The coming Water Wars

Some of us are lucky in that fresh water availability has never been a problem. I live not far from rivers and lakes and can walk to the Great Lakes. Wouldn't think of drinking directly from it's and swimming isn't recommended either.

Improper deforestation over hundreds of years turned the Middle East and North Africa into deserts. Other places too.

Civilization started when wandering hunters and nomads settled near fresh water sources and could carry on agriculture. The Nile in Egypt and Tigris and Euphrates Rivers further East are where the first cities grew.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then.

Over 6 Billion people now. More people were born in the past century than since the beginning of mankind.

You can go more than 3 days without access to clean water. A couple billion people struggle with that problem on a day to day basis. The lack of proper hygiene is the biggest contributor to diseases and related deaths.

There are solutions but getting overconfident that they will be available to all just because they technically are feasible does not address the growing problems.



Mike

reply to post by mmiichael


gigapica.geenstijl.nl...

This is an excellent example of what you speak.

Poverty and illiteracy is no excuse for this.

Even the poor and the illiterate know the importance of clean water.

This is due to greed and the lost of hope.

Originally posted by pai mei
Great movie. Privatization is the solution ? Desalination ? What if I can't pay for it ? Water should be like air. Free. How do we protect it from our evil economic ways ? We don't. We will keep playing "Economy" until we have a dead planet.

Do you really think that the government is run by good people? How do you explain the unceasing wars and crippling taxes?

You have a job, in order that you have some produce to trade for the things you require in order to live. No one truly believes that you can survive without having a job. So why can't you just pay for what you use, as you do now. And if you lose your job well you should have planned for that contingency if it were such a likely option. Are you justified in pointing a gun at me and demanding my resources because you lost your job? No. Beggars can't be choosers.

You stray dangerously close to socialism. I encourage you to look up historical examples of socialism and find out just how destructive a 'benevolent' totalitarian state can be.

This is the problem :

"When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, then you will realize that you cannot eat money." ~ Cree Indian proverb
gigapica.geenstijl.nl...

Yes well long before that ever happened people would change the money commodity to food. Money is simply whatever is scarce and most practical to use in half-trades. (As opposed to barter which is full trade). Salt, pigs, chickens, cattle, etc etc have all been used as money throughout history. Gold and silver are used when there is prosperity and paper and worthless token metals are used when there is fascism.

[edit on 10-5-2009 by Yandros]

reply to post by Yandros


No, government is not made up of good people. But I prefer the government to say "everybody has the right to drinking water", and protect the water.
I do not want the government to sell the water to some corporation, like they did in Bolivia. That is evil.

About socialism : I am a communist. Yes the evil Stalin type, I have a red flag and a sickle and I chase people around and I demand they give me their money !
I don't care about money. They can keep them. Just don;t condition my survival on their money so I am forced to be their slave. But this is the system.

Soon (2-3 years) people will look at Cuba with envy. They will not care about peak oil, economic crisis or whatever. The WWF declared them the only country with sustainable development.

I am from Romania. Born in 1980 I experienced communism until the age of 10. It was not bad at all. Now people are forced to work to have a job, to destroy the planet. Back then everybody had a job, and there was no way they could get unemployed. But there were too many people so there was lot of free time at the job. Then people had 1 month and even more - paid holiday every year. Life was much less stressful than now. Of course there was the police state, but as long as you did not curse the great lider nobody wanted anything from you.

Now you are free : to vote? to chose from 1000 types of jeans. Nice freedoms ! Would like more free time - can't have that in capitalism, sorry. Free time is real freedom. Freedom to chose your master as a slave - that is not freedom.

Some of my threads:
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...





[edit on 11-5-2009 by pai mei]

[edit on 11-5-2009 by pai mei]

I remember about three years ago the bush administration or lobbyists wanted to enact some new trade laws for water to be traded on the commodity exchange. I thought this was absolutely crazy; so did a lot of governors in the western United States. These governors put a stop to it. One of these rich moguls’ was behind it , not sure which one though. Texas and NM have always had this water battle going over water rights, but when this was proposed. I guess Texas and NM Governors teamed up and got the opposition going and put a stop to it, for now. I know Texas did threaten something and so did NM .what I don’t know.

Originally posted by pai mei
reply to post by Yandros

 

No, government is not made up of good people. But I prefer the government to say "everybody has the right to drinking water", and protect the water.
I do not want the government to sell the water to some corporation, like they did in Bolivia. That is evil.

This makes no sense. How do the people have a 'right to water' without the right to own water? If you grant monopoly privilege to the government then the people have no right to ownership of water. That's one hundred times worse than one company having a monopoly over all water. Why? because governments are not accountable to their customers, they fund their operations through theft (taxation) and slavery. Further, if a single company has all the current water, that situation still allows people to find new sources of water, whereas if you grant the government power of all water then you are baring anyone from owning any water, even water they discover in new sources or develop from existing undrinkable sources.

About socialism : I am a communist. Yes the evil Stalin type, I have a red flag and a sickle and I chase people around and I demand they give me their money !

Forget money. Money doesn't mean anything. An economy is just trade. It's just people making stuff, and trading what they make with other people. As an economy grows then it becomes useful for people to exchange their produce for some common commodity, then exchange that commodity for some other produce. This is far easier than barter due to the probability of finding a trading partner who has what you want, and who wants what you have.

Remember: honest money just represents real goods, and it is an emergent institution derived directly from basic human nature. Humans will always strive to find the easiest way to do anything that they have to do to survive. Humans must trade to survive in numbers greater than a few hundred thousand, and money makes trade MUCH easier.

I don't care about money. They can keep them. Just don;t condition my survival on their money so I am forced to be their slave. But this is the system.

[

You would force everyone to be a slave to the government. The difference between a free man and a slave is that a slave can't own property and thus is perpetually dependent on a master for his subsistence. What you propose in communism / socialism is that ALL MEN BE SLAVES. No one can own capital equipment except the government, thus all are slaves under the government. And do you really think the government will be acting in your best interests? Who could be that naive? Government was the number one cause of unnatural death in the last century, and is the number one cause of poverty and famine throughout the world, and has been since its institution, right back to its earliest days. Evil people seek power, and they will stop at nothing to get it. A totalitarian state will ALWAYS end up with a madman in control of it. Good people shy from power, bad people kill for power. It's a no brainer.

Soon (2-3 years) people will look at Cuba with envy. They will not care about peak oil, economic crisis or whatever. The WWF declared them the only country with sustainable development.

This is a total load of bull#. I suggest you RING UP SOMEONE IN CUBA and ask them what they think of the government. Then see if you agree.

www.therealcuba.com...

I am from Romania. Born in 1980 I experienced communism until the age of 10. It was not bad at all. Now people are forced to work to have a job, to destroy the planet.

Back then everybody had a job, and there was no way they could get unemployed. But there were too many people so there was lot of free time at the job. Then people had 1 month and even more - paid holiday every year. Life was much less stressful than now. Of course there was the police state, but as long as you did not curse the great lider nobody wanted anything from you.

I'm sorry but this is just ridiculous. It was better when people didn't have to work? If you're not working then someone else is. There's no such thing as a free lunch. I take it you believe that you are entitled to sustenance and shelter? Who will provide it if not you? You are simply advocating slavery. You want to own slaves so they can provide for you.

Now you are free : to vote? to chose from 1000 types of jeans. Nice freedoms ! Would like more free time - can't have that in capitalism, sorry. Free time is real freedom. Freedom to chose your master as a slave - that is not freedom.

Just work part time? Buy less stuff, live more cheaply? You don't want free time, you want someone else to do your work for you. Which is dispicable and disgusting and frankly is the heart of the communist movement. You people disgust me. It's so deeply dishonest.

Honest men work for a living! Why don't you admit what you want is slavery. You want others to support you at the point of a gun so that you can watch movies and play video games all day. Well I won't stand for it. I hope you starve.

Hunter gatherers had much more free time than we do. Why ?
Because of this :
www.storyofstuff.com...

And this:

www.orionmagazine.org...

In a 1927 interview with the magazine Nation’s Business, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis provided some numbers to illustrate a problem that the New York Times called “need saturation.” Davis noted that “the textile mills of this country can produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and that 14 percent of the American shoe factories could produce a year’s supply of footwear. The magazine went on to suggest, “It may be that the world’s needs ultimately will be produced by three days’ work a week.”

Business leaders were less than enthusiastic about the prospect of a society no longer centered on the production of goods. For them, the new “labor-saving” machinery presented not a vision of liberation but a threat to their position at the center of power. John E. Edgerton, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, typified their response when he declared: “I am for everything that will make work happier but against everything that will further subordinate its importance. The emphasis should be put on work—more work and better work.” “Nothing,” he claimed, “breeds radicalism more than unhappiness unless it is leisure.”

By the late 1920s, America’s business and political elite had found a way to defuse the dual threat of stagnating economic growth and a radicalized working class in what one industrial consultant called “the gospel of consumption”—the notion that people could be convinced that however much they have, it isn’t enough. President Herbert Hoover’s 1929 Committee on Recent Economic Changes observed in glowing terms the results: “By advertising and other promotional devices . . . a measurable pull on production has been created which releases capital otherwise tied up.” They celebrated the conceptual breakthrough: “Economically we have a boundless field before us; that there are new wants which will make way endlessly for newer wants, as fast as they are satisfied.”

Today “work and more work” is the accepted way of doing things. If anything, improvements to the labor-saving machinery since the 1920s have intensified the trend. Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take. Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce.

Want to see capitalism ? Search "eat dirt+Haiti" see what you find. Cuba would be the same if they were not communist. Search for child labour in Bangladesh, see children age 4 working to recycle batteries.

The government must control all water, and give it for almost free. The government is the people. That is how it should be. How would you like if I controlled it and sell it at a very high price ?
You say I want others to work for me ? I don't . Want more free time. Not when I am old and retired then "enjoy life". Why do you work ? Not to get rich and have free time and others working for you ?



[edit on 11-5-2009 by pai mei]

This has been brewing for awhile, and unfortunately for the vast amount of people it's too late. Luckily for us first world nations, it doesn't mean death, just an extra bill to pay and another scare tactic to keep us on our toes.

Would you rather have a terror attack or be told that there is only enough water for half the population? Interestingly, such a tactic could really bring together community's hell-bent on saving water.

Originally posted by shamus78
This has been brewing for awhile, and unfortunately for the vast amount of people it's too late. Luckily for us first world nations, it doesn't mean death, just an extra bill to pay and another scare tactic to keep us on our toes.

Would you rather have a terror attack or be told that there is only enough water for half the population? Interestingly, such a tactic could really bring together community's hell-bent on saving water.

Why is it too late?

[edit on 11-5-2009 by NightSkyeB4Dawn]

Heres a really interesting video about water and how it has memory I'd recomend watching it if anyones interested.

video.google.com...



[edit on 12-5-2009 by wassy]