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Age Editorial: Water Planning Needs More Than Quick Fixes
Water planning needs more than quick fixes
Editorial,The Age
September 4, 2008
Divining water in a dry future requires more than faith and hardware.
THE observation that water is the oil of the 21st century graduated to a truism in a blink. Security and prosperity are tied to it. Wars will be fought over it. Cartels have been founded on control of it. Access to it intimately shapes the possibilities of a life: how we work, where we live, how broadly we venture across the landscape.
But the analogy expires short of the true ambit of water in our lives. There are, after all, alternatives to oil. But to borrow the observation of W. H. Auden, “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water”. While we ride the juggernaut of peak oil with little capacity to determine its direction, the prospect of peak water galvanises action. With buckets and tanks, pipes and plants, thrift and innovation — it is within our realm to secure this, surely?
Maude Barlow Presentation (Brisbane)
Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant, will be discussing her very important new book at an upcoming event in Brisbane.
Date: Tuesday 2 September
Time: 6:00pm for 6:30pm start
Venue: Irish Club, 175 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane
Tickets: $15 / $12 concession, bulk purchase (6 or more) $10 each
Bookings: Through Brisbane’s Better Bookshops: Avid Reader: 193 Boundary St, West End, Ph: 07 3846 3422 or books{at}avidreader.com.au
Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water by Maude Barlow
Scientists call them “hot stains” – the parts of the earth running out of clean, drinkable water. They now include northern China, large areas of Asia and Africa, the Middle East, Australia, the Midwestern United States, and sections of South America and Mexico. How did the world’s most vital natural resource become so imperiled? And what must we do to pull back from the brink?
In the tradition of such classics as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, Blue Covenant addresses an environmental crisis that – together with global warming – poses one of the gravest threats to our survival.
World-renowned activist and author Maude Barlow has been at the forefront of international water politics, and in this timely and important book she discusses the state of the world’s water, how water companies are reaping vast profits from declining supplies, and how ordinary people from around the world have banded together to reclaim the public’s right to clean water.
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