WHEN WILL PEOPLE WORLDWIDE HAVE ENOUGH CLEAN, SAFE WATER TO DRINK?
This is a question of all time. Indeed, when we look at the way population has grown in the last one-hundred years, and the way the environment in general has suffered, we are forced to face certain realities. The realities of war, famine, drought, deforestation, over population and human waste are all around us and will be the biggest threat to us in the future.
There is no miracle cure for this, and this problem can only be addressed when all the Nations and people of the world, work as one. When each person makes a personal effort to keep their corner of the world clean and healthy, then we can achieve true and lasting change.
It is unfair and impractical to expect uneducated and under developed countries to take care of their environment, when the wealthy and more advanced countries can manipulate their governments, interfere in their businesses, and never take responsibility. The richer countries set up a desire in those poorer nations to commit atrocities that rape their environment. Then they take the wealth acquired back home, where they have no such visible environmental threats.
Soon the country is on CNN telling how the water is unclean due to certain industrial practices. This gets attention for a few minutes, and the richer countries say things like,” that’s awful”, and “they should do something about that”. But, the sadness soon fades, and all that’s left is a country with its natural resources drained, and a people in worse shape than before.
Technology is a great tool, but needs to be administered with wisdom. To go into a country with no industry, and help them to develop into a competitive trade nation is admirable. However if we go in and show them these tricks of big business and technology, and to do not impart to them the lessons to be learned from them, we are doing more harm than good.
We see they have a viable resource; we go in tell them about it, show them how to get it, and how to make it profitable for us both. During this process, we teach them nothing about what that new enterprise may do to their environment or how to prevent harm to their eco-system.
After we do this the heads of those corporations responsible, sit here in much safer conditions and manipulate them to increase profit margins. Of course when these heads of business are asked about the terrible conditions in that country, they can deny any responsibility saying it’s not our fault they don’t take care of their environment. This is at best irresponsible and at worst a quiet genocide.
Even in those richer countries they have to put chemicals in their water and run it through a filtering process to make it safe to drink. They seem to think that this has nothing to do with that and their problems are just that. When in reality the water is all connected on this planet. How long before all the things we do in one country affect the whole world when so many countries are polluting?
Insuring our future water supply is not a simple matter of conservation, or cleaning up certain highly visible bodies of water, but a matter of each person on the planet taking responsibility for their actions and taking steps to correct them. We are truly only as strong as our weakest link.
We cannot survive without water, it is as important as the air we breathe. As our water supply goes so go we all.
