Blue Gold: world water wars

Hi

I encourage you to Google Documentary & > topducumentaryfilms.com/ environment scroll down to page 3 ‘Blue Gold: world water wars. It is done by a host of experts from round

the world including Maude Barlow.

- you’ll need a cup of tea + a pencil & at least 2 sheets of paper – but its well worth watching till the end.

When the Aborigines first saw western oarsman, they assumed they had eyes in the back of their heads – because the rowed facing aft! In principle – if the cox dropped off the transom, they would happily row into a cliff…

Modern corporations are not much different. The measure of success or failure is the profit at year’s end. That is measured from the final balance sheet & profit & loss statement – but in navigation terms it is a back-bearing, it tells how far the skipper has come & @ what ‘profit’. There is no obligation at all to be careful about the future or protect whatever gave rise to that profit.

In fact – as quoted in the film, the bulk of roses for Europe are now grown in Kenya, at a profit – to keep the World Bank happy – but with the direct consequence that her major lake will be dry in 5 years – it will be in Europe.

Then we have the SA Government signing away the local water business to a French company – if we need it or not! But I am sure they all happily retire on very comfortable pensions glowing in the aura of their ‘successes’.

So the water crisis is handled by backwards-looking transnationals – obeying the law to the letter – & politicians who are herded like sheep by those powerful transnationals.

Not one is looking forward & the crunch is coming – the fabulous amount of groundwater being used is carefully outlined. Wells in Yemen are now 1,300 feet deep – & going dry. Worldwide water tables are dropping – up to 30′ pa near some Chinese cities – & yes here in SA too.

The advice to make each individual ‘corporation proof’ is to collect & use your own water… We do are best & are planning to do more with the use of greywater on the garden etc.

Desalination is covered in some detail – after all 80% of humanity lives within ~20 miles of the sea. But not seen as the solution with the CO2 costs associated with conventional desal.

The ‘system’ needs to be changed it is said. That is clearly true in principle, but how when the world’s legal systems are wrapped around profit making transnationals? Paris and some South American countries have done the obvious & taken back their own water – Nationalised it, recognising that the great world sweep of water privatisation was in fact a mistake.

A solar powered desal plant is to be built in India – about the same output as the Adelaide one, but that will presumably have the same controls on the public as now. The film states that the Chinese symbol for ‘control’ & ‘water’ are the same. Hopefully ‘SolarWater’ will allow its owners to make pure water from dirty or salty water with none of those controls.

Cheers

Charlie

Sir Charlie Madden Bt BSc MTech MBA
www.waterboatman.com.au