By Ellen Brown : scheerpost – excerpt
Oceans of water are beneath our feet, and new technologies are extracting it economically without ecological damage.
Lack of fresh water is now a global crisis. Water shortages mean food shortages, with hunger creating death tolls substantially exceeding those of the current Covid-19 crisis. According to the United Nations, some 800 million people are without clean water, and 40% of the world’s population is impacted by drought. By one measure, almost 100 percent of the Western United States is currently in drought, setting an all-time 122-year record. Meanwhile, local “water wars” rage, with states, cities and whole countries battling each other for scarce water resources.
The ideal solution would be new water flows to add to the hydrologic cycle, and promising new scientific discoveries and technologies are holding out that possibility. But mainstream geologists have long contended that water is a fixed, non-renewable resource —and vested interests are happy to profit from that limiting proposition. Declaring water “the new oil,” an investor class of “Water Barons” —including wealthy billionaire tycoons, megabanks, mega-funds and investment powerhouses — has cornered the market by buying up water rights and water infrastructure everywhere. As Jo-Shing Yang, author of “Solving Global Water Crises,” wrote in a 2012 article titled “The New ‘Water Barons’: Wall Street Mega-Banks are Buying up the World’s Water”:…(more)
By Ashley Werner, Special to CalMatters
For generations, public agencies have directed highways, landfills, meat processing plants, warehouses and other polluting facilities to South Fresno neighborhoods, an area of the San Joaquin Valley that is predominantly populated by lower income households and people of color.
This activity has turned South Fresno into one of the most environmentally burdened neighborhoods in the state. Every day, thousands of trucks rumble past homes and schools. Domestic wells have run dry as warehouse landscaping springs up around them.
2020’s devastating hardships brought important truths about the enduring legacy of structural racism and inequity in California to the forefront of public awareness. Some recognized for the first time that many communities suffer from a lack of access to clean air, reliable drinking water, quality housing, safe parks and other basic amenities due to this legacy.
It does not need to be this way...(more)