#Water pumped from deep underground helps #alfalfa grow at the Saudi-owned Fondomonte farm in the Butler Valley, in western Arizona
Saudi Arabia bans industrial scale farming of alfalfa, to protect its limited water supplies.
So they grow it in a #US desert and ship it back home, using AZ’s scarce water.
Perspective: The prior republican admin even blocked efforts to track the amount of water being used. #Arizona get saudi the fuck out. #natsec
🎁: read it free
"Big corporations, golf courses and hotels have been taking water from locals for years. Now the fire may result in even more devastating water theft."
"All over Maui, golf courses glisten emerald green, hotels manage to fill their pools and corporations stockpile water to sell to luxury estates. And yet, when it came time to fight the fires, some hoses ran dry. Why?"
"This is a classic case of the most craven disaster capitalism: a small elite group using a profound human tragedy as their window to roll back a hard-won grassroots victory for water rights, while removing civil servants who pose a political inconvenience to the administration’s pro-developer agenda."...
by Naomi Klein and Kapuaʻala Sproat
Three years worth of rain fell in two days in Greece, another manifestation of the intensification of the #climate long predicted by climate scientists. #water risks are among the worst. 💦
My 1986 dissertation concluded if we didn't stop polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases, the mountains in the West would start losing snowpack.
I've now lived long enough to see it. #climate # climate change #water
"For decades, beavers were considered pests – trapped & shot on sight. Now the attitude towards nature's best engineers is changing, & farmers are working to bring them back. #Beavers are vital to #ecosystems, as their dam building habits spread water through parched landscapes. This can not only help to regulate the flow of water, it provides another important service – keeping fires under control. Beavers are nature's firefighters.
In northern New Mexico, Darr has seen farmers "drastically" change their perception of beavers. "They were pretty hesitant, but they saw first-hand how the beavers provided sustained, reliable #water sources throughout the year, even during the hot dry summer we had. To see it is to believe it. We just have to show people what beavers can do for other wildlife, & humans." #permaculture#climate#drought#floodhttps://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240111-the-us-is-bringing-back-beavers-because-theyre-natures-best-firefighters
"Someone needs to explain to me why wanting clean drinking water makes you an activist. and why proposing to destroy water with chemical warfare doesn't make a corporation a terrorist."
—Winona Laduke, #Ojibwe economist & environmentalist
took your meme to add it #AltText
(am i doing this right?!?!)
“Palestinians are forbidden from gathering rain water for domestic or agricultural needs.”
– Third Periodic Report of Israel’s violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights with regard to the human rights to water and sanitation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
The number of "billion dollar disasters" in the United States is increasing rapidly. This graph (from NOAA) shows the number and breakdown of such disasters since 1980.
Two important trends: a rapid increase in the number, and especially in "severe storms."
These trends are another indication of the growing costs of #climatechange and the role that #water and the disruption of the planet's hydrologic cycle plays in it.
Every now and then I read something casually and it takes a few minutes for my brain to acknowledge the gravity of its meaning.
Like this sentence: "According to UN-endorsed projections, global demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% in 2030."
Global demand for fresh water will exceed supply by 40% in 2030! How is that not headline news driving a massive global effort to prevent the ensuing tragedy!?
"Engineers designed a solar #desalination system that passively turns seawater into drinking water. It circulates water in swirling eddies which drives water to evaporate and leave salt behind. The resulting water vapor can be condensed and collected while the leftover salt circulates out of the device.
A small suitcase-sized system could produce up to 6 litres of #drinking#water per hour and last several years."
The irony.
On World Water Day, the Russians attack the largest remaining dam in Ukraine, a clear and explicit violation of the 1977 Geneva Convention Protocols against attacking civilian #water infrastructure and dams.
And a reminder they most certainly destroyed the massive Kakhovka Dam last June.
“It’s just an unbelievable summer,” said Peter Gleick, a climate scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute. “It’s the kind of extreme weather that we climate scientists have been warning about for decades—it just now seems to be happening everywhere, all at once.” #climate #water
My favorite shot from a sunset last week here in Bellingham. Going to be releasing this and others from the past few months on my #fineartphotography website. Stay tuned!
Western States Opposed #Tribes’ Access to the #Colorado River 70 Years Ago. #History Is Repeating Itself.
Records unearthed by a University of Virginia professor shed new light on states’ vocal opposition in the 1950s to tribes claiming their share of the river.
The answer to the Q. 'Why is the UK facing water shortages despite record rainfall?' is essentially, we do too little to harvest & retain water, seeming happy to let it flow back to the sea...
As always in the UK it comes down to a lack of investment in infrastructure. And that is merely another reflection of the corrosive short-termism of our political class.
So, our problem with water is just exemplary of the omnicrisis into which the country has fallen.
This is the classic scam. Privatise an essential service. Load it with masses of debt, while investing the minimum it can get away with. Pay shareholders as much as it can get away with. When it collapses, walk away so the state has to pick up the pieces until it becomes viable again. Rinse and repeat.
Western governments must call out Israel’s water war crime & call for a ceasefire
Water in Gaza and the West Bank has long been under Israeli control due to the occupation. Recent developments have made it a weapon of war, and this must end immediately.