It seems remarkable that the Chinese symbol for water is the same symbol they use for control. Yet now, with a slightly larger grasp on the issue of water, as a finite resource, I see that the Chinese were light years ahead of the rest world on this issue. After viewing, Blue Gold, World Water Wars, I have learned that the Bush family is making grabs at this control by obtaining land in Paraguay, as a means to control the Guarani aquifer. The sense that they have helped to create this crisis and now are predicting the future haunts me.
During the Reagan administration, 1981-1989, Ronald Reagan teamed up with other world leaders, Margaret Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping, and Augusto Pinochet in support of a Neoliberal world. This started the deregulating of corporations, the removal of state intervention in economic affairs and the privatization of major commodities. Margaret Thatcher named water as a commodity and that is when the major trouble began. Three main corporations own most of the world’s fresh water, Suez, Vivendi and Thames Water. They own the water that is supplied to all of the large cities within the United States. Since the privatization of water, the cost has skyrocketed while the quality has plummeted.
The manner by which the world is currently using its water is disgusting. Farmers in California operating under the appropriation doctrine are encouraged to waste water for fear of losing their water rights. Golfers in Las Vegas stare out upon a sea of green while Lake Mead is being pumped into Las Vegas at 300,000 acre-feet of water per year. One acre-foot of water equals 325,900 gallons of water. The endless ways water is being misused is astounding, and that is only talking about in the U.S., where most people can afford to pay for water.
The film was very well developed and covered many issues worldwide. It showed the case of many Africans, whose water is regimented by a meter, a coin is necessary to make the water flow, those without a coin go without water. Or they go to a polluted water source, which is their only means of drinking, cooking or cleaning. These sources produce cholera, tuberculosis, polio, miscarriages and other pathologies we may not even know of yet.
About 70 percent of the earth is covered in water, 97 percent of this water is salt water, of the remaining 3 percent, which is fresh water, the stuff life depends on, we have already polluted and contaminated beyond use. So what do the big boys upstairs propose we do about it? Create desalination plants! They only cost huge sums of cash and waste huge amounts of energy and fossil fuels to create a source of water that life can depend on. The problem is money. Lusting for it, grabbing for it and doing anything to anyone in order to ensure your share of it. We have to change consciousness. We have to shift focus on private gain through exploitation to cooperation and sustention. The planet cannot sustain us the way we have been operating. And if it comes down to us against the planet, I’m betting on the planet.
References:
Blue Gold, World Water Wars, Sam Bozzo
Water Wars, Vandana Shiva
Lake Mead is Drying Up, Mark Frauenfelder
Cholera and the Age of Water Barons, Bill Marsden
Latin America After Neoliberalism: Turning the Tide in the 21st Century, Lars Schoultz
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