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Edited on Tue Mar-22-05 09:01 AM by ElsewheresDaughter
you CA"T drink oil.....and only 3% of the planets water is fresh. 2.5% of that is frozen in the polar caps.less than 1 half of 1% is accessable for mankinds needs..i read this book "Blue Gold" a few years ago and was astonished to learn about he global water crisis and the commodification of the planets water supply.
www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Water/Blue_Gold.html
We'd like to believe there's an infinite supply of water on the planet. But the assumption is tragically false. Available freshwater amounts to less than one-half of 1 percent of all the water on earth. The rest is sea water, or is frozen in the polar ice. Fresh water is renewable only by rainfall, at the rate of 40,000 to 50,000 cubic kilometers per year. Due to intensive urbanization, deforestation, water diversion and industrial farming, the earth's surface is drying. If present trends persist, the water in all river basins on every continent could steadily be depleted.
Global consumption of water is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth. According to the United Nations, more than one billion people on earth already lack access to fresh drinking water. If current trends persist, by 2025 the demand for freshwater is expected to rise to 56 percent above the amount that is currently available.
As the water crisis intensifies, governments around the world-under pressure from transnational corporations-are advocating a radical solution the privatization, commodification and mass diversion of water. Proponents say that such a system is the only way to distribute water to the world's thirsty. However, experience shows that selling water on the open market does not address the needs of poor, thirsty people. On the contrary, privatized water is delivered to those who can pay for it, such as wealthy cities and individuals and water-intensive industries, such as agriculture and high-tech. As one resident of the high desert in New Mexico observed after his community's water had been diverted for use by the high-tech industry "Water flows uphill to money."
The push to commodify water comes at a time when the social, political and economic impacts of water scarcity are rapidly becoming a destabilizing force, with water-related conflicts springing up around the globe. For example, Malaysia, which supplies about half of Singapore's water, threatened to cut off that supply in 1997 after Singapore criticized its government policies. In Africa, relations between Botswana and Namibia have been severely strained by Namibian plans to construct a pipeline to divert water from the shared Okavango River to eastern Namibia.
The former mayor of Mexico City has predicted a war in the Mexican Valley in the foreseeable future if a solution to the city's water crisis is not found soon. Much has been written about the potential for water wars in the Middle East, where water resources are severely limited. The late King Hussein of Jordan once said the only thing he would go to war with Israel over was water, because Israel controls Jordan's water supply.
Meanwhile, the future of one of the earth's most vital resources is being determined by those who profit from its overuse and abuse. A handful of transnational corporations, backed by the World Bank, are aggressively taking over the management of public water services in developing countries, dramatically raising the price of water to the local residents and profiting from the Third World's desperate search for solutions to the water crisis. The corporate agenda is clear water should be treated like any other tradable good, with its use determined by market principles.
At the same time, governments are signing away their control over domestic water supplies by participating in trade agreements such as the NAFTA; its proposed successor, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); and the World Trade Organization (WTO). These global trade institutions effectively give transnational corporations unprecedented access to the water of signatory countries.
Already, corporations have started to sue governments in order to gain access to domestic water sources. For example, Sun Belt, a California company, is suing the government of Canada under NAFTA because British Columbia (B.C.) banned water exports several years ago. The company claims that B.C.'s law violates several NAFTA-based investor rights and therefore is claiming $10 billion in compensation for lost profits.
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With the protection of these international trade agreements, companies are setting their sights on the mass transport of bulk water by diversion and by supertanker. Several companies are developing technology whereby large quantities of freshwater would be loaded into huge sealed vinyl bags and towed across the ocean for sale. Selling water to the highest bidder will only exacerbate the worst impacts of the world water crisis.
so much more....
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