~ firefly-dreaming a virtual home to learn (or teach!) alternative methods of solving problems we find facing us each day. By sharing ideas & knowledge on living with less stress, more joy & embracing tolerance & compassion we are working towards building a sustainable future for all living beings.
Good news, really? Well, I've been writing so many bleak water diaries for so long (I am sure you are well versed about the current water scarcity, desertification and Climate Change) that I need to cheer myself up (and you) and report about one - major - positive development. I have great faith in humanity and this post is dedicated to the good folks out there bursting their synapses coming up with novel ways of making the world less dependent on fossil fuels, working out solutions to feed the planet and generally trying to make this earth a better place (if you look at the human brain from say, 150,000 years ago, you will not see much difference when compared with today's brains. Yet the drive to learn, as well as our ability to communicate and work collectively, has lifted our human potential to unimaginable levels.)
For quite some time I have been following the efforts of Ireland-based entrepreneur Pat Farrelly of Aqua-Nu, and his revolutionary water filtration devices. Why is it important? Click on the above link. Mr Farrelly (who, by the way, is completely self-taught in the world of ceramic technology) has come up with a method of filtering water through ceramic which works roughly 700 times faster than anything else currently manufactured.
Note that I have absolutely no financial interest in his company but a huge admiration for what he has achieved.
Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
So wrote Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his seminal work, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The irony of finding oneself completely surrounded by water unable to partake a drink is not lost on us, and that may be the future as rapidly increasing populations are expected to more than double the need for more water by 2025. What really irks me is the lack of awareness from politicians and people in general: whenever I have a conversation with a friend or a client about water scarcity, I get the same vacant look, eyes roll, and shrugs ensue. I mostly get "but we have had water for millions of years, and surely, the rain replenishes aquifers!" Hum, no. Google aquifers and you will discover an entirely different story. Clean, potable water is finite. The world's apparent warming climate has caused fresh water reserves to fall across the globe. And to make matters worse a well known idiot, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican from Orange County, has an idea to battle global warming: "cut off the trees!" My head hurts at such asinine pronouncing.
To most it may seem obtuse to talk of a water crisis when we've had recent floods and deluges in some countries and yet we know water scarcity already affects 45% of the world's population. The next twenty five years will be crucial for not only governments but food producers worldwide. The message is stark: less water, less food.
The following linked articles and known facts are causes for concern.
Water use has been growing globally at more than twice the rate of population increase in the last century, and an increasing number of regions are reaching the limit at which water services can be sustainably delivered. So, what could go wrong? Plenty. While peak oil may be the least of our problem, peak water is almost upon us.
In this round-up I've blockquoted the most significant aspect of our collective problem, to save you from having to click on the links, and depress yourself further. I've read somewhere that more people in the world own cell phones than have access to a toilet, that's a depressing fact. What's even more depressing is the apparent obliviousness of some who gleefully would say that water will never run out...that the amount of water will never change...that it's called the water cycle. Yeah, right!
Last week I met up with an old globetrotter friend who had taken a sabbatical from his business. He had been traveling from Morocco to South Africa, mostly by train and buses, and had wanted to see as many countries as he could within his eight months of allotted time.
And here is what he said, more or less (though he would have written this far more elegantly than I can): "in every single country I visited, a Chinese presence is deeply felt, whether it's in the form of oil & mineral exploitation & mining, forestry, growing food and general infrastructure, they have managed to sew up the entire continent."
What does it mean, I asked my friend. His response was short and succinct: "it means the western world has missed the boat, pure and simple. While we wage unwinnable wars in three continents, the Chinese are busy laying the foundations for their next century, and they are also creating the green jobs & renewable energies that we only talk about."
Back in the eighties, in Sydney, I had the luck of renting an apartment on a rooftop. In fact the bricked space outside the quaint 2-bedroom was twice the size of our living quarters, and had 2 solid pergolas which could sit a party of 10 comfortably under both. The view wasn't bad either, the Opera House & and the (coat-hanger) bridge loomed in the distance. At the time I was running perhaps my most successful eatery and came into buying a fair amount of Bordeaux and Burgundy wines encased in sturdy pine boxes. Being a hundred feet or so closer to the sun gave me the idea of growing my own vegetables and herbs, and give my toddling son something to watch and amuse him.
So, with the help of a couple of friends, we trekked up some hundred or so boxes, soil (a good potting mix) and lots of old newspapers, and a bale of straw. Newspapers? Straw? Yes: an old friend of mine, an organic gardener who supplied some restaurants, had told me to intersperse sheets of papers with the soil, creating sub-layers (I think, IIRC, 4 to 5 layers per box, which was a foot high) thus saving a reasonable amount of water in the process. Straw was also a good idea to put into the soil with the paper. It worked. Daily watering, once in the morning and sparsely in the evening, using an old fashioned watering can, gave way to fresh organic vegetables from right outside my door within weeks. My little boy, who was beginning to talk non stop, was seen singing to the various plants one afternoon....pity I didn't have a video recorder in those days!
(today is World Water Day
what are you doing to conserve?
- promoted by dancingtrees)
I got an email from UNESCO reminding me that this year's World Water Day is to be held again on the 22nd of this month.
The objective of World Water Day 2011 is to focus international attention on the impact of rapid urban population growth, industrialization and uncertainties caused by climate change, conflicts and natural disasters on urban water systems.
This year's theme, Water for cities: responding to the urban challenge, aims to spotlight and encourage governments, organizations, communities, and individuals to actively engage in addressing the challenge of urban water management.
I skipped last month's Dead Water News as time suddenly became precious, almost as precious as water. This month's round-up brings a few surprises, with a couple of stories on food production since the two are closely related, but first a word on water scarcity, as a couple of posters asked me to define it (though there are differing opinions): from the point of view of anthropogenic or ecosystem use, water scarcity is simply characterized by a greater demand than supply. So how do governments around the world react to address the situation? Neoliberalism (a shaky model of economics rooted in the belief that liberal market economics constitutes the one and only economic choice for the entire world) seems to have taken hold as most countries, under the aegis of the World Bank, aided and abated by the IMF, are scrambling to privatize our most precious resource (a cursory look at this recent Newsweek article and this article, one of many circulating on teh internets, explains the machinations, as did this diary of mine two years ago.)
Even without accounting for climate change impacts, future population development, especially in the underdeveloped and developing regions, will greatly aggravate water scarcity. The challenge before us is to move the world toward a state of improved water efficiency and to address the growing scarcity of water. And that requires political will, which seems to be as scarce as, you have guessed, water.
Roughly 1 calorie of food requires 1 liter of water. So, most of the daily per capita water requirements arise from covering the energy requirements to sustain the metabolism. Unless you happen to grow most of your food, if your body needs say, 2,400 calories a day, you do the math.
I adore garlic. And who doesn't? Apart from my porridge and desserts (though I have made a garlic flavored ice cream in the past), it's in everything I cook. I can't tell enough you how incredibly healthy it is (perhaps you have read my garlic diaries, here and here). So, what's up with this bulb? A garlic war on your doorsteps, no less. How so? Here are the stakes:
The U.S. consumes about 300 million pounds of fresh or peeled garlic annually, and consumption is growing as garlic moves from a primary ingredient in many ethnic dishes to a mainstay in American kitchens and restaurants. The growing consumption would seemingly paint a bright picture for California garlic production, but the drop in acreage gives a clue otherwise. The reason: China.
Here's the maths: China went from 50,000 pounds of garlic a decade ago to 2 million to 3 million pounds last year, flooding the market with fresh and dehydrated garlic. So what's the problem, we're getting cheap garlic. Well, yes, but much of the garlic exported to the U.S. is dehydrated and may contain high levels of lead.
The international events of this past few days have distracted from financial news on the destructive nature of our current capitalistic religion: now that most finance companies and international speculators have ruined the property market and can no longer leverage their profits from the burst bubble, they are turning to food commodities.
All it takes is a quick reading of the latest UN reports in the past few days which indicate that up to 70% of business on commodity markets is speculative rather than trade. Furthermore the FAO indicates that food prices could rise as high as 40% over the next few years as a result.
