“SHIJIAZHUANG, China — Hundreds of feet below ground, the water supply for this provincial capital of more than two million people is steadily running out. Municipal wells have already drained two-thirds of the local groundwater, and the water table is sinking fast.

Above ground, this city in the North China Plain is having a party. Economic growth topped 11 percent last year. Population is rising. One new upscale housing development is advertising waterfront property on lakes filled with pumped groundwater. Another half-built complex, the Arc de Royal, is rising above one of the lowest points in the city’s water table.”

1 in 500 people in China have unfettered access to safe drinking water. The NYTimes article quoted above basically says that developers are building like crazy without considering availability of water. When the billions of people in China without water start looking for it there will be a major economic panic. Unlike oil, we cannot live without water. Disease spreads rapidly in water-depleted areas because you cannot prevent the spread of germs. There is no international water distribution system and water-reclamation technology is woefully backward and inefficient.
These factors and many more set the stage for economic wars over what should be this planet’s most bountiful and valued resource. Water issues are going to sneak up on us and there is no giant industry associated with them to hide the problem through disinformation campaigns designed to maximize profit opportunities.
Here in the US water is taken for granted in most areas, especially the northeast where I live. Yet we are in the midst of a severe drought right now that has lasted all summer and now is going into fall.

I haven’t been posting lately because we’re doing a redesign of the blog and moving it to a WordPress template on my company’s servers.
I’m also tightening my focus to water-related issues. I’ve always been interested in how climate change is affecting us on a personal level, right now, and water is one of the very early indicator issues. It is related intimately with weather issues, another subject I find fascinating. One of the reasons I’m choosing water issues stems from one simple fact: In China only one in 500 people has free access to safe drinking water.

Water will become the most valuable commodity on the planet, surpassing oil, in the next few years. In many places it already is. The oil wars of the second decade of this century will probably be eclipsed by water wars in the next decade, particularly if we don’t take worldwide action right now. It is my hope these conflicts are economic rather than violent as economic conflicts create business opportunities, which in turn, create incentives to resolve the issue (driven by profit motives). Violent wars also present opportunity but this opportunity only results in the creation of weapons which have no positive economic effect and death of innocents. This is a path we cannot allow humanity to go down.
Watch for our new look in the very near future and please contribute your views and stories.

Thanks,
Martin Edic

This trailer is a compelling brief look at a film that may eclipse An Inconvenient Truth in relevance right now. I am not a celebrity cause fan but by all reviews de Caprio has made a very important film that is frightening, provocative and relentlessly positive in its belief that we can change the world for the better. I can’t wait to see it.

This is insane. They are intentionally destabilizing Iraq and we are rewarding them?