On February 27, award-winning independent media (radio/television/web) outlet Democracy Now! interviewed Maude Barlow of the Blue Planet Project about a new documentary entitled "Flow, For Love of Water." The piece (both the interview and documentary) focuses on dangers of corporate interests privatizing a quintessential life source in impending water shortages attributed to global climate change as well as the process of "recycling" water as opposed to practicing and enforcing its conservation. Their argument taken from the Blue Planet Project's website: "Water justice is based on the right to water and on the principles that water is a public trust and part of the global commons."
For me, this is a pretty compelling example of a "low dread, high risk" situation. The documentary writers include a survey of the severity--in describing what the actual impact of global water shortages will be, and, based on the interview, begin describing regional effects before expounding upon global effects. There is a strong sense of urgency delivered, and a strong claim that each individual is susceptible to such a disaster, being touched by resource wars or an actual shortage (due to privatization, turning water into a commodity)--all in the name of water ownership.
The information provided through this particular choice of a media outlet is disseminated to a widely civic-literate audience which is generally comprised of activists and leftists. There is an assumption of some scientific literacy, on both the part of the interviewees as well as the interviewer, that the audience is familiar with climate change itself and what it means in terms of affecting water shortages.
-Kristin Herbeck (can't figure out how to change her handle!)
Friday, March 7, 2008
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I agree somewhat to the statement that we should focus more on water reuse than water conservation. However, the solution ultimately lies in both of these actions. I conduct research on the water parasite, Cryptosporidium, in the microbiology department. Over the past three years, I have learned a great deal about water quality and filtration methods. Recently, I have become involved with an engineering project called Agua Clara that designs and implements sustainable water filtration "plants" (though not at all very big) in Honduras. In the United States, we take clean water for granted everyday. In fact, we use TONS and TONS of clean water every single day and we need to start recognizing the repercussions of overuse right now. The U.S. holds extremely strict regulations in terms of water quality and water cleanliness. However, the issue now is how much longer are we going to have clean water for? GE's environmental iniative as well as other engineering leaders have begun major projects using desalination to create greater access to clean water. However, we will have to go beyond creating more advanced technologies before our water resource is tapped out. Water is the essential element of our survival, without it, we are done for. Thus, we need to figure out a way to conserve AND recycle fresh water so that we are not scrambling for survival in the future.
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