Water

Last weekend we watched "Blue Gold : World Water Wars". I would say it is a must see. Water is such a crucial element to everything we do, it is important to be informed about water issues at the small scale and on the big scale. On the small scale we have the little things we can do in our home: low-flow faucets, two-button toilets, turning off the water while we brush our teeth, using greywater for plants, etc. If you have a garden the list goes on: building a swale, catching rain water, watering at night to reduce evaporation, building a solar water distiller, etc. This movie is more about water on the big scale: how companies buy up the water rights, raise the prices, how water becomes unavailable to poor people, how Coke is cheaper than water in some places, how the IMF and World Bank order dry countries to export water, how companies can create laws that make it illegal to catch and capture rain water, etc.

Hearing the last comment made me nearly mad: In Bolivia (until reversed by protests) it was outlawed to capture or use rain water in any fashion. Rain water was property of Bechtel, a private US corporation. Can you imagine how twisted our profit seeking world has become! One day our air will be privatized and they will charge us for the air we breath. Back to H2O.

We have the term "peak oil". When will have the term "peak water"? We have it: read about it here. When is peak water? Some countries have reached it. The movie highlights many national and international water issues and predicts that the next wars will not be over oil but over water. I'd say that the fact that the George Bush family bought 98,000 acres of land on top of one of the world's richest aquafers as a vote in favor of the value of water and that people are willing to fight over it, either commercially, politically (the IMF and World Bank have been doing this for a decade already) and even bellicly.

The next time you have a sip of this refreshing cool liquid, think about it.

Blue Gold links:

• Official site
• Imdb
• Wikipeadia
• Video snippets and trailers on Google Video and YouTube