a regional conflict. Desalination? Carbon intensive, expensive, not guaranteed for long periods of time, threat to marinelife, and another excuse to keep wasting.... especially with a report just released showing the great damage to the ocean off the West Coast by humans already. Mass migration from the West Coast? I can't even begin to process that. Conservation? What's that you say? Actually CONSERVING the water left? Wow, what a concept. Not building golf courses and communities in the desert? Not wasting water in irrigation? Water restrictions that are adhered to? Truly ADEQUATE GHG emission targets instead of ones that appease industry? Actually planning for the future? But gee, we can't do that. It's just so much easier to keep doing what we are doing denying the results and thinking all will be well.

Only thing though, it isn't. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, and even that river is running dry.

Brazil Drought Staunches Famed Iguazu Falls

This is as close as you can get to a divine experience. It brings me to tears. Sheer beauty. Water is life.

And now:

Brazil drought staunches famed Iguazu falls


Excerpt:

"An acute drought in Brazil has hit the famed horseshoe-shaped Igauzu falls which straddle two countries, cutting back the tumbling waters to reveal the rocky sides.
Only a third of the usual volume of water is now flowing over the top of the stunning falls, which were listed as a world heritage site by UNESCO in 1984 and border both Brazil and Argentina, Globo television said.

At the foot of the falls on the Brazilian side, the bottom of the Parana river is now clearly visible, allowing environmentalists a rare chance to clean up mountains of accumulated trash.

The falls, which are actually made up of 275 waterfalls stretching some 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles), are taller than the Niagara Falls and twice as wide.

They provide a panoramic backdrop to the tropical rainforest region, with an average of 553 cubic feet of water per second from the Iguazu River thundering some 269 feet over the falls and then draining into the Parana.

Divers have been cleaning up the garbage which has collected in the Parana, finding everything from cameras to combs, CDs and batteries as well as plastic bottles, tin cans and umbrellas.

Some of the trash has floated down river from other towns, but most has been dropped by tourists, said environmentalist Tassio Lima."
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Now this should open your eyes. I have always thought that should these magnificent falls be diminshed that something surely was wrong with the climate balance of this planet. To stand and feel the raw energy and power and see the awe inspiring beauty of these falls is something to aspire to in life. To read these falls are now being diminshed due to drought leaves me sad, and must raise a flag.

We are changing the climate balance of this planet and it is affecting water beyond what I believe we could have comprehended or predicted. How much will we have to see disappear before we comprehend that as a species? And can you imagine, "tourists" throwing their garbage into the river there? Have we become that bereft of all respect for the natural beauty and power of this planet? We have forgotten our place and we are reaping the consequences of it now.