Care2 Action Alerts' Water Facts

Water Facts:

• 884 million people worldwide, (roughly 1 in 8) lack access to safe water, that's two and a half times the entire U.S. population.
• 4,000 young children are killed every day due to diarrheal diseases throughout the world, amounting to 1.5 million children each year. That's the equivalent of every professional football, baseball, basketball and hockey player dying in one day, but repeated everyday.
• 90 percent of waste water in developing countries is discharged into rivers and streams without any treatment. This is water used for bathing, cleaning and drinking.
• The average distance that women in developing countries walk to collect water per day is 4 miles and the average weight that women carry on their heads is approximately 40 pounds.
• 2.5 billion people don't have adequate sanitation facilities.
• From:
  Care2.com, Inc.
  275 Shoreline Drive, Suite 300
  Redwood City, CA 94065
  http://www.care2.com

Water Works

Water. We never really thought about it much. Did we? Why would we think about water? Water has always been big part of our lives, that we take for granted. Natural part of our world. We are the blue planet, after all.

Water represents life. It’s water that allows Earth to have biology. That would be us. Without water, we wouldn’t be. All life emerged from the oceans. From one-celled plant matter to complex multi-celled animals, such as we are. We are part and parcel of our water world.

Well, we here in Southern California do think about water, when we’re on fire, for instance, and when we’re told we’re in another drought, and that the DWP will be charging more for its use or rationing it out to us.

Our bodies remain 70% water, drought or not. In fact, we’re made up of all sorts of water based creatures. Ninety percent of our body’s cells are not even human cells. We are mostly viruses and bacteria, among other things. Don’t forget to take your probiotics today. Gotta keep those little beasts in check.

Water is even a metaphor for the mind in psychological, metaphysical, esoteric or poetic writings. It’s been a part of our mental and physical milieu from our childhood years from sliding on our bellies down a garden hose soaked plastic sheet thrown onto the lawn on those hot summer days, to doing a big cannon ball into a pool just to see how much water we can displace and how many people and how much concrete we can splash.

We never had to go without water. It flows from our faucets, hot or cold. We even have instant ice machines built into our fridges. We carry it in bottles every where we go, we swim and play in it, surf in it, take baths and long showers in it, water our lawns and gardens, and watch what doesn’t evaporate of it run down the street on its way back to the ocean.

This is America. It’s our god-given right to waste water along with every other precious natural resource we have. We are the home of Disneyland. Are we not? We’ve chosen to live in Fantasy Land. And don’t mess with people’s fantasies, either, unless maybe you’re Irish and enjoy a good fight.

I made the mistake of watching Flow: For Love of Water the other night on the Sundance Channel. Never watch murder thrillers, horror films or peek into stark reality late at night. Not if you want Mr. Sandman peacefully whisking you off to dream land. This documentary is all three of the above genres. Better to remain a mushroom. You know the joke.

But, life really is a sausage factory. You go peeking through those sausage factory windows late at night, and buh-bye sleep, peace in your neighborhood, and maybe some friends, mates, or family members who quickly tire of hearing you scream at and rail against injustice. Or maybe they simply fear that finger gun you’re aiming at the TV and pulling the trigger on at talking water privatization company CEO heads.

Not that I hadn’t heard about water privatization. Who hasn’t heard about that? But, it’s just words until you’ve seen it or lived it. I haven’t lived it, still living here in Disneyland. But, being a fairly empathetic creature, (I guess the Republicans wouldn’t allow me to be a Supreme Court judge), I was horrified and outraged watching people in poor countries suffer and thirst to death at the hands of rich corporations who are privatizing their water to make more money.

The corporations then sell the water back to them from a little spicket up the path, hill or wherever they have to march with their pots to get water for cooking, drinking, washing, etc. Only here’s their catch 22. The poor people in those regions can’t afford their tapped water.

So, they drink the same polluted water they bathe and wash clothes in, perform their rituals in, and the same water corporations flush their toxic by-products into. And then they die painfully from water borne illnesses.

Why is this allowed to happen? This is not Monopoly. They are not buying Water Works. Why does business and greed trump survival of humans? Why are they allowed to treat a third world country like it’s their private treasure trove and trash bin? Why and how does greed completely erase one’s conscience? And where is the outrage? Why don’t we see this on national news shows?

Would these CEOs, who have no apparent empathy, be the Republicans first choice for judges? Do we need to do with them what local judges have done with slumlords? Do we sentence these conscience-challenged CEOs to mandatory living as the natives do without water they can afford?

I think that might be one answer to unconsciousness and cruelty. Write your President, your Senator, your Congressman, your Representatives, your TV news networks, newspapers, or anyone who would or should care and/or be able to affect laws. Demand they hold these people accountable.

Water boarding or water withholding are both torture. Those who support water boarding should be made to try it out. Come on Sean Insanity, put your courage where your mouth is. Go for it. We’re awaiting your pronouncement that water boarding is no big deal, that you were able to do it while standing on your head.

And those who withhold water from other human beings who cannot afford their fees, should have to live as those people do, sans clean water. These people need object lessons. They need to experience for themselves what they find fair to do to others. They’re probably the first ones to say they are Christians. Well, I say, do unto yourselves…

Water is life itself. Humans can make it maybe weeks or months without food, but one day without water, watch out.

So, come on, all you water bottling CEOs taking advantage of powerless poor people everywhere there is water you want to tap, man up. Go a day without it yourselves. Just one day. Let us know what a difference one day can make.

Now I have to go take a shower, fill my water bottle for the road, and get my car washed before I go to the restaurant where I will order a refreshing free, glass of water with ice.