Indian Cities Face Water Crisis

Indian Cities Face Water Crisis



Video at link.

I just don't understand why there does not seem to be the global urgency there should be regarding our global water supply. Our thirst is relentless and we don't care how far down we dig or how much groundwater we deplete in our search to satisfy it. I wish I could be more positive but I'm not. I guess it is true: Humans on the whole just do not care until it reaches such a crisis point that it is then too late to do anything about it.

From California to the Maldives to India to Africa we see whole lakes and rivers evaporating. The Arctic and Antarctica are melting at a rapacious pace. The North Atlantic current is slower then ever before. The hydrologic cycle has been totally disrupted by human activity and abuse. We are killing the very systems we need to survive.

I suppose we will all just sit and watch this like a car accident on the highway and cry when it gets to the point where we have nothing.



Population and urbanization now necessary to address as climate change and changing weather patterns effect agriculture and water access. But again, will we wait until there is a global famine/global climate war to see this?

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Rare Rains In Chile- One Year's Worth In I Day In Driest Desert On Earth

Chile Desert Rains Sign Of Climate Change/Chief Weather Scientist Says

The heavy rainfall that battered Chile's usually arid north this week happened because of climate change, a senior meteorologist said, as the region gradually returns to normal after rivers broke banks and villages were cut off.

"For Chile, this particular system can only be possible in an environment of a changed climate," Deputy Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization Jeremiah Lengoasa told Reuters on a visit to Santiago on Friday.

The intense rainfall that began Tuesday in an area that is home to the Atacama, the world's driest desert, had resulted in nine deaths by Friday, with 19 people still missing, nearly 6,000 people in temporary housing and some roads cut off, the government's emergency office Onemi said.

Under a more familiar beating sun, people began to trickle back to debris-strewn villages and smashed houses. A curfew is in place in the Atacama region tonight, Onemi said, while operations at some mines in the top copper producer are still on hold.

Local media reported that one of those who lost his home was Victor Zamora, one of the 33 miners whose dramatic rescue from a mine in nearby Copiapo in 2010 attracted global attention.

While the worst seems to be over, Chile can expect to see more of this kind of event in the future, Lengoasa said.

End of Excerpt

63.5°F in Antarctica: Possible Continental Record; 14 Years of Rain in 1 Day in Chile



Extremely Rare Rains Floods Northern Chile, Kills Two

At least two people are dead after extremely rare rain triggered significant flooding in one of the driest places in the world, northern Chile.

Rainfall is extremely hard to come by in northern Chile. In Antofagasta, virtually no rain falls this time of year and the port city averages just 1.7 mm (0.07 of an inch) annually.

However, Wednesday was anything but normal across northern Chile as a storm system tracked unusually far to the north and unleashed torrential rain.

A total of 24.4 mm (0.88 of an inch) poured down in the 24 hours, ending Thursday morning. Photos and videos from the region show that runoff from the rain inundated streets in Antofagasta, while the Copiapo River to the south was brought out of its banks.

Thousands are without electricity and drinking water.

From 2011:

Rare Snow In Atacama Desert

Why is it that we see the effects of anthropogenic climate change getting worse, yet the actions still do not match the urgency?

Climate Extremes 2011-Part Three



Part of my video series from 2011. See 1:05 into video. Some of us have been reporting on this for a while. Unfortunate we are not heard.

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For World Water Day 2015

The power of nature and water. Respect them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Through my veins you run
Like a mighty river to the sea
Giving me strength...

Your power undeniable
Your retribution swift
Your beauty unmatched...

May we be worthy of the breath we draw from your power
which gives us life. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Every year the UN commemorates World Water Day on March 22nd. Granted, it may bring education about this crisis to some but what are we as a whole really doing to address the global water crisis that is already upon us? The blatant socio-economic caste system employed in many poor countries like Bolivia is not just about fighting for water access but about respecting human rights every day.

As this video recounts, climate change is now affecting access to water and is also affecting quality. Monsoon rains have already been affected resulting in less rain where it is most needed and extreme rain which then destroys crops. Droughts are more severe resulting in decreasing soil quality. Sea level rise resulting in erosion and salt water intrusion that also effects agriculture and coastlines. Lack of access to water also results in lack of access to food.

Millions of people needing to move due to extreme events and the effects of climate change is something we are not anywhere near prepared for. Water management and conservation based on equality and humanity are critical now as well as ending reliance on fossil fuels if we are to prolong the catastrophe awaiting us due to taking the seriousness of this crisis for granted.

No one should be denied water because they aren't rich enough or white enough. We will never be able to fully address any crisis on this planet adequately until we face the root causes : selfishness, greed, hubris, entitlement. Water is a human right and it is life. That is what we need to remember EVERY day.

World Water Day 2014

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Vanuatu: Cyclone Pam One Of Worst In Pacific History

UPDATE: 3-18-15 Vanuatu Island Residents Forced To Drink Salt Water



In pictures: Cyclone Pam hits Vanuatu (At link)

"People living on a remote island in the north-west of Vanuatu are having to drink harmful saltwater following last week's cyclone, the BBC has discovered. Residents of Moso say they are still waiting for outside help to arrive. Aid agencies have begun trying to access the country's small outer islands, but flooding has stopped their planes from landing in some areas. One pilot said the lush landscape had been transformed and now looked as if it had been destroyed by a bush fire. In addition to drinking water shortages, officials say there is also a desperate need for food and shelter, with tens of thousands of people now homeless.

Drinking saltwater is damaging as the more a person drinks, the more water already present in the body is rerouted to help dilute the excess of salt. It can lead to dehydration and death. The United Nations has revised the official number of people killed by the cyclone, bringing it down to 11 from an earlier figure of 24.The relatively low number of casualties has been attributed to the advance warnings that were issued.

Four days after the cyclone struck, aid agencies say that outlying areas of Vanuatu hit by Cyclone Pam suffered "significantly worse" damage than the island nation's capital, Port Vila. Prime Minister Joe Natuman told the BBC that the full extent of the damage across the islands was still not clear. He said that the more heavily populated islands of Tanna and Efate received most of the damage. "The other islands should be okay," he said, "except maybe one group." Local people and aid agencies say that the rebuilding effort will be immense.

Four days after Cyclone Pam ripped through Vanuatu the full extent of the damage is still not known. Many of the more than 60 inhabited islands remain cut off. We travelled by boat to Moso, the first people to visit since the cyclone struck. Villagers in the community of Taseriki told us they had received no help whatsoever since the storm. Many houses are completely flattened. There are no shops, people grow their own food, and their crops have been destroyed. One man told us his children were going hungry, having to scavenge what they could find. Villagers have been having to drink saltwater for two days. You cannot survive like that for long. The death toll across Vanuatu remains thankfully low. But the suffering is immense."

End of excerpt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So when anyone dares to tell you that the human race has PROGRESSED and EVOLVED, just look at them and laugh. In this the 21st Century we can send rockets to the moon, orbit satellites in space, create more and more destructive and technologically savvy weapons of death- but when it comes to getting water to people to save their lives WE FAIL. And of course, the usuals are now licking their lips to go in and make sure GM seeds are introduced along with the IMF and World Bank "guaranteeing" loans that will make them richer while the residents already suffering will continue to be in servitude to the elitist banks and corporations looking to profit off of their misery. Is this why climate change has been summarily ignored by the international community save for their platitudes and photo ops at UN COP Conferences and the fake marches by their NGO enablers? Global warming is a cash cow for the very entities claiming to want to address it!... so don't wonder why it has been allowed to get to this point- the point of no return. We humans need to take back out humanity or we are done.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

UPDATE:3-15-15 A Cyclone Destroys A Nation

Pam, a Category 5 storm, has left most of Vanuatu's population homeless.

By Matt Schiavenza


Cyclone Pam bears down on Vanuatu in this NASA satellite image.

Torrential rains and winds up to 185 miles per hour lashed the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu on Saturday, downing power lines and flattening buildings throughout the country. The official death toll of the storm, called Tropical Cyclone Pam, is eight, but the final figure is likely to be considerably higher: Rescuers have been unable to communicate with residents living in the archipelago's outlying islands.

Vanuatu President Baldwin Lonsdale said that Cyclone Pam destroyed schools and hospitals and rendered thousands homeless. "I stand to appeal on behalf of the government and the people to give a helping hand in this disaster," he said, his voice heavy with emotion. The governments of Australia and New Zealand flew military planes loaded with supplies to Vanuatu, a cluster of 65 islands located some 2,000 miles east of Australia, and have pledged millions of dollars in aid.

"Local residents say they have never experienced anything like this."

As a tropical nation, Vanuatu is no stranger to major storms. "Vanuatu has a cyclone season," the Oxfam country director in Port Vila, Colin Collet van Rooyen, told the New York Times. "But local residents say they have never experienced anything like this."

Alas, devastating cyclones may become more commonplace in Vanuatu, a low-lying nation considered extremely vulnerable to climate change. Roughly three quarters of the population of 267,000 work in fishing and agriculture, two industries sensitive to rising sea levels and warmer temperatures. Prolonged dry spells have begun to threaten the country's water supply, while intense rainstorms have damaged staple crops like cabbage.

snip

Vanuatu is well aware of the risks of climate change—in 2013, the country established a ministry devoted to mitigating the risks of rising sea temperatures, drought, and other environmental disasters. But for now, the country must recover from a cyclone whose damage may not be fully realized for years.

End of excerpt

Tropical Cyclone Pam: Death toll may rise after worst natural disaster in 'living memory'

This is the world we have made by our rapacious consumption. Shameful that after all of the disasters we have seen just in the last five years that on the whole we as a species still have not connected that dot. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cyclone Pam Brings Catastrophic Death and Destruction

Chloe Morrison, a World Vision emergency communications officer in Port Vila, said Sunday that officials from Vanuatu’s National Disaster Management Office confirmed to her agency that eight people in and around the capital had died during the cyclone.

She says officials haven’t been able to assess the damage in many of the hard-hit outer islands where communications remain down.

Many residents were forced to hunker a second night in emergency shelters after venturing out on Saturday only to find their homes damaged or blown away, according to aid workers.

Power remains out across the tiny Pacific archipelago and people on many of the outer islands have no access to running water or outside communications, said Chloe Morrison, a World Vision emergency communications officer in the capital of Port Vila.

Now, residents in New Zealand’s north are being urged to brace for the impact from the cyclone.

The UN had unconfirmed reports of 44 people killed in one province.

“A disaster of this magnitude has not been experienced by Vanuatu in recent history — particularly in terms of the reach of the potential damage and the ferocity of the storm,” said Sune Gudnitz, who heads the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Pacific.

The full extent of the damage is unknown, with limited communications in place after Super Cyclone Pam, a maximum category five storm, slammed directly into the island country late Friday with gusts up to 320 kilometres (200 miles) an hour.

The storm crossed the main Vanuatu island, home to more than 65,000 people, and a group of islands further south where 33,000 live after affecting the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu, where there were no reports of fatalities.

Heavy rain, gales and high seas are expected to hit New Zealand from Sunday night and could cause widespread flooding, power cuts and damage.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Reports are that this could be one of the worst cyclones in Pacific history on the same scale as Typhoon Haiyan which hit the Philippines in November 2013. Once again a huge storm hitting a poor area of the world where people were not prepared. Countries that attend UN COP Conferences always talk about aid to countries that are victims of climate destruction. Time to now step up to the plate- and if you don't think anthropogenic amplification has any part in these stronger storms you are extremely naïve.



NOAA Image of Cyclone Pam

Pacific Aid:Vanuatu Cyclone Appeal

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California Running Out Of Water

Addition 3-21-15: California Targets Wrong Water Wasters

NASA scientists contemplate that California may have only one year of water left before the point of no return as snowpack becomes less and less and El Nino makes itself known off the warming Pacific Coast now breaking heat records in California and Canada. Yet, big ag is still allowed to grow non-essential crops in the desert to export without rationing while people are penalized for watering their lawns. Sure hope that almond butter you bought was worth sacrificing an entire ecosystem. Unbelievable.

California Has About One Year Of Water Left: Will You Ration Now?



(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The sunrise illuminates the receding waters of Pine Flat Reservoir, one of California's most severely depleted dams.

By Jay Famiglietti

We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too

Authorize mandatory water rationing across the state

March 12, 2015,

Given the historic low temperatures and snowfalls that pummeled the eastern U.S. this winter, it might be easy to overlook how devastating California's winter was as well.

As our “wet” season draws to a close, it is clear that the paltry rain and snowfall have done almost nothing to alleviate epic drought conditions. January was the driest in California since record-keeping began in 1895. Groundwater and snowpack levels are at all-time lows. We're not just up a creek without a paddle in California, we're losing the creek too.

Data from NASA satellites show that the total amount of water stored in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins — that is, all of the snow, river and reservoir water, water in soils and groundwater combined — was 34 million acre-feet below normal in 2014. That loss is nearly 1.5 times the capacity of Lake Mead, America's largest reservoir.

Statewide, we've been dropping more than 12 million acre-feet of total water yearly since 2011. Roughly two-thirds of these losses are attributable to groundwater pumping for agricultural irrigation in the Central Valley. Farmers have little choice but to pump more groundwater during droughts, especially when their surface water allocations have been slashed 80% to 100%. But these pumping rates are excessive and unsustainable. Wells are running dry. In some areas of the Central Valley, the land is sinking by one foot or more per year.

As difficult as it may be to face, the simple fact is that California is running out of water — and the problem started before our current drought. NASA data reveal that total water storage in California has been in steady decline since at least 2002, when satellite-based monitoring began, although groundwater depletion has been going on since the early 20th century.

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.

In short, we have no paddle to navigate this crisis.

End of excerpt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It absolutely boggles my mind that California has been watching this unfold for over a decade and still people are more concerned with keeping their pools filled and growing almonds than taking this for the profoundly serious crisis this is. However, it is not surprising to me because in the last eight years I have been writing about this here I have been warning people that moral will has to take precedence in order for us to save our water and ourselves. That this comes down to the false worth we give to green paper and our own selfish lifestyles over what really matters. That this comes down to political convenience and profit taking precedence over principle.

That this is happening in California is to me so ironic. The state purported to have so many "liberal" celebrities who care about the environment is now running out of water. Imagine in one year's time with usage continuing as is and people not getting the message that rationing and conservation must now be employed... California is the fifth largest economy in the world and agriculture is it's heart. The economic fall out of this alone not just for California but a large part of the world will be devastating. The entire way farmers farm in California is going to have to change if they are to continue having farms. People continuing to fight over water for almonds, or fracking or other profit making schemes when people need water to live and crops that are necessary is not a solution and is now causing wells to be dug so deep to now use up ancient water with scientists predicting California may not be far off from the "big one".

I have always stated that people truly do not appreciate the importance of water until the well runs dry. Well, that well is now running dry and if the people of California do not now wake up out of their stupor they will wake up one morning to see no water running out of their golden faucets. Will they care then? What does it take to spark the moral will necessary to save ourselves? Do people really think they can use all the groundwater up and then move to the oceans? If so, it only illustrates how weak and selfish we humans really are.

Also see:

Excessive Drought-Floods In California/Abrupt Climate Change

Central California Residents Rely on Bottled Water As Wells Run Dry

California Drought Getting Worse-Linked To Global Warming

California Drought: San Joaquin Valley Sinking As Farmers Race To Tap Aquifer

California Drought: 17 Communities Could Run Out of Water Within 60 To 120 days/Updates

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Fighting For Water In Brazil

A Sea Of People Fighting For Water In Sao Paulo



The people know that governments are now using these droughts to facilitate their own prejudice against the poor to benefit the rich. Such is the case in Sao Paulo where 15 thousand protesters took to the streets at the meeting point in Largo da Batata to the arrival at Bandeirantes Palace, in Morumbi neighborhood which is the official residence of the governor Geraldo Alckmin .

Sabesp (Sao Paulo’s water management company) has been turning off the supply every day between 1pm and 7 am recently, leaving many in poorer areas without water. São Paulo and Sabesp are now being held responsible for the crisis and are being asked to reduce the impact of the crisis on the poorest population in lieu of increasing water rates scheduled to take effect this April (with no rain being forecast.) These rates further strap the poor while benefitting the wealthy.

This is the same scenario we always see where the wealthy are provided with what they need at the expense of the poor. Residents of the Eastern part of Sao Paulo usually have to worry about flooding- but now that Southeastern Brazil has been hit with the worst drought in eighty years, this is now becoming the nightmare they dreaded.

This protest ended with no violence, but that may not be the case should this drought/water crisis continue:

"I pay ... but I shouldn’t... Because water is not a commodity" was one of the slogans yelled by the marching crowd, which also included a water truck as a “parade float”, carefully escorted by heavily armed military police officers. "That's what will happen with the deepening crisis. Police will “guard” the water for those who can pay for it, while we die of thirst. We are here to show that we will not accept it", said protester Reginaldo Silva, a resident of the MTST occupation People's Cup (An occupation started at the onset of the Soccer World Cup in Sao Paulo in 2014."

This world we have made where money is the sole barometer of your worth as a human being can no longer be sustained, especially in the wake of climate change. If the international community and the UN care so much for climate solutions, where are they now? Climate change is not something that will happen, it is happening now and it is already effecting the poor of our world.

Also see:

Quirky Winds Fuel Brazil's Devastating Drought, Amazon's Flooding

Sao Paulo Running Out Of Water As Rain Making Amazon Vanishes

Brazil Drought Crisis Leads To Rationing And Tensions

Bolivia/Britain-A Tale Of Two Floods

Effects Of Arctic Amplification Being Ignored

(Citations for photos used at link to article.)

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NASA: Mars Once Had More Water Than Earth's Arctic Ocean

NASA Research Suggests Mars Once Had More Water Than Earth's Arctic Ocean



A primitive ocean on Mars held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean, according to NASA scientists who, using ground-based observatories, measured water signatures in the Red Planet’s atmosphere.

Scientists have been searching for answers to why this vast water supply left the surface. Details of the observations and computations appear in Thursday’s edition of Science magazine. “Our study provides a solid estimate of how much water Mars once had, by determining how much water was lost to space,” said Geronimo Villanueva, a scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the new paper. “With this work, we can better understand the history of water on Mars.” Perhaps about 4.3 billion years ago, Mars would have had enough water to cover its entire surface in a liquid layer about 450 feet (137 meters) deep. More likely, the water would have formed an ocean occupying almost half of Mars’ northern hemisphere, in some regions reaching depths greater than a mile (1.6 kilometers).

The new estimate is based on detailed observations made at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the W.M. Keck Observatory and NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii. With these powerful instruments, the researchers distinguished the chemical signatures of two slightly different forms of water in Mars’ atmosphere. One is the familiar H2O. The other is HDO, a naturally occurring variation in which one hydrogen is replaced by a heavier form, called deuterium.

By comparing the ratio of HDO to H2O in water on Mars today and comparing it with the ratio in water trapped in a Mars meteorite dating from about 4.5 billion years ago, scientists can measure the subsequent atmospheric changes and determine how much water has escaped into space.

The team mapped H2O and HDO levels several times over nearly six years, which is equal to approximately three Martian years. The resulting data produced global snapshots of each compound, as well as their ratio. These first-of-their-kind maps reveal regional variations called microclimates and seasonal changes, even though modern Mars is essentially a desert. The research team was especially interested in regions near Mars’ north and south poles, because the polar ice caps hold the planet’s largest known water reservoir. The water stored there is thought to capture the evolution of Mars’ water during the wet Noachian period, which ended about 3.7 billion years ago, to the present. From the measurements of atmospheric water in the near-polar region, the researchers determined the enrichment, or relative amounts of the two types of water, in the planet’s permanent ice caps. The enrichment of the ice caps told them how much water Mars must have lost – a volume 6.5 times larger than the volume in the polar caps now. That means the volume of Mars’ early ocean must have been at least 20 million cubic kilometers (5 million cubic miles).



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Incredible to think there was water on Mars but not too surprising. Water is the element that keeps the universe alive. This also raises the question then that if this much water really was on Mars all those years ago was there also life thriving on it- and if so what happened to it. NASA claims the water has been evaporated into space which raises another question: how much of that evaporated water could have made its way to a comet or even to Earth itself. Amazing that after all these years we are just beginning to learn about what is around us and where we came from.

Also see:

Scientists Find Oldest Water On Earth

Where Did Earth's Water Originate?

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Study: Climate Change Helped Spark Syrian Civil War

Did Climate Change Help Spark Syrian Civil War?

March 2, 2015

Scientists Link Warming Trend to Record Drought and Later Unrest

In 2006-2010, an unprecedented drought (brown areas) spread across much of Turkey, Syria and Iraq—the so-called Fertile Crescent. In part due to unsustainable farming practices and government mismanagement, Syria was especially vulnerable to its effects. (NASA)

A new study says a record drought that ravaged Syria in 2006-2010 was likely stoked by ongoing manmade climate change, and that the drought may have helped propel the 2011 Syrian uprising. Researchers say the drought, the worst ever recorded in the region, destroyed agriculture in the breadbasket region of northern Syria, driving dispossessed farmers to cities, where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created unrest that exploded in spring 2011. The conflict has since evolved into a complex multinational war that has killed at least 200,000 people and displaced millions. The study appears today in the leading journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We’re not saying the drought caused the war,” said Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who coauthored the study. “We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.”

A growing body of research suggests that extreme weather, including high temperatures and droughts, increases the chances of violence, from individual attacks to full-scale wars. Some researchers project that manmade global warming will heighten future conflicts, or argue that it may already be doing so. And recent journalistic accounts and other reports have linked warfare in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in part to environmental issues, especially lack of water. The new study, combining climate, social and economic data, is perhaps the first to look closely and quantitatively at these questions in relation to a current war.

The recent drought affected the so-called Fertile Crescent, spanning parts of Turkey and much of Syria and Iraq, where agriculture and animal herding are believed to have started some 12,000 years ago. The region has always seen natural weather swings. But using existing studies and their own research, the authors showed that since 1900, the area has undergone warming of 1 to 1.2 degrees Centigrade (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit), and about a 10 percent reduction in wet-season precipitation. They showed that the trend matches neatly with models of human-influenced global warming, and thus cannot be attributed to natural variability.

Global warming has had two effects, they say. First, it appears to have indirectly weakened wind patterns that bring rain-laden air from the Mediterranean, reducing precipitation during the usual November-April wet season. Second, higher temperatures have increased evaporation of moisture from soils during the usually hot summers, giving any dry year a one-two punch. The region saw substantial droughts in the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s. However, 2006-10 was easily the worst and longest since reliable recordkeeping began. The researchers concluded that an episode of this severity and length would have been unlikely without the long-term changes.

End of excerpt

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I reported on this almost two years ago: The Root Causes Of Violence In Syria



This is what sparked many to move to the cities- which sparked tensions - tensions ignored by the President of Syria, particular in regards to water shortages. Yet, it still is basically being ignored in the media as part of the reporting of violence in this region with the primary emphasis being on politics. Now, due to the proliferation of terror groups like ISIS that sprang from the invasion of Iraq and other factors we will now see little done to address the effects of this human induced drought that is effecting the lives of millions in this region.

It is hard for me to find the words when I write some of these entries because I am simply tired of it all. Tired of the apathy, the lack of caring, humanity and concern for the Earth that is being destroyed by our wanton greed, hatred and ignorance. The Fertile Crescent is said to be the cradle of civilization. The culture here is rich, historical and as precious as the farming which began over 12,000 years ago and it is all being destroyed by hate and indifference... and let's face it outright racism. How many times I have heard people state that all people in Syria are terrorists and should be blown to bits. How will we ever tackle the climate destruction we have unleashed on this Earth without first overcoming our rancid hatred for each other?

Make no mistake, regardless of what you look like on the outside, the effects of thirst and hunger are the same on the inside.

However, we seem as a species to have lost caring for culture, history and the continued sustainability of this region and the world as a whole. This goes beyond politics and religion to the very core of who we are as humans. If the current situation here is any indication of how we are going to address the effects of climate change globally (by invading the land and then sucking out all of the water and gas for global markets which only exacerbates climate destruction, poverty and terrorism) that is simply unacceptable. I always at least tried to be positive in thinking that no matter how bad we allowed it to get we would act in time. It truly is frightening to observe that we seem to be in a freefall as a species.

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