Environmental Awareness and Green Action

Well said!

I tend to think that if a person really understands what is going on, that person might avoid using plastic shopping bags, might drive less, and might make all the other right decisions without anyone pressuring them, and if enough people are well informed, their actions will be sound PLUS they will start to change the government and business, through voting and spending choices. What do you think?

My big issues are with peak water, which is far more deadly to all species than peak oil (see Plan B 2.0, by Lester Brown), and with acknowledging the horrific error of considering "Man" separate from "Nature."

(my apologies for gratuitous use of scare-quotes)

Hi, Daren. Does Lester Brown use that phrase, Peak Water? Of course Richard Heinberg is now promoting the Peak Everything concept.

I guess it means that there is no new water being made, and in fact it is being reduced due to pollution, as well as bad distribution on the planet. So not exactly like Peak Oil, but the effect is also of hitting the ceiling with a resource.

Do you want to elaborate a little more on what Peak Water means, as you understand it?

One person is the key!! If we each start to make conscious choices to make an effort to save the world we can. It doesn't have to be an international policy change, just simple little things - reduce, reuse and recycle. Use things until they are worn out or find someone else to use them. Carry a bag to the store, if you go out to eat take your own container to put your leftovers in, turn off the lights when you are not in the room... These things may seem simple and not like much but believe me you will influence others by your actions and that's how change starts. It is amazing how many people are not aware of the waste they create and the simple ways to reduce their impact on the earth. BTW - love the comment about Mother Earth being a battered woman, that pretty much sums it up. Battered however is not irrevocably broken, healing can take place and it will be with you and me and them.

Kelly, I believe what you said is very important... that each of our efforts will be seen by others. I believe one more thing is worth mentioning: speak to others, explain what you are doing and why, so that eventually people will start to connect the dots and take action themselves as well.

In addition to needing water for drinking, most of the crops on which we depend require enormous quantities of water to grow.

Consider corn, for example, which has become not only a food but also a fuel source for the United States. "A 200-bushel corn crop uses about 600,000 gallons of water — nearly 3,000 gallons per bushel" (1).

Most of our manufacturing processes consume even more outrageous quantities, and add pollutants out of all proportion to what the system can maintain.

We're consuming our fresh water resources faster with every day, and almost no one aside from farmers and water managers realizes it. Aquifers, rivers, and lakes the world over are drying up (2). Our glaciers, long a renewable and dependable source for fresh water, are melting off faster than anyone ever imagined possible (3).

If we haven't already passed it we will very soon pass a point beyond which our fresh water resources rapidly decline to catastrophic shortages and worldwide misery.

This may seem like a trivial reference, but if you've seen the movie Ice Pirates (1984), the writers foresaw a distant space-traveling future in which water has become the most precious resource in the universe. In the movie, a planet is discovered that is mostly water, and everyone is saved. We don't have another planet to look for.

Humans can live indefinitely without petroleum, as can every other species on the planet. A healthy human in a protected environment, not having to endure much exertion, begins to die from dehydration after 3 days.

(1) Source: http://southeastfarmpress.com/grains/122807-corn-water/

(2) Aquifers: http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2006/3310endersbee_water.html

Lakes: http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/2560

Rivers: http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Study:_Drying_up_rivers_to_cause_freshwater_crisis

(3) Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/mar/16/glaciers.climatechange