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*
"Clean
water and health care and school and food and tin roofs and cement floor, all
of these things should constitute a set of basics that people must have as birthrights."
-- Paul Farmer |
We never know the
worth of water till the well is dry.
~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732
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*
We
must treat water as if it were the most precious thing in the world, the most
valuable natural resource. Be economical with water! Don't waste it! We still
have time to do something about this problem before it is too late.
-- Mikhail
Gorbachev
The
shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment.
--
Mikhail Gorbachev
|
Water,
like religion and ideology, has the power to move millions of people. Since the
very birth of human civilization, people have moved to settle close to it. People
move when there is too little of it. People move when there is too much of it.
People journey down it. People write, sing and dance about it. People fight over
it. And all people, everywhere and every day, need it.
-- Mikhail
Gorbachev
"Globalization
was supposed to break down barriers between continents and bring all peoples together.
But what kind of globalization do we have with over one billion people on the
planet not having safe water to drink?"
-- Mikhail Gorbachev
“A
river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.”
-- Justice Oliver Wendell
Holmes
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"So
many people that I've seen can't get clean water. It's a crime."
~ Jay-Z "Well
I'm not just gon' go and do rap songs. I wanna touch, and maybe help, and see
what I can do in these areas.' As I start looking around me, looking at things
in ways that I can become helpful, starting at the first thing, water. Something
as simple as water."
~ Jay-Z |  |
By 2015,
according to estimates from the United Nations and the United States government,
at least 40 percent of the world's population, or about three billion people,
will live in countries where it is difficult or impossible to get enough water
to satisfy basic needs. "The signs of unsustainability are widespread and spreading,"
said Sandra Postel, director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Mass.
"If we're to have any hope of satisfying the food and water needs of the world's
people in the years ahead, we will need a fundamental shift in how we use and
manage water."
-- Douglas Jehl
 |
Clean water
is a necessity that we can no longer take for granted. Each year more people die
of water related diseases than any other cause of death on this planet. With a
higher rate of suffering and mortality than diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol,
or war; or any two combined for that matter! An entire economy is growing around
water. Those without money are suffering the most and risk severe illness from
contaminated sources
-- Jewel *
Solutions
and technologies exist to provide clean, affordable drinking water anywhere in
the world. These solutions will save lives, reduce financial burdens, foster peace,
and relieve millions of people from worrying about their next drink of water.
-- Jewel |
"No one has
the right to use America's rivers and America's Waterways, that belong to all
the people. as a sewer. The banks of a river may belong to one man or one industry
or one State, but the waters which flow between the banks should belong to all
the people."
~ Lyndon B. Johnson
But
we have not used our waters well. Our major rivers are defiled by noxious debris.
Pollutants from cities and industries kill the fish in our streams. Many waterways
are covered with oil slicks and contain growths of algae that destroy productive
life and make the water unfit for recreation. "Polluted Water—No Swimming" has
become a familiar sign on too many beaches and rivers. A lake that has served
many generations of men now can be destroyed by man in less than one generation.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
A
nation that fails to plan intelligently for the development and protection of
its precious waters will be condemned to wither because of its shortsightedness.
The hard lessons of history are clear, written on the deserted sands and ruins
of once proud civilizations.
-- Lyndon B. Johnson
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*
"If
we could ever competitively, at a cheap rate, get fresh water from saltwater,
..(this) would be in the long-range interests of humanity which could really dwarf
any other scientific accomplishments."
--
John F. Kennedy |
| *
"We
in Government have begun to recognize the critical work which must be done at
all levels—local, State and Federal—in ending the pollution of our waters."
~ Robert F. Kennedy
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*
"...if
we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our culture which are
to create communities for our children that provide them with the same opportunities
for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us, we've
got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air that we breathe, the water
that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us."
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr. |
"What
we are fighting for is not just the fishes and the birds. We protect nature not
for nature's sake but for our own sake because it's the infrastructure of our
communities, and if we want to meet the obligations of our civilization and our
culture which are to create communities for our children that provide them with
the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our
parents gave us, we've got to start by protecting that infrastructure; the air
that we breathe, the water that we drink, the landscapes that enrich us. We're
not protecting nature for nature's sake. We're protecting it because it enriches
us, yes, it enriches our economy and we ignore that at our peril. But it is also
enriching us aesthetically, recreationally, culturally, historically and spiritually.
Human beings have other appetites besides money. And if we don't feed them, we're
not going to grow up…we're not going to become the kind of beings that our creator
intended us to become."
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
Industrial
agriculture now accounts for over half of America's water pollution.
~ Robert
Kennedy, Jr.
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*
"All
ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise: that the individual is a member
of a community of interdependent parts. . . The land ethic simply enlarges the
boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or
collectively: the land."
~ Aldo
Leopold |
Multinational
companies now run water systems for 7 per cent of the world's population, and
analysts say that figure could grow to 17 per cent by 2015. Private water management
is estimated to be a $200 billion business, and the World Bank, which has encouraged
governments to sell off their utilities to reduce public debt, projects it could
be worth $1 trillion by 2021. The potential for profits is staggering: in May
2000 Fortune magazine predicted that water is about to become 'one of the world's
great business opportunities', and that 'it promises to be to the 21st century
what oil was to the 20th'.
-- John Louma
"Civilization
has been a permanent dialogue between human beings and water."
-- Paolo Lugari
(founder of the Gaviotas Community in Colombia
