"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children." A Liberal-supporting, environmentalist blog. We blog according to our opinions, not those of the party or government. Free speech must win and that's why we have this blog. The views of two Montrealers and a Libertarian.
The world's freshwater supply is getting depleted. Demand will only rise as more of the world develops and the population increases. However, there are desalination plants that remove the salt from sea water. That's all very good except that these plants use enormous amounts of energy that is usually fossil fuels. But, in our own country, a Vancouver-based business called Saltworks Technologies has designed a way to separate salt and water while at the same time, cutting down energy use by half, maybe 80%. This kind of innovation will be important in the next few decades. Water will become valuable and there could be wars over it. This kind of desalination technology, that won't require a lot of energy provides us with hope for the future.
The world isn’t facing a water shortage. Anyone who lives by the ocean knows that.
What we are running short of is fresh water. Only 3 per cent of the water on this planet is considered fresh water, and of that about two thirds is locked up in glaciers.
Most of the rest isn’t close to the people who need it most, with parts of Australia, India and the U.S. southwest being some of the better known water-scarce regions.
Water as we all know helps with food drinking and agriculuture, But it can do the oposite and so much more, because of climate change extrem weather activity has happened that have distroyed many crops. Climate change have caused many climate catastrophies like hurricains will come more and more which will cause major disators all around the world. With the polar ice caps melting the water level will rise all around and flood many areas. We have to take action to ensure that the effects of climate change are as minimal as possible, and water is seen as the resource of health and life and not the resource of catastrophies and death.
In July, the United Nations proclaimed access to safe and clean water was a human right. But, right now, almost a billion people live without clean and safe access to drinking water. Water is life. Without it we cannot survive. By declaring access to safe and clean water a human right, the United Nations are helping protect lives.
Now is the time to act. If we are to lift the poor out of poverty, people must have access to safe water. It's a matter of helping other humans who live in our world. In the goal of providing clean water to everyone, each country should invest in building the infrastructure that is needed in those countries instead of the pointless spending we see a lot of here in Canada. Investing in human rights such as water in other countries will not only boost our international reputation, but could also have landed us that seat on the Security Council...
3 world countries in Africa are considered 3rd world, because of lack for water. Which means everything in our global economy. If you have oil it means nothing unless you have water to get it. You need water for agriculture. You need lakes or shores for fishing and tourism. If you have none of these you country is doomed to go third world. European countries don't have as much water as North America does, but they have a substantial amount, while African countries have none or extremely minimal. Yet the U.S is allowing companies to pollute lakes rivers and ocean by allowing companies to leak toxic into the water. 40% of rivers and 46% of lakes in the U.S are too polluted to swim, fish or allow animals to survive. The U.S might be heading third world if it doesn't stop allowing companies to pollute in any river they want. Many places in the U.S are trying to preserve there rivers lakes for the future generation. We must make sure that we keep our lakes and rivers clean.
(note: even though rivers and lakes are polluted the tap water doesn't come from there as tap water is regulated to be clean and safe in the U.S)
In history we learn that many countries have wars, because of resources. In new France the resource was fur. In the last couple decades the resource was oil. Now in the future water will be the new oil. As the population in the world continue to increase which will make water the most demanded resource on earth even above water. Canada a country that has the largest supply of water will be in center stage of this shift in power. Canada may have to struggle with even higher immigration than we have today, and many countries across the world are going to be looking at Canada for the resource. The planet will shift and Canada will become the new Saudi Arabia for resource.
I've talked a lot about the enormous GHG emissions of the tar sands. However, the tar sands are also depleting our clean freshwater. The great majority of the tar sand sare located in the Athabasca region. It just so happens that the Athabasca watershed is situated in the same place. Naturally, bitumen, which IS the tar sands, needs to be refined, with a heavy use of water. It takes four barrels of water to produce every barrel of oil from the tar sands. This water is drawn from Canadian rivers.After the transformation of bitumen into oil, the water, along with many other "leftovers" of the process is dumped into tailing ponds that look something like this:
These tailing ponds are often quite close to the freshwater supply. Chemicals could easily leak into the drinking water of communities further downstream. Yet nothing is done about the waste and pollution of water that the tar sands cause. What we need is environmental taxes, to make sure that the polluters don't get away with wasting and leeching chemicals into our drinking water. Wasting and polluting water should not be tolerated, especially when the world will need more as we move into the future. Water should be used in a smart way, and not polluted. The tar sands are a prime example of those who waste water and it doesn't look pretty either.
In north America many people don't want to use city tap water, because it is "unsafe". So many people go for the alternative bottled water. In Cleavland they did a test between city tap vs. Fiji water bottle. What they found out is that tap water better quality and wins in a taste test. This is true across the country in the U.S where tap water is proven to be safer in most cases as it is more regulated and tastier than bottled water. People in the U.S buy more than 500,000,000 water bottles. Why? Because water companies are tricking people into think that tap water isn't safe, but the truth is that it is much better, and one third of all bottled water bottles is just filtered water from the tap. plastic that makes the bottle comes from oil and with 500,000,000 bottles of plastic that is enough oil and energy to fuel a million cars. The reason oil prices are going up is because we waste oil on plastic bottles we use once. Water bottles are the biggest waste of two dollars and our environment. Unless you live in an area where the water isn't really safe, because of polluting industries like the water bottled industry you should always try the tap.In North America we need to push against water bottles and try to ban them from our lives.
Blog Action Day is is today! Throughout the day, the Happy Wanderer will post eight posts about water around the world. We hope you enjoy this as much as we will. Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.
Blog Action Day 2010 is Friday, October 15. The subject this year is water. Almost a billion people on this planet don't have access to clean drinking water. There are many different issues covering water. The Happy Wanderer is participating in Blog Action Day 2010. We hope you register your blog too! Register here. Sign the petition supporting clean water for everyone here. Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.
Join the global conversation around water on October 15th.
