Is Water Becoming 'The New Oil'?

Is Water Becoming 'The New Oil'?

www.commondreams.org

Water, Dow Chemical Chairman Andrew Liveris told the World Economic Forum in February, “is the oil of this century.” Developed nations have taken cheap, abundant fresh water largely for granted. Now global population growth, pollution, and climate change are shaping a new view of water as “blue gold.”

Water’s hot-commodity status has snared the attention of big equipment suppliers like General Electric as well as big private water companies that buy or manage municipal supplies - notably France-based Suez and Aqua America, the largest US-based private water company.

Global water markets, including drinking water distribution, management, waste treatment, and agriculture are a nearly $500 billion market and growing fast, says a 2007 global investment report.

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is something I have been keeping an eye on, and I keep reporting on, that may soon be a HUGE problem to add to the list of our other issues plaguing us---The CORPORATIZATION and PRIVATIZATION OF WATER. The corporate giants, and now their complicit servers--the gov---Are pushing to have water set up as a COMMODITY. If this happens, we are in for an absolute NIGHTMARE...You will see this necessary resource for life become a profiteering venture that will again hurt all the middle and poor classes to an unheralded degree...It will also then become yet another CONTROL TOOL...

And this is not just the ramblings of a delusional conspiracy theorist---The government is already putting into motion steps to allow this to happen---See the following:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I hope people are paying attention to this, but judging from the lack of responses this subject seems to garner, I fear they are not...

This not something to be ignored---It may well effect us all very soon.

“There are three basic things in life: food, water, and air,” says Paul Marin, who three years ago led a successful door-to-door campaign to keep the town council of Emmaus, Pa., from selling its local water company. “In this country, we have privatized our food. Now there’s a lot of interest in water on Wall Street…. But I can tell you it’s putting the fox in charge of the henhouse to privatize water. It’s a mistake.”

www.commondreams.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

Apologies in advance: Repeating a noteworthy entry (if I do say so myself) from your related thread)

During a 'UNICEF' trip to Paraguay undertaken by President Bush's daughter, she brokered the purchase of a huge portion of Paraguayan property which sits over what is reported to be one of the largest unspoiled aquifers in the South American continent.


It's Bush property now. Things that make you go, "hmmmmm...,"

Starred and Flagged DD - This will probably be the most under appreciated development on the board for some time. Once they have the water, I will have to reconsider the 'intensity' of my dissent. Mess with water and your messing with life itself.

this is pretty serious stuff. Just last week I was discussing with my business partner about investing in water related businesses. And now Im thinking beyond the water control issue.
As a nation, and as a technologically somewhat advanced species, we are invading and manipulating each others minds throught the use of electromagnetic technology, playing amazing almost real life video games, we have anti gravity technology(noncivilian), we can build vast towering sky scrapers, and we can even create edible food out of cells.
But yet...
we cannot have a system that can desalinate and recycle ocean water for the use of the general public, so that water isn't an issue anywhere that it's needed?
This is becoming far too outlandish and people are the ones that need to make a change.
Any water experts out there?
u2u me

I just posted an article on the Worldview blogabout this situation:

I included the following facts in my article:

•884 million people, lack access to safe water supplies, approximately one in eight people.

•Each year, 3.575 million people die from water-related disease.

•2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation, including 1.2 billion people who have no facilities at all.

•Every 15 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.

•Millions of women and children spend several hours a day collecting water from distant, often polluted sources.

•At any given time, half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from a water-related disease.


I have links an sources in the article. Here is the link to the article:
Water

This is somethig which has been of concern for a good few years:

news.bbc.co.uk...

www.independent.co.uk...

www.independent.co.uk...

www.newscientist.com...

Worth noting that that first link goes back to 1999

Yeah, it's not all water, it's clean and useable water.

Oh did I mention that we mess up water when looking for oil?
Lots of irony.

Yep - water IS becoming the new oil. What do we need to survive ?
Water.
What do people control when they want to make a large profit?
Survival.

Originally posted by spinkyboo
What do people control when they want to make a large profit?
Survival.

Excellent Point.

My dad always says "What's the quickest way to control the population? Control their food and control their water."

Interesting timing as well, the oil & gas in Alberta has slowed down substantially in the past year. It's only a matter of time before something else becomes the newest commodity and newest currency.

Water, would be an excellent place to start - for those looking to dig their dirty corporate hands into the pockets of people everywhere. Why not with water? Everybody needs it....


- Carrot

It's all about control. These selfish greedy parasites want to control everything and everyone and it's inevitable that someday soon they'll play the fear card again to try and take control of water as well. Completely ridiculous especially as we live on a planet that is mostly water.

www.waterencyclopedia.com...

We are truly ignorant if we can't develop & use current technologies that enable us to turn sea water into drinking water.

New inventions turn sea and air into drinking water
www.alertnet.org...

Sea-water into drinking water
waterweek.wordpress.com... bic-metre/

Desalination plant in Santa Cruz to turn sea water into drinking water
cournalist.com...

[edit on 22-3-2009 by kindred]

Humans have wasted the bluegold as if there was an unlimited amount of it available, but there is not, and its about time to control the water supply more intensively and hardened, certain regulations and laws have to be implemented in order to give everybody a fair share and to make it impossible to go over the "daily usage amount".

Nature needs to recover and we have to step back for a few hundred years.

Originally posted by Clairaudience
Nature needs to recover and we have to step back for a few hundred years.

FOr a few hundred years?

Well as long as i can have my daily shower and 7 cups of water a day than its all good.Any less than that and i will have to dig up my own well.

reply to post by merkava


Well I doubt that in the future we will have the possibility to take a daily shower, it will rather become a luxury and we will be more than happy to fit the daily bodily need.

This is nothing new. Regional wars in America's infancy were fought over control of and access to water. William Mulholland's engineering feat of diverting water from the Owens Valley to bloom the metropolis of Los Angeles out of a barren desert is one of the best. The movie "China Town" staring Jack Nicholson was a semi-nonfictional account of the Los Angeles Water Wars.

This link to Myths, History and Water in the Eastern Sierra details perhaps the most accurate account of private enterprise's desire to outright control or at least partially control and profit off of the water. The story is rife with corrupt government officials, ambitious businessmen, secret plots and conspiracies, double dealing, violence and deaths resulting from Los Angeles struggle to secure and control a water supply to capitalize off of endless speculative land deals, and to meet the demands of an ever increasing demand for commerce and to control it.

It even has one of the main players, defeated in years of planning, when the bank he kept his money in collapsed during the Great Depression bankrupting him and causing him to loose all of his amassed holdings that would have given him incredible economic benefits and political power as the Aquaduct and the city continued to grow.

Makes you wonder what might be changing hands out there right now as banks begin to collapse?

Myths, History, and Water in the Eastern Sierra

Most of the desert southeast is totally dependent upon fragile and limited water supplies.

Controversies in the past year over the flow of water out of the Carolina's through Georgia and into Northern Florida have had the Army Corps of Engineers ducking for cover as they scramble to hastily arrange the quotas of water deemed vital for ever growing population centers, often leaving farmers and lakefront property owners up in arms. One road long submerged in a man made lake never thought or sought to be seen again has become traversable again in rural South Carolina after the lake had been almost completely drained by the demand.

That water is becoming a rapidly dwindling commodity only makes it more attractive to private enterprise and governments both State and Federal looking to profit from their own control in this process.

This policy paper written by the PERC Institute details the challenges in managing the limited supply as well as arguments for letting Market pressures be a deciding factor in settling regional disputes for water.

PERC Policy Series

People in Israel not hawkish on attacking Iran, or Lebanon or Gaza, are inclined to believe the next major Middle East War will be fought over water.

ICE Case Studies published it's findings regarding water disputes in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia in this Case Study.

ICE Case Study

There is little doubt that the world is reaching unsustainable population numbers and water resources are being stretched to the max.

Its control and flow is destined to fall into the hands of private business and corrupt political regimes bent on exploiting it for money and power.

Having said that, there is one totally green settled island in the Florida Keys were every one of the residents lives entirely off of solar and wind generated power, water cisterns to capture natural rain fall, all because the island's size and remoteness makes it not worth the cost of attaching it to the water and power grids.

It is aptly named No Name Key

No Name Key

They pay the utilities nothing for the same things and conveniences we all take for granted, but the island itself is populated only to the extent it's own natural resources can sustain.

City and urban dwellers are in for a rough ride in the years ahead and water is going to be just one of many things that will make sustaining any kind of quality of life and personal freedom in a metropoliss difficult or entirely impossible.




[edit on 22/3/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

[edit on 22/3/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]

[edit on 22/3/09 by ProtoplasmicTraveler]