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Ear to the Ground

Water Is the New Oil

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Posted on Apr 22, 2009
Flickr / just clicked

Turns out polar bears aren’t the only land mammals struggling with global warming. Many of the world’s most-used rivers, from the Colorado to the Ganges, have been losing water for the last 50 years. So, in addition to coping with floods, storms, deserts and mass extinction, we could all die of thirst. Happy Earth Day.

BBC:

From the Yellow river in northern China to the Ganges in India to the Colorado river in the United States—the US scientists say that the major sources of fresh water for much of the world’s population are in decline.

The researchers analysed water flows in more than 900 rivers over a 50-year period to 2004.

They found that there was an overall decline in the amount of water flowing into the world’s oceans.

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By T.emeric, April 23, 2009 at 4:33 pm Link to this comment

“Water Is The New Oil,” “Turns out…” Words; Is this new news? I wonder if the media pays attention to the real world, or do they exist outside of reality, living in a place where everything is nothing, until it is written, until they write it, until they take an interest in it.

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By flow, April 23, 2009 at 1:11 pm Link to this comment

If you haven’t see the movie Blue Gold: World Water Wars or read the book Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World’s Water, I highly recommend it.

Little wonder the Bush family is quietly buying up the land sitting on top of the last great (undrained and unpolluted) aquifer in the Americas.

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By samosamo, April 23, 2009 at 8:00 am Link to this comment

Another pure case of corporate meddling. Here is an essential part of life, animals are about 70% water, and sure enough those ‘behind closed doors’ meeting some young ambitious greedy asshole is figuring out how to lay claim on water for corporate funding. Think about the whole genetic industry where the science has degenerated to the point of some unworthy greedy souls can not claim PATENT rights on genes that are in yours, mine and any living thing’s body.

I would be not amazed to hear that ‘clean water’ is the key because the competition for clean water is of real moment as ‘industry’, for the good of the people, must have it for their business and/or manufacturing, that will be cheap if not free. The people depending on unpolluted water for life will have to pay dearly, not that those ‘public water works’ aren’t already charging out the wahzoo for their investors now.

So now that corporate america has polluted the water to such an extent that water sources everywhere are becoming more and more polluted just because these pollutors make us believe that they could not function if they had to control their waste. Next will be the air and a lot of people will be shocked when they start receiving bills for the clean air they breath.

But the main threat here is the ‘unfettered’ growth of the human population. And it is now a problem that is so big, I don’t think it will be corrected except but some extra ordinary event that will make this cutback of the over abundance of humans.

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By Spiritgirl, April 22, 2009 at 2:58 pm Link to this comment

Water (or scarcity of) should be the security concern!  For those unwilling to understand what “climate change” really means, think of a spider web, each piece of the web makes it strong, whole, and once you knock out enough parts of the web what you have left isn’t really worth anything.  Much the same way each degree increase in temperature- changes are happening, and while we may not “see” them they are occurring.

It is past time that we as human beings stop paying lip service and start doing all that we collectively can to mitigate the changes we are forcing on the planet, because this time it may not bounce back as much as we think it will.

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