It doesn’t matter if you are from a Red State, Blue State or Purple State, we, as humans, need fresh water to exist. It is as simple as that. We have needed water since life on earth began, but we never needed oil to survive. In fact, oil has only been making our modern lives easier for the last 100 to 150 years.
Now, the world is experiencing not only a food crisis but a water crisis and they go hand-in-hand. Billions of people on earth live without access to safe drinking water at a time when we are choosing not to invest in cleaning up and restoring our nation’s vast fresh water resource – The Great Lakes and her tributaries. In fact, we are putting greater demands on that fresh water reservoir with the production of biofuels at a time when climate change, invasive species and a legacy of industrial pollution is stressing the ecosystem and supply of fresh water.
“Behind the world food crisis is a global freshwater crisis, expected to rapidly worsen as climate change impacts intensify,” World Wildlife Federation Director General James Leape said last week at the World Water Week Conference in Stockholm.
It would take an investment of $26 billion to fully implement the strategy that embeds a swath of programs that would restore and regenerate the Great Lakes fresh water and the economy. Up to now we have been engaged in a band-aid, piecemeal approach to fixing what ails nearly a quarter of our world’s – and 90 percent of our nation’s – surface fresh water. We have learned from economists with the Brookings Institution that spending that $26 billion would generate a$50 billion profit. So, it truly is pay as you go – unlike the War in Iraq that is costing us $10 billion a month while the new government clutches its $79 billion surplus. What is more, we only get 17 percent of our oil from the Middle-East while 40 million US and Canadian residents get their drinking water from the Great Lakes – a number that will surely increase as the water crisis intensifies.
We need a comprehensive plan to deal with the impending water crisis and the Great Lakes are a central piece of our nation’s fresh water reserve – why not rely on the well-thought out strategy devised by national, regional, state and local leaders. The next President of the United States and US Congress should, with all haste, fully fund the restoration of the Great Lakes. It is a matter of our very survival, the essence of our existence and it is time to show some respect for our fresh water.
Related posts:
- Don’t Poo Where You Drink
- War Game Proves: Saving the Great Lakes is a National Security Issue
- The Day after Tomorrow: The Great Lakes in Crisis
- Save the Loon and the Great Lakes Too!
- Saving the Lakes One Policy at a Time