Water, Water...used to be everywhere...

Last week I had the privilege of attending a seminar on the Global Water Crisis in San Francisco that was being put on by a non profit organization called Spark. There were two panelists that have been water rights activists for many years. They were Maude Barlow author of Blue Gold and Blue Covenant, and Susana De Anda of the Community Water Center in the Central Valley of California. They were both very interesting speakers and coming from such different levels of work. Maude Barlow's work focuses primarily on the Global Crisis, where as Susana De Anda's Work is more localized, in helping individual people in her area of America.

I had an economics professor in college who was convinced that the next major war would be fought over water, not oil. If it hadn't been for les imbeciles de regime cowboy, aka the Bush administration, he probably would have been correct. I believe that our food and water supply are the most important thing for us to protect at this time in history, and we are doing the exact opposite. We are centralizing our food and water supply instead of diversifying. If you want to protect your money, you don't invest it all in one place, you diversify. So why can't we understand this, with our most precious resources? In fact, a major reason for the spike in wheat and rice prices this year is because some of the major rice producers in the world are starting to realize the need to be independent. India for example is clamping down on rice exports, and as one of the worlds biggest exporters, it is bound to hurt our pockets and dramatically cuts supply. Some areas such as Australia are already facing major issues due to shortages of water. Third world countries feel it much deeper as they do not have the money and technology to filter the water that the first world has polluted. The levels of nitrites, perchlorate, and many other chemicals are off the charts in many parts of the United States. Unfortunately this water looks crystal clear and safe to drink, and when it is boiled many of these contaminants increase in concentration, particularly nitrites. Also of concern is the amount of medication, sedatives, birth control, anti psychotics that cannot be filtered out of water when it is recycled and which seep back into ground water. Many areas of the United States have undrinkable groundwater due to these pollution and contaminants. We will run out of clean water, if there is an area that I am pro technology, it is in trying to figure out how to solve this problem. The earth has an innate ability to heal itself, just as the body does, but it cannot heal itself if we keep thrashing it. Your body cannot mend a broken bone if you keep having someone hit it with a bat.

Our problem is our wasteful lifestyles. At the seminar a woman raised her hand and asked when we are going to realize that we need population control, in other words we need to stop over populating the earth. Overpopulation is not the problem, as Susana De Anda pointed out a family of 7 to 10 in rural Mexico probably produce less waste than a family of 2 in America. It is our lifestyles that lead to pollution, the draining of our resources by industrialization. Don't get me wrong, technology and industrialization have brought us many great things in America, our lives would not be the same without them. However, there is a line, bottled water is one of them. Coke and Pepsi both take water directly from the ground and bottle it. There is no filtering in most cases. You are paying for ground water, sometimes from your local area, and sometimes your local area supply might be safer. These companies are subject to sometimes monthly, often yearly inspections. In a city like New York, the tap water is tested multiple times daily. This use of fresh water in industry is also a major drain on water supply. In some areas there area actually pieces of legislation that state that in an emergency, water must be diverted for drinking and agriculture first before industry, but this does not exist in all or even most areas of our country.

The problem is not hopeless, but the time to act is now. If we run out of drinking water, we die. That is not a scare tactic, that is reality. And it is not a scare tactic to say that at the rate we are going it is inevitable. Conservation of water at a personal level is important for all of us, but it is equally, if not more important for our government to step in and regulate. We need to realize as a culture that water is not as renewable as we think.

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” Cree Indian Proverb

Blessed are Thou who Modifies Nature

The Vatican has issued a statement claiming that it is ok to genetically modify babies. The process begins with isolating a gene from one organism, plant or animal and lodging it into another. Genes can also be shut-off through this process as well so that they are no longer active. The process is a bit imprecise however, we are never really sure what the outcome will be or if we will create foreign proteins that will damage our bodies for generations to come. Although the science to genetically modify human babies is in the works, the Vatican's position is on the genetic modification of plants and non human animal life forms.

What is the difference really? What is the difference if the Vatican's position supports the modification of plants or humans. In my mind supporting one is only a short step away from supporting the other. To confuse matters even further the Vatican has recently updated its list of mortal sins which now includes, genetic experimentation, tampering with the order of nature, pollution, social injustice, causing poverty, accumulating excessive wealth, and drug abuse. Ironically. I could go through each ones of those additions and show rather definitively how the Vatican is breaking its own rules. However, here I choose to focus on those first two. Genetic Experimentation and tampering with the order of nature.

The Vatican has come out many times over the last few years in support of genetic modification. Touting the technology as the hope for the future and putting pressure on the European Union, who currently require all GM foods to be labeled and certain countries completely ban them from the market. It should be noted that the United States has no restriction on Genetic Modification and there are no labeling laws. It is estimated that around 75% or more of the average American's diet contains genetically modified foods. The Vatican claims that these patented modified foods are the answer to the worlds hunger and malnutrition problems. GM Foods are a great blow to sustainable agriculture. The seeds must be purchased every year as they are built to self destruct after one season. In the US and around the world, if a farmer buys seed one year and does not use it all they must get rid of that seed and purchase new seed every year. If they are caught "saving seed" they must pay fees for violation of the patent on the seed. Our worlds hungry need a method that will be sustainable for them forever, otherwise they will be on our welfare forever. That is what these dependent crops do, they take away independence. Some say that it is easy to be anti-GM crops when your belly is full, but our problem in this world is not a lack of food or overpopulation. Look at America, we are the most wasteful country in the world, we have ridiculous surpluses of food, and we have hungry, starving poor people in this country that have no access to food and clean water. The reasons that people in this world are starving are political and monetary, not lack of food.

A large part of the reason that third world countries have problems growing their own food is access to clean water. In many areas around the world the women of the nation spend nearly 8 hours of their day gathering fresh clean water for the household, walking miles and miles carrying pales of water. In other areas meters are installed in towns to allow only a small portion of water to be available to the residents at a great cost. Let us not forget our fellow Americans who cannot drink the tap water that they pay a municipal bill for because it contains such high levels of nitrites and perchlorate. By the way, if you boil water containing nitrites, the level of nitrites increases dramatically! It is education and access to water that is needed in these areas. If we teach people to grow crops and help them with an adequate supply of water, people can sustain themselves. GM crops are a quick fix that will destroy soil quality and keep the world dependent on patented technology. Plus we really do not know the long term implications of genetically modifying crops, the strong pesticides that are used on them, the unnatural protein and gene structures produced in these orgainisms are a potential nightmare for spreading protein diseases such as Mad Cow (BSE, human form Cruetzfeld Jacobs disease).

Companies such as Monsanto run around the world trying to push their financial agenda, in the process they occasionally pick up substantial supporters, such as the Vatican, the US Government, the G8 Summit, and people such as Bill Gates. I believe the reason these people are behind using genetically modified crops is that they are not being shown the other options forcefully enough. The other options are also not as simple. GM crops are the quick fix silver bullet that we are looking for in our society. But they are not a sustainable fix. Education and the promise of clean water are not easy things to produce, but they are necessary. The US Government, Monsanto, Cargil, and GD Searle, have been revolving doors for employees to jump from one to the other and back again. The political lobbies are so strong it is sometimes hard to tell them apart.

So my message to the Vatican, Please I beg of you, knock one mortal sin off of your repertoire. You do not need to commit them all, we believe that you are powerful enough that you do not have to follow your own rules. But this is a fairly clear cut case of tampering with nature and genetic experimentation. You have so much power, use it for good!