It’s raining outside, and not for the first time lately.
But don’t call this “bad weather”! Because we need the water. Perhaps not acutely here in the North-East, but worldwide, water shortage is growing – and will only get worse.
Here some water facts:
• About one billion people in the world are short of water, and suffer from consequences of poor sanitation and not enough drinking water.
• Mexico City is sinking because water for 20 Million people is pumped out under the city and cannot be refilled.
• Beijing’s aquifers are drying out because, with heavy industrialization, more wells have been drilled: Water levels are falling about a meter per year. Wells need to be deeper now: Up to a thousand feet. Rivers and lakes, especially in the North, are drying out.
• The same happens in Africa where, for instance, Lake Chad is getting to look like a puddle.
• Similar things happen here: California faces drought and water shortage. Texas wants to privatize water. For Colorado, future shortages are on the wall – due to population growth, global warming and extensive use of Colorado water by other states.
• Groundwater gets more polluted from agricultural and industrial run-off. Lee water is soaked up in forests and meadows because more and more land is covered with asphalt – the asphalt industry worldwide still grows by two percent every year.
• Bottled water is becoming a commodity – and you make firms rich (and yourself poor) if you buy bottled water. Water is your life right – it should not be peddled away.
For now only this: There is no bad weather – just healthy water. Unless we are talking hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, flash floods … Read More
Blog: On Health. On Writing. On Life. On Everything.
Water Emergency
May 4, 2010
In the Boston area where I live, two million people have been under a spell for four days: They had a water emergency.
Of course, for a time now, there is a water emergency in the world. The UN created World Water Day (March 22, exactly a month before Earth Day) in order to pull attention to the fact that the rich countries are not conserving water, and the poor countries are suffering. Global warming will only make the situation worse.
So, back to Boston: Did we run out of water? No. Because of a main break, we were required to boil our water for two minutes before ingesting it. That led to a run on supermarkets, and in no time bottled water was sold out. People were panicking.
A neighbor called us in Maine to tell us of the catastrophe. We filled a 23 liter tank with our delicious Maine well water and headed home. Did I say “catastrophe”? Today the boiling water order was lifted. But it leaves me sad.
My mission (one of them) in life is to spread news about the health benefits of cooking your own dinner from scratch every evening – for your family, for yourself. As I see it, the catastrophe lies in this: People can’t cook – they can’t even boil water!
The good news: People might pay more attention to the world-wide water problem. Read More