Been Thinking About

Those Blessed Raindrops on Canvas

And About the Devastating Wildfires

Around Lake Tahoe – A Place I Love

"In an age when man has forgotten his origins,

And is blind even to his most essential needs for survival,

Water, along with many other resources,

Has become the victim of his indifference.”

Rachel Carson

Water covers 70 percent of earth’s surface

But only 3 percent of it is in reality – ‘fresh’

The other 97 percent of earth’s water is salted

And many haven’t given this much thought yet

Only 1 percent of the world’s fresh water supply

Can be found in rivers, lakes, streams, and springs

And now, global warming is adding to this problem

More severe droughts and more wildfires, it will bring

Despite what many claim, fresh water is truly a finite resource

Today, 40 percent of earth’s population lives under water stress

Right now, over 1 billion people lack access to clean fresh water

And our exploding world population will make it far worse, not less

I have personally felt the heartbreak caused by a lack of fresh water

Having traveled to the devastated Gulf Coast after Katrina’s Hurricane

Desperately trying to revive dying, dehydrated, left behind dogs and cats

Whose need for fresh, life-giving water, left them in horrid agony and pain

And very sadly, many scientists and biologists are now reporting

That only eighteen years from now, in the approaching year of 2025

Two thirds of the world’s population will face a severe water shortage

On a planet growing ever drier, many will find it very hard to stay alive

Adequate supplies of fresh water have always been essential to earth’s continued life, health, and economic development, and we’ve callously squandered far too much of it away in the last 100 years.

On any given day now, half the population of the developing world is suffering from contaminated water related diseases, resulting in the loss of 5 billion working days a year.

And more than half of the world's freshwater wetlands have been lost in the last century to ever expanding agricultural and industrial usage. Freshwater animal species and habitats are very sadly now among the world's most endangered.

It is also now widely believed that the dire effects of climate change will exacerbate earth’s fresh water problem even further, and lead to many severe droughts, more devastating wildfires, rising sea levels, and increased flooding.

Modern day dams, construction projects, urban sprawl, water pollution, and industrial and agricultural chemical and pesticide runoff have also dramatically altered the amount, timing, and quality of flow, and more importantly, the very water purity, in most of the major river systems of the world today, wreaking yet more havoc on their natural, life-giving, life-sustaining, functions.

"Thousands have lived without love,

Not one - without water.”

W.H. Auden

If Only Teardrops Could Heal…

ž2007, Mr. Ed