An Inconvenient Truth not only discusses what we are doing to our atmosphere regarding the burning of fossil fuels. Related to that is also the looming water crisis we now face that is predicted to lead us into wars for this precious resource should current trends continue and as human activity continues to contribute to the conditions causing severe drought in our world through melting permafrost and glaciers.
In Al Gore's prescient movie, An Inconvenient Truth, he presents to us a scenario of a planet that is now evolving and will continue to evolve from our current rapacious use of fossil fuels because of our continued denial about the consequences of our actions in denying our role in it's making, and reneging on our moral responsibility to our planet to stem the tide of those effects.
It is a movie that I believe must be seen by all, as it truly depicts the world we are creating for our children and the hope and will we need to solve this crisis, which I too believe can be done. And inextricably linked to the climate crisis we now face is also a looming global water crisis.
I cannot stress enough how absolutely crucial an issue this is to our world and our lives. It is so complex an issue that I could not hope to cover all that is involved in it in this one entry. However, I truly hope I can convey the sense of urgency that we must have regarding this issue in this entry, as water will be the resource fought over in years to come should present conditions persist or worsen, as it is the one resource we cannot live without.
As populations increase globally and water use per person rises, the demand for freshwater is increasing. This is becoming the most crucial environmental issue of our future. The supply of freshwater on Earth is finite and the majority of it globally is threatened by pollution. Pollution we are making. This presents many countries with difficult choices between demand and the increasing percentages of polluted water that leave whole populations without anything else to use for sanitation, drinking, and everyday living. Populations continue to grow rapidly and there is no more water on Earth now than there was 2,000 years ago when the population was less than 3% of its current size.
Farming, domestic (municipal) consumption, and privatization that does not take these issues into account are causing wars over allocation of scarce water resources and pollution issues regarding freshwater available. Today, 31 countries counting for under 8% of the world population, face chronic freshwater shortages. By the year 2025, however, 48 countries are expected to face shortages affecting more than 2.8 billion people, -35% of the world's projected population.
Among countries likely to run short of water in the next 25 years are Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Nigeria, and Peru. Other large countries such as China already face chronic water problems due to economic expansion with poor policies in place regarding water safety and scarcity, and severe drought due to excessive heat brought on in part by climate change. And in much of the world polluted water, improper waste disposal, and poor water management cause deadly public health problems.
Water-related diseases such as malaria, cholera, typhoid, and schistosomiasis harm or kill millions of people every year. Overuse and pollution of water supplies also are taking a heavy toll on the natural environment and pose increasing risks for many species of life.
Water-borne diseases caused by the lack of adequate sanitary waste disposal clean water for drinking, cooking, and washing is to blame for over 12 million deaths a year... twelve million preventable deaths a year. This figure does not even take into account those who die due to droughts that also affect food supplies. Countries such as Niger and Kenya have been experiencing droughts beyond the crisis stage for many years, yet there seems to be no viable solutions being brought forward aggressively to alleviate the suffering of these people even as scientists corroborate the human activity that is contributing to the drought conditions over 30% of this world now faces.
More than one billion people worldwide have no access to safe drinking water (that's four times the U.S. population).
More than 2.5 billion people worldwide have no access to adequate sanitation facilities.
More than 8,000 children die every day (nearly one child every 10 seconds) from illness linked to inadequate and unsafe water supplies and waste disposal in poor countries. Nearly all of this illness is preventable.
Improvements in water supply and sanitation reduce infant mortality by an average of 55%.
The twenty-first century is here and still one of every six persons on Earth faces a daily life threatening struggle... the struggle just to get water to drink. Now with climate change becoming part of this equation, there is an added factor to consider. Appropriate policies and strategies must be formulated and acted on soon by the world community. Whatever the reason for water's use be it for farming, municipal use, or industry, there is much more room for conservation and more effective management to eliminate waste, emphasize conservation, and stress sustainability.
To avoid a global catastrophe over the long term, it also is important to act now to slow the growth in demand for freshwater by slowing population growth and bringing the inconvenient truth to people that we simply must stop the rapacious emitting of greenhouse gases that are contributing to the effects we are seeing in much of the world.
And now scientists have reported that due to melting permafrost, more CO2 and methane is being released into our atmosphere at a rate six times faster than was anticipated, and human activity is also exacerbating this viscious cycle which once again does and will also have an effect on global water supplies in relation to drought, dams, diversion, and lack of water due to waste and privatization.
I then submit that there needs to be a global sustainability summit held (which most definitely should be presided over by Mr. Gore) where the needs of the world's poor are truly represented regarding issues of future sustainability. I think that would be one way for Al Gore to bring this message to the world community all at once, and to truly have a meeting of minds to seriously plan for our future. And we need to see major legislation on the part of this nation's Congress addressing the climate crisis that is affecting our world also in regards to water scarcity.Without planning now for the repercussions of over population, pollution, economic unrest, and our own contributions to the climate crisis we now face (which all contribute to these preventable deaths in the millions due to diseases borne of our own greed and indifference to our world and fellow citizens,) we surely may see the closing of that ten year window Dr. James Hansen of NASA warned us about. And for our future sustainability, that is simply not an option.
As Al Gore stated in An Inconvenient Truth, we are reaching a period of consequences, but we do have all we need to mitigate this crisis. What we lack is the will and the hope. It's time to stop using our resources for war and death which take away that will and hope, and start using them for the work they were meant to do: Giving life. This is then most definitely the moral issue of our time.
http://www.climatecrisis.nethttp://water-is-life.blogspot.comMy blog on water issues.
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