Water: The Blue Gold that Threatens World Stability

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http://watchingamerica.com/News/242640/water-the-blue-gold-that-threatens-world-stability/

Wall Street banks are buying large reserves of the precious liquid all over the world.

Water: The Blue Gold that Threatens World Stability
Bolpress, Bolivia
By Luis Beatón
Translated By Courtney Cadenhead
11 July 2014
Edited by Emily France

The showdown for control of the world’s water, the so-called “blue gold,” could intensify during the next few years in the face of unrestrained efforts by the world’s dominant economic and political powers to monopolize that vital resource. The crisis advances silently; the media speaks of wars in the Middle East, in Africa and in other corners of the world, and little is said of the threat that looms over the majority of the world’s population.

California, made famous more than a century ago by the gold fever in that part of the western United States, now accumulates land titles as it faces a terrible drought — a situation some farmers have used to their advantage by selling their private water reserves at the price of gold.

The “Salad Bowl” state, which has an annual agricultural production valued at $44.6 billion and produces half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables, has suffered an absence of rain for three consecutive summers. An article from the newspaper La Opinión cited economists who reported that the resulting need for water has multiplied the price of that essential liquid 10 times in the last five years.

Scientists indicate that global warming will worsen the droughts and increase the cost of maintaining the water supply system in that western state of the United States, all of which is expected to compound the crisis even more.