michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on May 6, 2007 15:35:17 GMT 4
WATER: A MAJOR CONSTITUENT OF ALL LIVING MATTER
"You mean steal water from each other?" Paul asked. The idea outraged him, and his voice betrayed his emotion.
"It's done," Kynes said, "but that wasn't precisely my meaning. You see, my climate demands a special attitude toward water. You are aware of water at all times. You waste nothing that contains moisture."
From the book DUNE By Frank HerbertGood day, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the global water crisis. Listen up, please, your future depends on it.
The world is running out of water. Humans are polluting, depleting, and diverting its finite freshwater supplies so quickly, we are creating massive new deserts and generating global warming from below.
In many parts of the world, surface waters are too polluted for human use. Ninety per cent of wastewater in the Third World is discharged untreated. Eighty per cent of China's and 75 per cent of India's surface waters are too polluted for drinking, fishing, or even bathing. The story is the same in most of Africa and Latin America.
Humans, using powerful new technology, are mining groundwater sources far faster than they can be replaced, creating drought in once-fertile areas. When water is taken from an aquifer to grow crops in the desert, another desert is created. A recent scientific report from the United Kingdom warned of "coming anarchy" in Asia as water is sucked out of the ground by untold millions of bore wells.
Water is also massively displaced through the building of large dams, the main reason so many of the great rivers of the world no longer reach the oceans. Around the world, a massive network of pipelines is being constructed to move water from place to place, similar to the pipeline network that now moves oil and gas. Water is transferred -- sometimes great distances -- for flood irrigation that creates more deserts as it over-tills topsoil, leaving it to blow away in the wind. Water is removed from rivers, wetlands and aquifers and ends up as sewage.
Huge amounts of water are also displaced through the trade in "virtual water" where poor countries grow water-intensive crops for export to countries trying to conserve their water supplies. They are left with dead lakes and rivers.
Further, urban sprawl is creating huge "heat islands" unable to absorb rain. The destruction of water-retentive landscapes means that less precipitation remains in river basins and continental watersheds; this in turn, equates to less water in the hydrologic cycle.
Recently, I discussed water at Money Masters and Enslaved Taxpayers where in a series of closed-door meetings that grant the business sector privileged access while shutting out the public, leaders from Canada, Mexico and the United States are scheduled to discuss bulk water exports. According to the document, a roundtable on the “Future of the North American Environment,” is planned for Friday April 27 in Calgary, and will discuss “water consumption, water transfers and artificial diversions of bulk water” with the aim of achieving “joint optimum utilization of the available water.” You can review that posting here:Re: Money Masters and Enslaved Taxpayers « Reply #57 on Apr 25, 2007, 5:33pm » Leaked document reveals bulk water exports to be discussed at continental integration talks by Council of Canadianstinyurl.com/3xxs4pIn conjunction with that article, I give you the following. Will the day ever come when we must don our stillsuits like the Fremen of the planet Arrakis?....Michelle Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our WaterBy Tara Lohan, AlterNet Posted on April 25, 2007 All across the United States, municipal water systems are being bought up by multinational corporations, turning one of our last remaining public commons and our most vital resource into a commodity. The road to privatization is being paved by our own government. The Bush administration is actively working to loosen the hold that cities and towns have over public water, enabling corporations to own the very thing we depend on for survival.The effects of the federal government's actions are being felt all the way down to Conference of Mayors, which has become a "feeding frenzy" for corporations looking to make sure that nothing is left in the public's hands, including clean, affordable water. Documentary filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman recently teamed up with author Michael Fox to write "Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water" (Wiley, 2007). The three followed water privatization battles across the United States -- from California to Massachusetts and from Georgia to Wisconsin, documenting the rise of public opposition to corporate control of water resources. They found that the issue of privatization ran deep. "We came to see that the conflicts over water are really about fundamental questions of democracy itself: Who will make the decisions that affect our future, and who will be excluded?" they wrote in the book's preface. "And if citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?"As the effects of climate change are being felt around the world, including decreasing snowpacks and rainfall, water is quickly becoming the market's new holy grail. Mayor Gary Podesto, in his State of the City address to his constituents in 2003, sang the praises of privatization to his community, located in California's Central Valley. "It's time that Stockton enter the 21st century in its delivery of services and think of our citizens as customers," he said. And there is the crux of the issue -- privatization means transforming citizens into customers. Or, in other words, making people engaged in a democratic process into consumers looking to get the best deal.It is also means taking our most important resource and putting it at the whims of the market. Currently, water systems are controlled publicly in 90 percent of communities across the world and 85 percent in the United States, but that number is changing rapidly, the authors report in "Thirst." In 1990, 50 million people worldwide got their water services from private companies, but by 2002 it was 300 million and growing. There are a number of reasons to be concerned. "Globally, corporations are promoting water privatization under the guise of efficiency, but the fact is that they are not paying the full cost of public infrastructure, environmental damage, or healthcare for those they hurt," said Ashley Schaeffer of Corporate Accountability International. "Water is a human right and not a privilege."There are also significant environmental considerations -- with private corporations, sustainability can be tossed out the window. "Climate change is a warning that uncontrolled abuse of the earth's natural resources is leading toward planetary catastrophe," the authors write in "Thirst." "Who is to set the necessary limits to the abuse of the environment? Private companies fighting for market share are incapable of doing so." Privatization has been pushed aggressively at the federal level for decades, but especially so in the last six years. "There is a kind of fire sale of everything in the public sector right now," said Alan Snitow. "Water, we think, is the line in the sand -- when your water is actually a profit mechanism, people really react negatively to that." "Thirst" beautifully documents the coalitions that are forming in communities that are fighting back. But the battles are not easy: They must confront massive political muscle and unlimited financial resources of multinational corporations, not to mention our society's religious belief in the power of the marketplace. Privatizing municipal water systems is globalization come home, said Deborah Kaufman. In 2000 Bechtel privatized water in Cochabamba, Bolivia, with such miserable consequences that it was shortly driven out of the country in an incredible feat of cross-class organizing. But just a few years later, it was awarded a $680 million contract to "fix" Iraq's ruined water systems. "What's happened in Iraq is really emblematic of what the Bush administration is doing," said Kaufman. "We view the privatization of water in the United States as the World Bank come home -- the third-worldization of America and American communities."It turns out the United States is an attractive place for multinationals looking to make inroads in the water business. The three main players are the French companies Suez and Veolia (formerly Vivendi), and the German group RWE.The companies first pushed water privatization in developing nations. "But in many instances, those attempts didn't pan out as planned, it being difficult to gouge governments and customers that don't have a lot of money," Public Citizen reports. "The U.S., by contrast, presented the promise of a steady, reliable revenue stream from customers willing and able to pay water bills." The companies that already controlled the small percentage of U.S. water held privately were bought by the big three: Veolia picked up U.S Filter, Suez got United Water and RWE took over American Water Works. The results have been disastrous, as "Thirst" shows -- rates are increasing, quality is suffering, customer service is declining, profits are leaving communities and accountability has fallen by the wayside. In Felton, Calif., a small regional utility ran the water system until it was purchased in 2001 by California American Water, a subsidiary of American Water, which is a subsidiary of Thames Water in London, which has also become a subsidiary of German giant RWE. Residents in Felton saw their rates skyrocket, "Thirst" reports. A woman who runs a facility for people in need saw her water bill increase from $250 to $1,275 a month.RWE also bought the company controlling the water system in Urbana, Ill., and locals have been unhappy with the service it provides. "A few months ago, I got a notice on my door saying the water was turned off, and that when it came back on, I needed to boil it before I used it," said the city's mayor, Laurel Prussing. But when she called the number, the company didn't know what was going on -- and it was no wonder, because the call center was located in Florida. The list of abuses in "Thirst," which represent only a handful of communities, are plentiful: In 2006, two top managers at a Suez/United Water plant in New Jersey were indicted for covering up high radium levels in drinking water ... In Milwaukee, Suez subsidiary United Water discharged more than a million gallons of untreated sewage into Lake Michigan because it had shut down pumps to reduce electricity bills ... In Stockton, Calif., a citizen's watchdog group reported that water leakage doubled in the first year that OMI/Thames took over system operations. In Indianapolis, customer complaints nearly tripled the first year of Veolia's contract, and inadequate maintenance resulted in hundreds of fire hydrants freezing in the winter ... Overall, it has proved to be a recipe for disaster. "Seeking to consolidate market share, private water companies are merging or buying other companies, creating a volatile and unpredictable market," they conclude, "hardly the kind of stability required for a life-and-death resource like water." The water crisis comes homeCorporate interest in water systems in the United States exists for very good reason -- we have a water crisis. Our drinking and wastewater systems were largely designed a hundred years ago and in many places, little improvements have been made. Aging systems combined with the pressures of increasing population, development, and pollution have left many communities close to disaster. As a result, corporations have swooped in to offer public officials an easy out -- not only will they run these aging plants, but they'll save the city millions of dollars in the process. At least that's the promise. So far, it hasn't panned out. In 2005,"Thirst" reports, 200 mayors of large and small cities said they would consider privatization if it would save money. In addition to lobbyists, publicists and ad campaigns, the corporations have also directly gone after public officials to sell their wares. "The U.S. Conference of Mayors has become an engine of water privatization through its Urban Water Council," they write in "Thirst." "One mayor described a Conference of Mayors session he attended as a kind of feeding frenzy, with companies bidding to take over everything from his city's school-lunch program to its traffic lights and water services. Financed by the private water industry, staffed by former industry officials, the UWC works hard to give its corporate sponsors 'face time' with mayors."And the federal government is not doing anything to help -- in fact, it's doing the opposite. "The administration has backed language in legislation to reauthorize existing federal water funding assistance programs that would require cities to consider water privatization before they could receive federal funding," reports Public Citizen. "And in lockstep with private industry's goals, the EPA is increasingly playing down the role of federal financial assistance while actively encouraging communities to pay for system upgrades by raising rates to consumers -- exactly the strategy the industry hopes will drive cash-strapped and embattled local politicians to opt for the false promise of privatization."The EPA has projected a needed $446 billion for drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years, but the money that is needed and that is actually allocated in the budget falls billions short. Snitow calls the under funding of public water systems and public infrastructure as a whole, "systematic" under the Bush administration. "On water, President Bush says he wants to fund private companies to do it. He does not want to give money, even loan money, to government agencies at the local level to improve their own water systems." This mindset goes against public opinion and environmental law. The Safe Drinking Water Act passed in 1974 says, "The federal government needs to provide assistance to communities to help the communities meet federal drinking water requirements." And a national poll showed that 86 percent of Americans supported creating a water infrastructure trust fund. But this issue is not a partisan problem. As reported in "Thirst," in 1997 the Clinton administration changed the law to the benefit of private companies. Previously municipal utility contracts were limited to five years, but Clinton changed it to allow contracts to be extended up to 20 years. "The rule change unleashed a wave of industry euphoria with predictions that private companies would soon be running much of what is now a public service," they wrote. In the following five years, municipal water contracts with private companies tripled.
"Privatization comes from both Democrats and Republicans. Particularly the Clinton wing of the Democratic Party. Clinton advanced this in a number of areas -- Bush has taken it to the extreme," said Snitow.And across the country, Democrats are guilty as well as Republicans. "In Lee [Mass.], one of the key people supporting the Veolia privatization is a liberal Democrat. He has a great record with unions, on gay rights. He is a social liberal, but he wants to privatize key public services," said Snitow. "There is an ideology that is bipartisan and is part of the old Washington consensus which is that the market can do everything better, it can be more efficient," he continued. "I think that we are seeing the chickens come home to roost on this with Iraq. You are seeing the ultimate apotheosis of the kind of vision that they had in mind -- where they would turn over the entire government and the resources to private multinationals. And, if that is efficiency, I think that most people in the world would want themselves counted out." Not for sale"Thirst" documents not just the consolidation of power through corporations but the public resistance that is often, despite seemingly impossible odds, successful. Time and time again throughout the book, citizens responded to local threats but realized they were part of much bigger effort against water privatization around the world and the wholesale auction of the commons. Even if you don't live somewhere under threat at the moment, there is something for everyone to do. We can work to create a trust for drinking water and wastewater; to drop conditions in federal funding that favor privatizing water resources; to block water corporations from obtaining access to public funding through tax-exempt private activity bonds; and to promote strong public management of water resources. Or you can work to support organizations like Corporate Accountability International, Food and Water Watch, Sierra Club and others who are organizing around the issue."There has to be preemption -- companies come in secretly and people don't know there are negotiations going on, and communities that are organizing are coming from behind," said Snitow. "If there is more consciousness about this and more mayors know that their political lives are going to be spent fighting this issue, then I think fewer and fewer of them are going to say this not the way for me to leave my mark on the city. They'll choose something else. I think there is a lot of potential for victories, for changing the water policy in this country and it won't be a minute too soon, given what's going to be happening with global warming." Taking a stand against corporate control of water means believing that some things, like the lifeblood of our communities, should not be for sale. "Whether clean and safe water will remain accessible to all, affordable and sustainable into the future, depends on us," write Snitow, Kaufman and Fox. "The stakes could not be higher. The outcome will surely be a measure of democracy in the 21st century." Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: www.alternet.org/story/50994/
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Jun 2, 2007 17:12:37 GMT 4
Troubled WatersBy Mary Carmichael Newsweek June 4, 2007 Drought, pollution, mismanagement and politics have made water a precious commodity in much of the world. Daily life in the developed world has depended so much, for so long, on clean water that it is sometimes easy to forget how precious a commodity water is. The average American citizen doesn't have to work for his water; he has only to turn on the tap. But in much of the rest of the world, it isn't that simple. More than a billion people worldwide lack clean water, most of them in developing countries. The least fortunate may devote whole days to finding some. When they fail—and they fail more and more often now that rivers in Africa and Asia are slowly drying up after decades of mismanagement and climate change—they may turn to violence, fighting over the small amount that is left. Water has long been called the ultimate renewable resource. But as Fred Pearce writes in his book "When the Rivers Run Dry," if the world doesn't change, that saying may no longer apply. Like the famines of the '80s, the global water crisis is far more than a straightforward issue of scarcity. Accidents of geography, forces of industry and the machinations of politics may all play a role in who gets water—just as warlords, as well as droughts, were responsible for starvation in Ethiopia. In many ways, the famines contributed to today's man-made droughts: the crops grown in the worldwide "green revolution" of the past three decades sated hunger but sapped water in the process. "As the globe gets more crowded," says Susan Cozzens, a policy professor at Georgia Tech who is working on water problems, "the old arrangements just don't work anymore." There is still time for nonprofits and governments to fix things. "Chlorination, gravity-fed distribution systems, taps at every household, all these could make a difference," says John Kayser of Water for People, a nonprofit working in the developing world. Ecoconscious start-ups in the United States and Europe are increasingly offering new ways of purifying water, from high-tech (but inexpensive) ultraviolet filters to simple tactics such as filling clear bottles and letting the hot sun kill the bacteria inside. But thus far, there has been no worldwide "blue revolution." More likely, says Pearce, we'll "only really start to worry about the water when it isn't there." Here are some flashpoints, regions where the future of water is most worrisome. CHINA Population: 1.3 billion Crisis: Pollution China's Poisoned Water. To look at the mighty Yangtze River, you might think China could not have a water crisis. The third longest river in the world, it funnels 8 million gallons into the East China Sea every second. The river drives the world's largest hydroelectric dam, the Three Gorges, and it is one of the backbones of the country's economy. When you look more deeply into China's water supply, however, you'll see plenty to worry about. The government has long known that the Yangtze is polluted. In 2002, Beijing announced a $5 billion cleanup effort, but last year admitted that the river was still so burdened with agricultural and industrial waste that by 2011 it may be unable to sustain marine life, much less human life. An April report by the World Wildlife Fund and two Chinese agencies found that damage to the river's ecosystem is largely irreversible. Travel farther north, especially near the country's other major water system, the Yellow River, and the picture is even bleaker. Since the 1980s, drought and overuse have diminished the river to a relative trickle. Most of the year, little to none of its water reaches the sea, says Pearce. What does still flow in the Yellow is often unsuitable for drinking, fishing, swimming or any other form of human use. Every day, the river absorbs 1 million tons of untreated sewage from the city of Xian alone. Nowhere is China's pollution problem more visible than in the tiny "cancer villages" that dot the country's interior. Shangba, a town of 3,000, captured national attention a few years ago after tests found that heavy metals in its local river far exceeded government levels. Officials from a nearby state-owned mine—suspected of dumping those chemicals into the water—persuaded the government to pay for a new reservoir and water system built by locals. But other, smaller cancer villages are still struggling. In the southern hamlet of Liangqiao, rice grown by villagers with water from a local river has taken on the reddish hue of contaminants from the same iron mine that blighted Shangba. Since the late 1990s, cancer has caused about two thirds of the 26 deaths in the village. "We have to use the polluted water to irrigate the fields, since we have no other choices. We don't have any money to start a water project," says Liangqiao resident He Chunxiang. "We know very well that we are being poisoned by eating the grain. What more can we do? We can't just wait to starve to death." There is hope yet for Liangqiao. Environmental lawyer Zhang Jingjing is filing a lawsuit against the mine on behalf of the villagers, and she has a strategy that focuses on loss of crops instead of loss of life. (Chinese courts are often reluctant to link cancer to pollution.) But win or lose, Liangqiao is a tiny part of the problem. It has just 320 people. Meanwhile, almost 400 million Chinese, fully a third of the country's population, still have no access to water that is clean enough for regular use. INDIA Population: 1.2 billion Crisis: Poor distribution India's "Hydrological Suicide." In this country of 1.1 billion, two thirds lack clean water. "Sanitation for drinking water is a low priority there, politically," says Susan Egan Keane of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The priority is agriculture. In the '70s and early '80s, the Indian government made this clear by pouring money into massive dams meant to pool water reserved for farms. "In many of these developing countries, the vast majority of their fresh water goes to irrigation for crops," says Egan Keane. "Agriculture may make up only 25 percent of the GDP, but it can get up to 90 percent of the water." That's not to say, however, that India's farmers have enough. They are actually running low. The government built dams, but it failed to create the additional infrastructure for carrying water throughout the countryside. At the same time, factories have drawn too heavily on both the rivers and the groundwater. In Kerala, a Coca-Cola plant had to be shut down in 2004 because it had taken so much groundwater that villagers nearby were left with almost none. Some farmers have reacted wisely to the dropping water levels by switching to hardier crops. Kantibhai Patel says he stopped growing wheat on his farm in Gujarat, the epicenter of India's water shortage, after eight years of watching his bounty and income shrivel in the sun. He farms pomegranates now, which require far less water than wheat. Experts hope more farmers will follow Patel's lead. So far, most farms still focus on water-guzzling crops like wheat, cotton and sugar cane. Indian dairy farmers also cultivate alfalfa, a particularly thirsty plant, to feed their cows, a practice Pearce calls "hydrological suicide." For every liter of milk the farmers produce in the desert, they consume 300 liters of water, says Saniv Phansalkar, a scholar at the International Water Management Institute. "But who is going to ask them not to earn their livelihood," he asks, if the dairy farms are keeping them afloat for now? To nourish their plants and cows, most Indian farmers have resorted to drawing up groundwater from their backyards with inexpensive pumps. When the pumps don't bring up enough water, the farmers bring in professionals who bore deeper into the ground. There is constant pressure to compete. "If one [farmer] is digging 400 feet into the ground, his fellow farmer is digging at least 600 feet," says Kuppannan Palanisami, who studies the problem at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. The water table, he says, drops six to 10 feet each year. WEST BANK Population: 2.75 million Crisis: Shortage The West Bank's Water Wars. Like the Chinese, the people of the West Bank wouldn't have a huge water problem if nature were the only force involved. Rain falls regularly on their hills and trickles down into the rocks, creating underground reservoirs. Unfortunately for denizens of the West Bank, that water then flows west toward Israel. Palestinians are largely banned from sinking new wells and boreholes to collect water, and they pay what they consider inflated prices to buy it. Meanwhile, the groundwater level is dropping, and Palestinians accuse Israelis of overusing. "[The Palestinians] sit in their villages, very short on water," says Pearce, "and they look up at their neighbors and see them sprinkling it on their lawns." Battling over water in this region is nothing new—the Six Day War started with a dispute over water in the Jordan. Lately, on the West Bank, the water table is dropping and tensions are rising. Israeli soldiers have been accused of shooting up water tanks on the West Bank in retribution for terrorist acts, and Palestinians have been caught stealing from Israeli wells. It is impossible to untangle the water problem in Israel and the Palestinian Authority from the overall animosity between the two groups. Conversely, says Pearce, "the wider problem between the Palestinians and the Israelis won't be solved until the water problem is solved." On the West Bank, it's a Catch-22, with water—and life—on the line. Source:www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/gpg/2007/0604troubled.htm
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jun 12, 2007 15:40:32 GMT 4
The wrath of 2007: America's great drought"I must go over into the interior valleys. There are about five thousand families starving to death over there, not just hungry but actually starving. The government is trying to feed them and get medical attention to them with the fascist group of utilities and banks and huge growers sabotaging the thing all along the line....."
From a letter written in 1938 by John Steinbeck to Elizabeth Ottis while investigating staggering conditions and great suffering of migrant workers.....Michelle The wrath of 2007: America's great drought By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles Published: 11 June 2007 America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still. From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895. California and Nevada, where burgeoning population centres co-exist with an often harsh, barren landscape, have seen less rain over the past year than at any time since 1924. The Sierra Nevada range, which straddles the two states, received only 27 per cent of its usual snowfall in winter, with immediate knock-on effects on water supplies for the populations of Las Vegas and Los Angeles. The human impact, for the moment, has been limited, certainly nothing compared to the great westward migration of Okies in the 1930 - the desperate march described by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath. Big farmers are now well protected by government subsidies and emergency funds, and small farmers, some of whom are indeed struggling, have been slowly moving off the land for decades anyway. The most common inconvenience, for the moment, are restrictions on hosepipes and garden sprinklers in eastern cities. But the long-term implications are escaping nobody. Climatologists see a growing volatility in the south-east's weather - today's drought coming close on the heels of devastating hurricanes two to three years ago. In the West, meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests a movement towards a state of perpetual drought by the middle of this century. "The 1930s drought lasted less than a decade. This is something that could remain for 100 years," said Richard Seager a climatologist at Columbia University and lead researcher of a report published recently by the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).While some of this year's dry weather is cyclical - California actually had an unusually wet year last year, so many of the state's farmers still have plenty of water for their crops - some of it portends more permanent changes. In Arizona, the tall mountains in the southern Sonoran desert known as "sky islands" because they have been welcome refuges from the desert heat for millennia, have already shown unmistakable signs of change. Predatory insects have started ravaging trees already weakened by record temperatures and fires over the past few years. Animal species such as frogs and red squirrels have been forced to move ever higher up the mountains in search of cooler temperatures, and are in danger of dying out altogether. Mount Lemmon, which rises above the city of Tucson, boasts the southernmost ski resort in the US, but has barely attracted any snow these past few years. "A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away," Thomas Swetnam, an environmental scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, told The New York Times a few months ago. "But it's happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States." Across the West, farmers and city water consumers are locked in a perennial battle over water rights - one that the cities are slowly winning. Down the line, though, there are serious questions about how to keep showers and lawn sprinklers going in the retirement communities of Nevada and Arizona. Lake Powell, the reservoir on the upper Colorado River that helps provide water across a vast expanse of the West, has been less than half full for years, with little prospect of filling up in the foreseeable future.According to the NOAA's recent report, the West can expect 10-20 per cent less rainfall by mid-century, which will increase air pollution in the cities, kill off trees and water-retaining giant cactus plants and shrink the available water supply by as much as 25 per cent. In the south-east, the crisis is immediate - and may be alleviated at any moment by the arrival of the tropical storm season. In Georgia, where the driest spring on record followed closely on the heels of a devastating frost, farmers are afraid they might lose anywhere from half to two-thirds of crops such as melons and the state's celebrated peaches. Many cities are restricting lawn sprinklers to one hour per day - and some places one hour only every other day. The most striking effect of the dry weather has been to expose large parts of the bed of Lake Okeechobee, the vast circular expanse of water east of Palm Beach, Florida, which acts as a back-up water supply for five million Floridians. Archaeologists have had a field day - dredging the soil for human bone fragments, tools, bits of pottery and ceremonial jewellery thought to have belonged to the natives who lived near the lake before the Spanish arrived in the 16th century. Environmentalists are not entirely upset, because the lake is notoriously polluted with pesticides and other farm products that then poison nearby rivers. River fish stocks in the area are now booming. Nothing, though, was so strange as the fires that broke out over about 12,000 acres on the northern edge of the lake at the end of May. They were eventually doused by Tropical Storm Barry last weekend. State water managers, however, say it will may take a whole summer of rainstorms, or longer, to restore the lake. The great Dust Bowl disaster The Dust Bowl was the result of catastrophic dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American prairies in the 1930s. The fertile soil of the Great Plains had been exposed by removal of grass during ploughing over decades of ill-conceived farming techniques. The First World War and immense profits had driven farmers to push the land well beyond its natural limits. When drought hit, the soil dried, became dust, and blew eastwards, mostly in large black clouds. This caused an exodus from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and the surrounding Great Plains, with more than half a million Americans left homeless in the Great Depression. Source:news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2643033.ece
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Jul 24, 2007 18:53:13 GMT 4
A disaster to take everyone's breath awayIn my understanding of the Universe, our planet was created as a biological library. The Creator gave us a wonderful playground, a jewel of a planet, hidden in space for our protection from invaders within an obscure one sun solar system. Truth is, humans have done far more damage to her ecosystems than any off planet adversary could have.....Our beautiful planet is dying.....Go ahead, cut that tree down in your yard 'cause you don't want to rake the leaves; to hell with the life it supports, including ours....Sorry if I'm venting; you wouldn't believe the anger I've faced when trying to save our forests and individual trees......YES, I AM A TREE HUGGER!!!! Trees [and plants, weeds included] are part of the water cycle; they moderate our climate. Read the following and weep with me MichelleA disaster to take everyone's breath away12:00AM Monday July 24, 2006 By Geoffrey Lean MANAUS - Deep in the heart of the world's greatest rainforest, a nine-day journey by boat from the sea, Otavio Luz Castello is anxiously watching the soft waters of the Amazon drain away. Every day they recede further, like water running slowly out of an immense bathtub, threatening a worldwide catastrophe. Standing on an island in a quiet channel of the giant river, he points out what is happening. A month ago, the island was under water. Now, it juts 5m above it. It is a sign that severe drought is returning to the Amazon for a second successive year. And that would be ominous. New research suggests that one further dry year beyond that could tip the whole vast forest into a cycle of destruction.The day before, top scientists delivered much the same message at a remarkable floating symposium on the Rio Negro, on the strange black waters beside which Manaus, the capital city of the Amazon, stands. They told the meeting - convened on a flotilla of boats by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church, dubbed the "green Pope" for his environmental activism - that global warming and deforestation were pushing the entire enormous area towards a "tipping point", where it would start to die. The consequences would be awesome. The wet Amazon Basin would turn to dry savannah at best, desert at worst. This would cause much of the world to become hotter and drier.In the long term, it could send global warming out of control, eventually making the world uninhabitable.Nowhere could seem further from the world's problems than the idyllic spot where Otavio Luz Castello lives. The young naturalist's home is a chain of floating thatched cottages making up a research station in the Mamiraua Reserve, halfway between Manaus and Brazil's border with Colombia. Rare pink river dolphin play in the tranquil waters around the cottages, kingfishers dive into them, giant, bright butterflies zig-zag across them and squirrel monkeys romp in the trees on their banks. There is little to suggest that it may be witnessing the first scenes of an apocalypse. The rivers of the Amazon Basin usually routinely fall 9m to 12m - greater than most of the tides of the world's seas - between the wet and dry seasons. But last year they just went on falling in the worst drought in recorded history. At one point in the western Brazilian state of Acre, the world's biggest river shrank so far that it was possible to walk across it.
Millions of fish died, and thousands of communities whose only transport was by water were stranded.
And the drying forest caught fire; in September, satellite camera images showed 73,000 blazes in the basin.
This year, says Otavio Luz Castello, the water is draining away even faster than last year - and there are still more than three months of the dry season to go.It is much the same all over Amazonia. In the Jau National Park, 18 hours by boat up the Rio Negro from Manaus, local people who took me out by canoe at dawn found it impossible to get to places they had reached without trouble just the evening before. Acre received no rain for 40 days recently, and sandbanks are beginning to surface in its rivers. Flying over the forest - with trees in a thousand shades of green stretching, for hour after hour, as far as the eye can see - it seems inconceivable that anything could endanger its verdant immensity. Until recently, scientists took the same view, seeing it as one of the world's most stable environments. Though they condemned the way that, on average, an area roughly the size of Wales is cut down each year, this did not seem to endanger the forest as a whole, much less the planet. Now they are changing their minds in the face of increasing evidence that deforestation is pushing the Amazon and the world to the brink of disaster. Dr Antonio Nobre, of Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research, told the floating symposium of unpublished research which suggests that the felling was drying up the entire forest and helping to cause the hurricanes that have been battering the United States and the Caribbean. The hot, wet Amazon, he explained, normally evaporates vast amounts of water, which rise high into the air as if in an invisible chimney, drawing in wet northeast trade winds, which have picked up moisture from the Atlantic. This, in turn, controls the temperature of the ocean - as the trade winds pick up the moisture, the warm water left gets saltier and sinks. Deforestation disrupts the cycle by weakening the Amazonian evaporation which drives the whole process. One result is that the hot water in the Atlantic stays on the surface and fuels the hurricanes. Another is that less moisture arrives on the trade winds, intensifying the forest drought. Marina Silva, a fiery former rubber-tapper who is now Brazil's Environment Minister, described how the Government was finally cracking down on the felling by seizing illegally cut logs, closing illicit enterprises and fining and imprisoning offenders. As a result, she says, it dropped by 31 per cent last year. But that takes it only back to the levels it was in 2001, still double what it was 10 years before. And it has reached far into the forest after the American multinational Cargill built a huge port for soya three years ago at Santarem.
This encouraged entrepreneurs to cut down trees to grow soya.The symposium flew to inspect the damage this had caused - vast fields of beans destined to feed supermarket chickens in Europe, where until recently there was lush forest. Brazilian politicians say their country has so many other pressing problems that the destruction is unlikely to be brought under control, unless the world helps.Calculations by Hylton Philipson, a British merchant banker and rainforest campaigner, reckon that doing this would take US$60 billion ($80 billion) a year - less than a third of the cost of the Iraq war. About a fifth of the Amazonian rainforest has been razed completely. Another 22 per cent has been harmed by logging, allowing the sun to penetrate to the forest floor, drying it out. Add these two figures together and the total is perilously close to 50 per cent, predicted as the "tipping point" that marks the death of the Amazon.Nobody knows when that crucial threshold will be passed, but growing numbers of scientists believe that it is coming ever closer. One of Nobre's colleagues, Dr Philip Fearnside, says: "With every tree that falls, we increase the probability that the tipping point will arrive."The science behind the scareStudies by the blue-chip Woods Hole Research Centre, carried out in Amazonia, have concluded that the forest cannot withstand more than two consecutive years of drought without breaking down. Scientists say that this would spread drought into the northern hemisphere and could massively accelerate global warming with incalculable consequences.The research - carried out by the Massachusetts-based centre in Santarem on the Amazon River - has taken even the scientists conducting it by surprise. When Dr Dan Nepstead started the experiment in 2002 - by covering a chunk of rainforest the size of a football pitch with plastic panels to see how it would cope without rain - he surrounded it with sophisticated sensors, expecting to record only minor changes. The trees managed the first year of drought without difficulty. In the second year, they sunk their roots deeper to find moisture, but survived. But in year three, they started dying. Beginning with the tallest the trees started to come crashing down, exposing the forest floor to the drying sun. By the end of the year the trees had released more than two-thirds of the carbon dioxide they have stored during their lives, helping to act as a break on global warming. Instead they began accelerating the climate change. The Amazon now appears to be entering its second successive year of drought, raising the possibility it could start dying next year. The immense forest contains 90 billion tons of carbon, enough in itself to increase the rate of global warming by 50 per cent.Nepstead expects "mega-fires" rapidly to sweep across the drying jungle. With the trees gone, the soil will bake in the sun and the rainforest could become desert. Deborah Clark from the University of Missouri, one of the world's top forest ecologists, says research shows "the lock has broken" on the Amazon ecosystem and the Amazon is "headed in a terrible direction".- INDEPENDENT Source:www.nzherald.co.nz/section/2/story.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10392615&pnum=0
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Sept 28, 2007 13:43:23 GMT 4
TRADE-CANADA: Losing Water Through NAFTABy Stephen Leahy TORONTO, Sep 22 (Tierramérica) - Under the North American Free Trade Agreement, Canada lost control over its energy resources. Now, with "NAFTA-plus", it could also lose control over its freshwater resources, say experts. Canada's water is on the trade negotiating table despite widespread public opposition and assurances by Canadian political leaders, said Adèle Hurley, director of the University of Toronto's Programme on Water Issues at the Munk Centre for International Studies. A new report released Sep. 11 by the programme reveals that water transfers from Canada to the United States are emerging as an issue under the auspices of the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP). The SPP -- sometimes called "NAFTA-plus" -- is a forum set up in 2005 in Cancún, by the three partners, Canada, United States and Mexico. Economic integration as envisioned by the powerful but little-known SPP is slowly changing the lives of Canadians, says Andrew Nikiforuk, author of the report "On the Table: Water Energy and North American Integration".
The SPP is comprised of business leaders and government officials who work behind the scenes and are already responsible for changes to border security, easing of pesticide rules, harmonisation of pipeline regulations and plans to prepare for a potential avian flu outbreak, Nikiforuk writes.
"The SPP is run by corporate leaders; governments are irrelevant," said Ralph Pentland, a water expert and acting chairman of the Canadian Water Issues Council.
Pentland envisions a future where, in response to ongoing drought problems in the United States, the SPP will make arrangements to dole out millions of dollars of public funds for private companies to build pipelines to transfer water from Canada.
"The SPP is like putting the monkeys in charge of the peanuts," he told Tierramérica. Massive water diversions from Canada do not make economic or environmental sense, according to water experts. Far better and cheaper is to improve water efficiency and eliminate waste. The United States and Canada lead the world in water consumption and are extraordinarily wasteful, Pentland says. Moreover, most of Canada's water is in the far north, not near its border with the United States. And even the transboundary Great Lakes are at their lowest levels in 100 years due to climate change, notes Nikiforuk. William Nitze, prominent member of the SPP and chairman of GridPoint Inc., a company that makes energy management systems, is not in favor of bulk water exports. "Water management has been poor in all three countries," Nitze said. Canada, for example, favors guidelines over mandatory rules for keeping pollutants out of water. And Mexico needs to double its investment in its water infrastructure, he noted. Nikiforuk agrees that Canada has mismanaged its water resources. He points out that Canada already ships enormous volumes of water to the United States, in the form its main exports: grain, cattle, hogs, aluminum, automobiles and oil. Each of these requires many tons of water to produce, but the latter is perhaps the most controversial. Most of Canada's oil comes from the tar sands, a 125-billion-dollar capital project in the boreal forest of northern Alberta province. One million barrels of oil flow south each day to the U.S. making Canada its largest supplier. However, it takes three barrels of freshwater to produce one barrel of oil from the tar sands, says Nikiforuk. The project already consumes 359 million cubic metres of water, enough for a city of two million people in Canada. Ninety percent of the water becomes contaminated and has to be stored in vast tailings impoundments. More than 10 of these exist, covering an area of 50 square km. Members of the SPP North American Energy Working Group met in Houston, in the southern U.S. state of Texas, in 2006, where they talked about the "pipeline challenge", a proposed a five-fold increase in production at the tar sands, said Nikiforuk. "No mention was made of water at the meeting, but there isn't nearly enough water in the region for this kind of expansion," he said. Under NAFTA rules, Canada cannot reduce its energy exports to the United States, according to Gordon Laxer, director of the Parkland Institute, a research network at the University of Alberta. "The U.S. is the most energy wasteful nation on Earth. And Canada is sacrificing its environment to feed America's addiction to oil," Laxer said in an interview. "Respected energy analyst Matthew Simmons told me Canada should stop furthering the U.S. addiction to liquid fuels and make it illegal to use fresh water in tar sands," said Nikiforuk. There is ample evidence that environmental standards and stewardship in Canada and Mexico have plummeted since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, and "accelerated trade under the SPP means accelerated environmental abuse," he said. (*Originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.) (END/2007) Source:www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39365
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Nov 18, 2007 0:48:23 GMT 4
How Dry We Are A Question No One Wants to Raise About DroughtBy Tom Engelhardt posted November 15, 2007 3:39 pm Georgia's on my mind. Atlanta, Georgia. It's a city in trouble in a state in trouble in a region in trouble. Water trouble. Trouble big enough that the state government's moving fast. Just this week, backed up by a choir singing "Amazing Grace," accompanied by three protestant ministers, and 20 demonstrators from the Atlanta Freethought Society, Georgia's Baptist Governor Sonny Perdue led a crowd of hundreds in prayers for rain. "We've come together here," he said, "simply for one reason and one reason only: To very reverently and respectfully pray up a storm." It seems, however, that the Almighty -- He "who can and will make a difference" -- was otherwise occupied and the regional drought continued to threaten Atlanta, a metropolis of 5 million people (and growing fast), with the possibility that it might run out of water in as little as 80 days or as much as a year, if the rains don't come. Here's a little summary of the situation today: Water rationing has hit the capital. Car washing and lawn watering are prohibited within city limits. Harvests in the region have dropped by 15-30%. By the end of summer, local reservoirs and dams were holding 5% of their capacity. Oops, that's not Atlanta, or even the southeastern U.S. That's Ankara, Turkey, hit by a fierce drought and high temperatures that also have had southern and southwestern Europe in their grip. Sorry, let's try that again. Imagine this scenario: Over the last decade, 15-20% decreases in precipitation have been recorded. These water losses have been accompanied by record temperatures and increasing wildfires in areas where populations have been growing rapidly. A fierce drought has settled in -- of the hundred-year variety. Lawns can be watered but just for a few hours a day (and only by bucket); four-minute showers are the max allowed. Car washes are gone, though you can clean absolutely essential car windows and mirrors by hand. Sound familiar? As it happens, that's not the American southeast either; that's a description of what's come to be called "The Big Dry" -- the unprecedented drought that has swept huge parts of Australia, the worst in at least a century on an already notoriously dry continent, but also part of the world's breadbasket, where crops are now failing regularly and farms closing down. In fact, on my way along the parched path toward Atlanta, Georgia, I found myself taking any number of drought-stricken detours. There's Moldova. (If you're like me, odds are you don't even know where that small, former Soviet republic falls on a map.) Like much of southern Europe, it experienced baking temperatures this summer, exceptionally low precipitation, sometimes far less than 50% of expected rainfall, failing crops and farms, and spreading wildfires. (The same was true, to one degree or another, of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, and -- with its 100-year record scorching of Biblical proportions -- Greece which lost 10% of its forest cover in a month-long fiery apocalypse, leaving "large tracts of countryside…. at risk of depopulation.") Or how about Morocco, across the Mediterranean, which experienced 50% less rainfall than normal? Or the Canary Islands, those Spanish vacation spots in the Atlantic Ocean known to millions of visitors for their year-around mild climate which, this summer, morphed into 104 degree days, strong winds, and fierce wildfires. Eighty-six thousand acres were burnt to a crisp, engulfing some of the islands in flames and smoke that drove out thousands of tourists? Or what about Mexico's Tehuacán Valley, where, thousands of years ago, corn was first domesticated as an agricultural crop. Even today, asking for "un Tehuacán" in a restaurant in Mexico still means getting the best bottled mineral water in the country. Unfortunately, the area hasn't had a good rain since 2003, and the ensuing drought conditions have made subsistence farming next to impossible, sending desperate locals northwards and across the border as illegal immigrants -- some into southern California, itself just swept by monstrous Santa Ana-driven wildfires, fanned by prolonged drought conditions and fed tinder by new communities built deep into the wild lands where the fires gestate. And Tehuacán is but one disaster zone in a growing Mexican catastrophe. As Mike Davis has written, "Abandoned ranchitos and near-ghost towns throughout Coahuila, Chihuahua and Sonora testify to the relentless succession of dry years -- beginning in the 1980s but assuming truly catastrophic intensity in the late 1990s -- that has pushed hundreds of thousands of poor rural people toward the sweatshops of Ciudad Juárez and the barrios of Los Angeles." According to the How Dry I Am Chart of "livability expert" Bert Sperling, four cities in Southern California, not parched Atlanta, top the national drought ratings: Los Angeles, San Diego, Oxnard, and Riverside. In addition, Pasadena has had the dubious honor, through September, of experiencing its driest year in history. Resource Wars in the Homeland "Resource wars" are things that happen elsewhere. We don't usually think of our country as water poor or imagine that "resource wars" might be applied as a description to various state and local governments in the southwest, southeast, or upper Midwest now fighting tooth and nail for previously shared water. And yet, "war" may not be a bad metaphor for what's on the horizon. According to the National Climate Data Center, federal officials have declared 43% of the contiguous U.S. to be in "moderate to extreme drought." Already, Sonny Perdue of Georgia is embroiled in an ever more bitter conflict -- a "water war," as the headlines say -- with the governors of Florida and Alabama, as well as the Army Corps of Engineers, over the flow of water into and out of the Atlanta area. He's hardly alone. After all, the Southwest is in the grips of what, according to Davis, some climatologists are terming a "'mega-drought,' even the 'worst in 500 years.'" More shockingly, he writes, such conditions may actually represent the region's new "normal weather." The upper Midwest is also in rainfall-shortage mode, with water levels at all the Great Lakes dropping unnervingly. The water level of Lake Superior, for instance, has fallen to the "lowest point on record for this time of year." (Notice, by the way, how many "records" are being set nationally and globally in these drought years; how many places are already beginning to push beyond history, which means beyond any reference point we have.) And then there's the southeast, 26% of which, according to the National Weather Service, is in a state of "exceptional" drought, its most extreme category, and 78% of which is "drought-affected." We're talking here about a region normally considered rich in water resources setting a bevy of records for dryness. It has been the driest year on record for North Carolina and Tennessee, for instance, while 18 months of blue skies have led Georgia to break every historical record, whether measured by "the percentage of moisture in the soil, the flow rate of rivers, [or] inches of rain." Atlanta is hardly the only city or town in the region with a dwindling water supply. According to David Bracken of Raleigh's News & Observer, "17 North Carolina water systems, including Raleigh and Durham, have 100 or fewer days of water supply remaining before they reach the dregs." Rock Spring, South Carolina, "has been without water for a month. Farmers are hauling water by pickup truck to keep their cattle alive." The same is true for the tiny town of Orme, Tennessee, where the mayor turns on the water for only three hours a day. And then, there's Atlanta, its metropolitan area "watered" mainly by a 1950s man-made reservoir, Lake Lanier, which, in dramatic photos, is turning into baked mud. Already with a population of five million and known for its uncontrolled growth (as well as lack of water planning), the city is expected to house another two million inhabitants by 2030. And yet, depending on which article you read, Atlanta will essentially run out of water by New Year's eve, in 80 days, in 120 days, or, according to the Army Corps of Engineers -- which seems to find this reassuring -- in 375 days, if the drought continues (as it may well do). Okay, so let's try again: Across the region, fountains sit "bone dry"; in small towns, "full-soak" baptisms have been stopped; car washes and laundromats are cutting hours or shutting down. Golf courses have resorted to watering only tees and greens. Campfires, stoves, and grills are banned in some national parks. The boats have left Lake Lanier and the metal detectors have arrived. This is the verdant southeastern United States, which, thanks in part to a developing La Nina effect in the Pacific Ocean, now faces the likelihood of a drier than ever winter. And, to put this in context, keep in mind that 2007 "to date has been the warmest on record for land [and]… the seventh warmest year so far over the oceans, working out to the fourth warmest overall worldwide." Oh, and up in the Arctic sea, the ice pack reached its lowest level this September since satellite measurements were begun in 1979. And Then? And then, there's that question which has been nagging at me ever since this story first caught my attention in early October as it headed out of the regional press and slowly made its way toward the top of the nightly TV news and the front-pages of national newspapers; it's the question I've been waiting patiently for some environmental reporter(s) somewhere in the mainstream media to address; the question that seems to me so obvious I find it hard to believe everyone isn't thinking about it; the one you would automatically want to have answered -- or at least gnawed on by thoughtful, expert reporters and knowledgeable pundits. Every day for the last month or more I've waited, as each piece on Atlanta ends at more or less the same point -- with the dire possibility that the city's water will soon be gone -- as though hitting a brick wall. Not that there hasn't been some fine reportage -- on the extremity of the situation, the overbuilding and overpopulating of the metropolitan region, the utter heedlessness that went with it, and the resource wars that have since engulfed it. Still, I've Googled around, read scores of pieces on the subject, and they all -- even the one whose first paragraph asked, "What if Atlanta's faucets really do go dry?" -- seem to end just where my question begins. It's as if, in each piece, the reporter had reached the edge of some precipice down which no one cares to look, lest we all go over. Based on the record of the last seven years, we can take it for granted that the Bush administration hasn't the slightest desire to glance down; that no one in FEMA who matters has given the situation the thought it deserves; and that, on this subject, as on so many others, top administration officials are just hoping to make it to January 2009 without too many more scar marks. But, if not the federal government, shouldn't somebody be asking? Shouldn't somebody check out what's actually down there? So let me ask it this way: And then? And then what exactly can we expect? If the southeastern drought is already off the charts in Georgia, then, whether it's 80 days or 800 days, isn't there a possibility that Atlanta may one day in the not-so-distant future be without water? And what then? Okay, they're trucking water into waterless Orme, Tennessee, but the town's mayor, Tony Reames, put the matter well, worrying about Atlanta. "We can survive. We're 145 people but you've got 4.5 million there. What are they going to do?" What indeed? Has water ever been trucked in to so many people before? And what about industry including, in the case of Atlanta, Coca Cola, which is, after all, a business based on water? What about restaurants that need to wash their plates or doctors in hospitals who need to wash their hands? Let's face it, with water, you're down to the basics. And if, as some say, we've passed the point not of "peak oil," but of "peak water" (and cheap water) on significant parts of the planet… well, what then? I mean, I'm hardly an expert on this, but what exactly are we talking about here? Someday in the reasonably near future could Atlanta, or Phoenix, which in winter 2005-2006, went 143 days without a bit of rain, or Las Vegas become a Katrina minus the storm? Are we talking here about a new trail of tears? What exactly would happen to the poor of Atlanta? To Atlanta itself? Certainly, you've seen the articles about what global warming might do in the future to fragile or low-lying areas of the world. Such pieces usually mention the possibility of enormous migrations of the poor and desperate. But we don't usually think about that in the "homeland." Maybe we should. Or maybe, for all I know, if the drought continues, parts of the region will burn to a frizzle first, à la parts of southern California, before they can even experience the complete loss of water? Will we have hundred-year fire records in the South, without a Santa Ana wind in sight? And what then? Mass Migrations? Okay, excuse a terrible, even tasteless, sports analogy, but think of this as a major bowl game, and they've sent one of the water boys -- me -- to man the press booth. I mean, please. Why am I the one asking this? Where's the media's first team? In my own admittedly limited search of the mainstream, I found only one vivid, thoughtful recent piece on this subject: "The Future Is Drying Up," by Jon Gertner, written for the New York Times Magazine. It focused on the southwestern drought and began to explore some of the "and thens," as in this brief passage on Colorado in which Gertner quotes Roger Pulwarty, a "highly regarded climatologist" at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "The worst outcome…. would be mass migrations out of the region, along with bitter interstate court battles over the dwindling water supplies. But well before that, if too much water is siphoned from agriculture, farm towns and ranch towns will wither. Meanwhile, Colorado's largest industry, tourism, might collapse if river flows became a trickle during summertime." Mass migrations, exfiltrations…. Stop a sec and take in that possibility and what exactly it might mean. After all, we do have some small idea, having, in recent years, lost one American city, New Orleans, at least temporarily. Or consider another "and then" prediction: What if the prolonged drought in the southwest turns out, as Mike Davis wrote in the Nation magazine, to be "on the scale of the medieval catastrophes that contributed to the notorious collapse of the complex Anasazi societies at Chaco Canyon and Mesa Verde during the twelfth century"? What if, indeed. I'm not simply being apocalyptic here. I'm just asking. It's not even that I expect answers. I'd just like to see a crew of folks with the necessary skills explore the "and then" question for the rest of us. Try to connect a few dots, or tell us if they don't connect, or just explain where the dots really are. As the World Burns Okay, since I'm griping on the subject, let me toss in another complaint. As this piece has indicated, the southeastern drought, unlike the famed cheese of childhood song, does not exactly stand alone. Such conditions, often involving record or near record temperatures, and record or near record wildfires, can be observed at numerous places across the planet. So why is it that, except at relatively obscure websites, you can hardly find a mainstream piece that mentions more than one drought at a time? An honorable exception would be a recent Seattle Times column by Neal Peirce that brought together the southwestern and southeastern droughts, as well as the Western "flame zone," where "mega-fires" are increasingly the norm, in the context of global warming, in order to consider our seemingly willful "myopia about the future." But you'd be hard-pressed to find many pieces in our major newspapers (or on the TV news) that put all (or even a number) of the extreme drought spots on the global map together in order to ask a simple question (even if its answer may prove complex indeed): Do they have anything in common? And if so, what? And if so, what then? To find even tentative answers to such questions you have to leave the mainstream. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, for example, interviewed paleontologist and author of The Weather Makers: The History and Future Impact of Climate Change, Tim Flannery recently on the topic of a "world on fire." Flannery offered the following observation: "It's not just the Southeast of the United States. Europe has had its great droughts and water shortages. Australia is in the grip of a drought that's almost unbelievable in its ferocity. Again, this is a global picture. We're just getting much less usable water than we did a decade or two or three decades ago. It's a sort of thing again that the climate models are predicting. In terms of the floods, again we see the same thing. You know, a warmer atmosphere is just a more energetic atmosphere. So if you ask me about a single flood event or a single fire event, it's really hard to make the connection, but take the bigger picture and you can see very clearly what's happening." I know answers to the "and then" question are not easy or necessarily simple. But if drought -- or call it "desertification" -- becomes more widespread, more common in heavily populated parts of the globe already bursting at the seams (and with more people arriving daily), if whole regions no longer have the necessary water, how many trails of tears, how many of those mass migrations or civilizational collapses are possible? How much burning and suffering and misery are we likely to experience? And what then? These are questions I can't answer; that the Bush administration is guaranteed to be desperately unwilling and unprepared to face; and that, as yet, the media has largely refused to consider in a serious way. And if the media can't face this and begin to connect some dots, why shouldn't Americans be in denial, too? It's not that no one is thinking about, or doing work on, drought. I know that scientists have been asking the "and then" questions (or perhaps far more relevant ones that I can't even formulate); that somewhere people have been exploring, studying, writing about them. But how am I to find out? Of course, all of us can wander the Internet; we can visit the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has just set up a new website to help encourage drought coverage; we can drop in at blogs like RealClimate.org and ClimateProgress.org, which make a habit of keeping up with, or ahead of, such stories; or even, for instance, the Georgia Drought website of the University of Georgia's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences; or we can keep an eye on a new organization of journalists (well covered recently on the NPR show "On the Media"), Circle of Blue, who are planning to concentrate on water issues. But, believe me, even when you get to some of these sites, you may find yourself in an unknown landscape with no obvious water holes in view and no guides to lead you there. In the meantime, there may be no trail of tears out of Atlanta; there may even be rain in the city's near future for all any of us know; but it's clear enough that, globally and possibly nationally, tragedy awaits. It's time to call in the first team to ask some questions. Honestly, I don't demand answers. Just a little investigation, some thought, and a glimpse or two over that precipice as the world turns.... and bakes and burns. Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com, is the co-founder of the American Empire Project. His book, The End of Victory Culture (University of Massachusetts Press), has just been thoroughly updated in a newly issued edition that deals with victory culture's crash-and-burn sequel in Iraq.
Copyright 2007 Tom Engelhardt Source:www.tomdispatch.com/post/174863/as_the_world_burns
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
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Post by michelle on Apr 27, 2008 19:30:40 GMT 4
Water - the under-reported resource crisisBy Fred Pearce Last Updated: 2:01pm BST 22/04/2008 Food riots in Haiti, strikes over rice shortages in Bangladesh, tortilla trouble in Mexico and bread wars in Egypt.*Biofuels 'could cause serious water shortages' *Yangtze River water level at 140-year low *Food shortages: how will we feed the world? Soaring food prices are causing more misery round the world than the credit crunch. But what is the cause? An almost dried-up Yangtze River in Chongqing, China Biofuels are part of it, clearly. A quarter of US corn is now put into tanks rather than stomachs. And oil price rises are feeding in, via the cost of fertiliser and transport. But here is something nobody has yet mentioned. Water.The great slow-burning, under-reported resource crisis of the 21st century is water.Climate change, over-consumption and the criminally inefficient use of this most basic raw material are all to blame. I wrote a book three years ago called When The Rivers Run Dry - because many of the world's biggest rivers are indeed running dry. We are using them to death. And with two-thirds of the water abstracted from nature round the world going to irrigate crops, water shortages equal food shortages. Consider. The two underlying causes of the world food crisis are falling supplies and rising demand on the international market. Add in speculation, panic and hoarding and you have a perfect food storm. Why falling supplies? Because of major droughts in Australia, one of the world's big three suppliers, and Ukraine, another major exporter. Those droughts bite hard because both countries are already using their water reserves to the limit. Australia's wheat exports are 60 per cent down; rice exports are 90 per cent down. Why rising demand? Mainly because of booming China, where demand for grain is rising sharply at a time when every last drop of water in the north of the country, its major breadbasket, is already taken. The Yellow River rarely reaches the sea now.China can't feed itself any more, for want of water. Ditto India, where underground water reserves are being over pumped by 100 cubic kilometres a year.Most of the Middle East is in the same boat. Hence the bread riots in Egypt, where the River Nile no longer reaches the sea because all its water is taken for irrigation. In recent years, much of the global food trade has become a proxy trade in water. Or rather, the water needed to grow the food. "Virtual water," some economists call it. The virtual water trade has kept the hungry in dry lands fed. But now that system is breaking down, because there are too many buyers and not enough sellers.Till two years ago, the world's biggest supplier of virtual water was Australia. It exported a staggering 70 cubic kilometres of water a year in the form of crops, mainly food. Drought has more than halved that figure. It may never recover. {see Note below}Right now, we in Europe can get the food we need - at a price. But we are not immune. Britain imports large amounts of food. It works out at 40 cubic kilometres of virtual water a year, or more than twice the water we use annually within our own borders. In Britain, we don't often think about water shortages, except when there is a hosepipe ban. We should. Because even as it rains at home, the world water crisis is encroaching. Source: www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/04/22/eafred122.xmlNote from Michelle: For more on Australia's drought see past article:Re: Global Warming « Reply #19 on Apr 24, 2007, 2:42pm » Global warming: a rapidly advancing threat to human life bringing more hunger and poverty Australia's Epic Drought: The Situation Is Grim And also the following reply #20:Re: Global Warming « Reply #20 on May 1, 2007, 9:29am » Australia Begins Secret Talks On Evacuating Half Of Continent Due To Epic DroughtGo to: tinyurl.com/634dou
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michelle
Administrator
I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on May 21, 2008 14:49:10 GMT 4
Water: The World Is Facing a Dire Shortage of This Essential Element Tuesday, May 20, 2008 by: Mark Sircus Ac., OMD [NaturalNews]When it comes to our water supplies we are trusting the wrong people and that trust will hurt us in ways we will regret. The waters, the rivers of life are precious to those who value life.(1) To certain others, they are just things to throw trash into, to pollute, and to make money off of at the expense of destroying the environment. Life is just unthinkable without water, for we cannot be separated from water and live. Water is so important that its pollution and poisoning has a direct impact on our health and even on the quality and effect of our minds and feelings. We are the element water and we have reservoirs, ponds, rivers and seas of fluids within us. The flow of blood, the lymphatic system with its fluid movement, endocrine fluidity, urinary fluidity, the fluidity represented by perspiration, saliva, tears, sexual secretions, and lactation are all influenced by water. Clean water is absolutely essential for healthy living. An Adequate supply of fresh and clean drinking water is a basic need for all human beings on the earth, yet hundreds of millions of people worldwide are deprived of this. When you add the fact that most drinking water from public systems are laced with toxic chemicals then we begin to see that its not hundreds of millions who have a problem with water but billions. Even bottled water has its problems.(2) We thus need to take so much care when it comes to the water we drink. 'If the world's water was contained in 100 liters or 26 gallons, then what is readily available to us would amount to one-half teaspoon.' - Dr. Sang HwangIf there were no water there would be no world as we know it so pollution of our water or the deliberate injection of hazardous chemicals like fluoride and chloramines into it is nothing less than devastating to our biological existence over time. When approaching a topic as big and as important as water we have to have some sense of reverence for there is something sacred, almost sacramental in the very fabric of water. Thus water holds the potential to change our world, to change us. It holds the power of life and death and the most dominant influence over our health. In the Midwest today there is a serious drought that drives farmers and everyone else to think about water more than anything else. Next to our breath there is nothing more important than water. The connection between water and disease wasn't established until a scant 100 years ago and the connection between water and human consciousness has still to be discovered. Observant physicians noted early on that not all diseases were transmitted through contact between individuals. The two greatest epidemics of the 19th century -- yellow fever and Asiatic cholera showed evidence that some factor other than direct contact with disease victims was necessary to spread the disease. Typhus and waterborne typhoid fever raged through urban areas, proving to be one of history's most virulent killers. Cholera could wipe out its victims in as little as 12 hours. Cholera is a disease that can take a man suddenly down in good health at daybreak and kill him by nightfall. Water is well capable of being the harbinger of death and disease so it is best to know and understand the water we drink and bathe in. In developing countries, four-fifths of all the illnesses are caused by waterborne diseases, with diarrhea being the leading cause of childhood death. Medically we are still in the Stone Age when it comes to our understanding of water. Public health officials seem to deliberately choose to remain blind to ever present dangers of all the chemicals finding their way into the public water supplies probably because they are deeply associated with an industry and a medical paradigm that uses toxic chemicals in the form of drugs that are, as we shall see below, also polluting our waters. Water pollution is caused by human activities: 1) By point sources i.e., factories, sewage treatment plants, underground mines, oil wells, oil tankers and pesticides from agriculture. 2) Non-point sources include mercury in the air, acid deposition from the air, traffic, pollutants that are spread through rivers. 3) Chemicals deliberately put in the water like fluoride and chloramines. Water reminds us of the need to live simply and close to the ground but the lesson has been lost on modern man who has not really comprehended his total dependence and vulnerability to water issues. The CIA considers global water scarcity "a significant issue in security," said John Gannon, a former CIA assistant director and former chairman of the National Intelligence Council. Even as we continue to take water for granted, things are getting critical as water levels in many aquifers around the world are dropping, in some places by several meters a year.(3) In recent measurements, in Waukesha near Chicago for instance, the water level had dropped about 600 feet with the greatest loss being over the last 20 years. Professor Liu Yonggong, of China Agricultural University in Beijing, indicated that the water table beneath much of the North China Plain, a region that produces some 40 percent of China's grain, has fallen an average of 1.5 meters per year over the last five years. Lack of water means lack of food."Future competition for water seems likely to take place largely in world grain markets." - Lester R. Brown, President of the Earth Policy Institute An unexpectedly abrupt decline in the supply of water for China's farmers poses a rising threat to world food security. China depends on irrigated land to produce 70 percent of the grain for its huge population of 1.2 billion people, but it is drawing more and more of that water to supply the needs of its fast-growing cities and industries. As rivers run dry (4) and aquifers are depleted, the emerging water shortages could sharply raise the country's demand for grain imports, pushing the world's total import needs beyond exportable supplies. Since 1950, the population of China has grown by nearly 700 million, a staggering increase. Since 1950, the global renewable freshwater supply per person has fallen 58 percent as world population has swelled from 2.5 billion to 6 billion. With finite and diminishing water supplies the human race is like a fast moving car about to collide with a solid wall of water scarcity, which is not being helped at all by the global warming effect and the weather changes it is bringing throughout much of the world. The Yellow River water in China is now loaded with heavy metals and other toxins that make it unfit even for irrigation, much less for human consumption, along much of its route. None of the proposed solutions to the water crisis -- importing water, water conservation, expanded use of desalination of seawater or developing genetically modified crops that use less water -- will be "sufficient to substantially change the outlook for water shortages in 2015," according to Global Trends 2015, a report by the intelligence council. Agriculture accounts for two-thirds of water use worldwide and 80 percent to 90 percent in many developing countries. Some of this is already coming home to Californians who, as of New Year's Day 2002, have had three of their eight water pumps on the Colorado River shut down by federal order. Now, much less water is churning down the 242-mile aqueduct toward coastal Southern California, where 17 million people rely on snow-melt from the Rocky Mountains for washing dishes, flushing toilets and watering lawns. This is a pivotal moment in the contentious history of water in the arid West and in many other places around the world. We are just at the beginning of a problem that has no way of going away. 'The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives.' - American Indian ProverbReferences:1. Oceans contain 97 per cent of our planet's water but it is too salty for drinking, irrigation or industrial use. Only 3 per cent of earth's total water is considered fresh water. About 2.997 per cent of this fresh water is trapped in polar ice caps and deep within earth's surface which is too costly to extract. Thus only .003 per cent of earth's total available water by volume is available for human use. The global picture of water is not pretty with some 1.1 billion people still lacking access to improved drinking water sources and some 2.4 billion to adequate sanitation. 2. In March of 1999, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report called "Bottled Water, Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" NRDC's report points out that as much as 40% of all bottled water comes from a city water system, just like tap water. Federal regulations that govern bottled water only require it to be as good as tap water, not better. There are no assurances, regulations or requirements that bottled water be any higher in quality than tap water. 3. Iran. The water table is falling by 2.8 meters annually in the agriculturally rich Chenaran Plain in northeastern Iran. That, coupled with the cumulative effect of a three-year drought, has driven people out of the region, generating a swelling flow of water refugees. 4. Egypt. Egypt is entirely dependent for its water on the Nile River, which is now reduced to a trickle as it enters the Mediterranean. Neither Egypt, Ethiopia, nor Sudan can increase its take from the Nile except at the expense of the other two countries. Populations in these three countries is projected to climb to 264 million in 2025 from 167 million today. A quarter-century ago, with more and more of its water being pumped out for the country's multiplying needs, the Yellow River began to falter. In 1972, the water level fell so low that for the first time in China's long history it dried up before reaching the sea. It failed on 15 days that year, and intermittently over the next decade or so. Since 1985, it has run dry each year, with the dry period becoming progressively longer. In 1996, it was dry for 133 days. In 1997, a year exacerbated by drought, it failed to reach the sea for 226 days. For long stretches, it did not even reach Shandong Province, the last province it flows through en route to the sea. Shandong, the source of one-fifth of China's corn and one-seventh of its wheat, depends on the Yellow River for half of its irrigation water. About the author Mark A. Sircus Ac., OMD, is director of the International Medical Veritas Association (IMVA)http://www.imva.info/. Dr. Sircus was trained in acupuncture and oriental medicine at the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Sante Fe, N.M., and in the School of Traditional Medicine of New England in Boston. He served at the Central Public Hospital of Pochutla, in México, and was awarded the title of doctor of oriental medicine for his work. He was one of the first nationally certified acupuncturists in the United States. Dr. Sircus's IMVA is dedicated to unifying the various disciplines in medicine with the goal of creating a new dawn in healthcare.
He is particularly concerned about the effect vaccinations have on vulnerable infants and is identifying the common thread of many toxic agents that are dramatically threatening present and future generations of children. His book The Terror of Pediatric Medicine is a free e-book one can read. Dr. Sircus is a most prolific and courageous writer and one can read through hundreds of pages on his various web sites.
He has most recently released his Survival Medicine for the 21st Century compendium (2,200 page ebook) and just released the Winning the War Against Cancer book. Dr. Sircus is a pioneer in the area of natural detoxification and chelation of toxic chemicals and heavy metals. He is also a champion of the medicinal value of minerals and is fathering in a new medical approach that uses sea water and different concentrates taken from it for health and healing. Transdermal Magnesium Therapy, his first published work, offers a stunning breakthrough in medicine, an entirely new way to supplement magnesium that naturally increases DHEA levels, brings cellular magnesium levels up quickly, relieves pain, brings down blood pressure and pushes cell physiology in a positive direction. Magnesium chloride delivered transdermally brings a quick release from a broad range of conditions. International Medical Veritas Association: www.imva.info/Source: www.naturalnews.com/023267.html
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michelle
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I have broken any attachments I had to the Ascended Masters and their teachings; drains your chi!
Posts: 2,100
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Post by michelle on Mar 19, 2009 14:49:49 GMT 4
Maine Town Passes Ordinance Asserting Local Self-Governance and Stripping Corporate PersonhoodSun, 2009-03-01 18:08. Today the citizens of Shapleigh, Maine voted at a special town meeting to pass a groundbreaking Rights-Based Ordinance, 114 for and 66 against. This revolutionary ordinance give its citizens the right to local self-governance and gives rights to ecosystems but denies the rights of personhood to corporations. This ordinance allows the citizens to protect their groundwater resources, putting it in a common trust to be used for the benefit of its residents. Shapleigh is the first community in Maine to pass such an ordinance, which extends rights to nature, however, the Ordinance Review Committee in Wells, Maine is considering passing one in their town. These communities have been under attack by Nestle Waters, N.A., a multi-national water miner that sells bottled water under such labels as Poland Springs. Communities have opposed the expansion by Nestle Waters, but the corporation will not take no for an answer. The town of Fryeburg, Maine has been in litigation with Nestle for six years. Nestle wants to expand and the town's people say no to the tanker trunk traffic which has disrupted their quiet scenic beauty, so Nestle's tactic is to wear them down, and break their bank. Nestle is the world's largest food and beverage company and has very deep pockets. However, we won't back down, we are the stewards of this most precious resource water, and we want to protect it for future generations. Activists in Maine are well aware that the Nestle Corporation is not just interested in expanding for the purpose of filling their Poland Springs bottles today, they are interested in the control of Maine's abundant water resources for the future. They are expanding in many parts of this country from McCloud, California to Maine. Nestle is positioning themselves to capitalize on the emerging crisis of global water scarcity. The right to water is a social justice issue and we believe that it should not be sold to those who can afford it, leaving the world's poorest citizens thirsty. Citizens will do a much better job of protecting this resource than a for-profit corporation. The concept of a rights-based ordinance was pioneered by environmental attorney Thomas Linzey, founder of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund of Gettysburg, PA. Linzey has assisted the town of Barnstead, New Hampshire with their rights-based ordinance, which was passed in 2006 and with another in Nottingham, New Hampshire, which passed in 2008. To date there have been no legal challenges to these ordinances. Linzey also crafted Ecuador's new Constitution, which also gives the ecosystem rights. Ecuador is the first country in the world to protect its natural resources from corporate exploitation. Activists have learned the hard way that trying to protect their communities and the environment by going the route of fighting a typical regulatory ordinance, which is written by corporate lobbyists, will fail to protect communities from harms done. The multi-national corporation's allegiance is never to the communities where they do business, as that could conflict with their fiduciary responsibility to make a profit for stockholders. People throughout the country are saying "enough is enough, large corporations have too much power." Constitutional Rights were granted to corporations from the bench in the 1800's and it is time to rectify a wrong! People are saying let's dismantle the neo-colonial corporate power by starting with their right to personhood. In Maine, we are tired of Nestle behaving as if they are a Colonial power with a right to our water resources. We decided that we will behave as if we have the power and ignore the naysayers who said that people will never vote to take rights away from corporations or to give rights to nature. We want to encourage other communities join us. The time is now! Copies of the The Shapleigh, Maine Town Warrant calling for a special town meeting and The Shapleigh Water Rights and Local Self-Government Warrant are available from the Contact Person, below. For more information on attorney Thomas Linzey and the Community Environmental Defense Fund, please visit: www.celdf.org For more information about the battle to protect ground water in communities in Maine, please visit: www.soh2o.org . Click on the LEGISLATION tab and go to ORDINANCES to read the important new Shapleigh ordinance. CONTACT PERSON: Jamilla El-Shafei Save Our Water steering committee member and organizer steering committee member of the Maine Water Allies (state-wide coalition) 603.969.8426 jamillaelshafei@gmail.com Source: www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/40335
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