Cleopatra's
Bathwater
by
Kenny Ausubel
When
biologists speak about Cleopatra's bathwater,
what they are playfully illustrating is that
the Earth is mainly a closed loop. What's here
today was generally here yesterday. So that
cup of tea you're drinking could once have
been Cleopatra's bathwater! But if Cleopatra
were to bathe in the Earth's waters today, her
skin would crawl and palace heads would roll.
Our booming human population is massively
disturbing the planetary waters, polluting and
straining the ecology of water everywhere.
Water
and oxygen define the blue-green Earth as a
"water planet", in Jacques Cousteau's
lovely image. The human body, which is 97
percent water, can survive longer without food
than without this vital liquid. Yet freshwater
available for human use constitutes less than
half a percent of all water on the planet, and
represents an increasingly scarce and threatened
resource. Even the once seemingly endless seas
are beleaguered.
As
water wizard Peter Warshall has written,
"Life depends in toto on water's
constancy. (Technically, this is one aspect of
an organism's homeostasis.) The ability of water
to absorb large amounts of energy, buffers
photosynthesis in cytoplasm and the transfer of
oxygen in animal blood from chaotic flux;
moderates the Earth's climate by using oceans
and lakes for heat storage; eases seasonal
change and our bodies' adaptation to it by
slowing, without shocks, the change of weather;
and protects plants like cacti from boiling
under desert skies. Most of all, water's
specific heat, heat of vaporization, and heat of
fusion give life its ability to maintain itself
in hard times. Without these molecular traits,
climatic extremes would turn living creatures
over to their Maker at unprecedented
rates." (1)
Water
has been held sacred by virtually all the
world's religious and spiritual traditions. As
Chinese sage Lao-Tzu long ago observed,
"The sage's
transformation of the world arises from solving
the problem of water. If water is united, the
human heart will be corrected. If water is pure
and clean, the heart of the people will readily
be unified and desirous of cleanliness. Even
when the citizenry's heart is changed, their
conduct will not be depraved. So the sage's
government does not consist of talking to people
and persuading them, family by family. The pivot
is water."
Our
very life originates in the water of the womb.
Yet we have treated it as hardly more than an
industrial "resource" and noxious
dumping ground. We are learning that we cannot
live without this precious substance, but it
seems that perhaps we have had to defile this
sacred essence of life in order to learn our
intimate dependence on it, and to undertake the
restoration of the world's waters.
THE
PROBLEM
We
are witnessing the disastrous effects of toxic
agricultural and industrial practices,
uncontrolled development, urban growth,
"heroic" engineering projects that dam
or divert nearly all rivers, and rapacious
overfishing. Sewage and toxic chemicals poison
rivers, lakes, coastal areas, and even the high
seas, introducing virulent toxins into the
global food chain. About 80 percent of diseases
are transmitted by water. Aquifers that provide
drinking water are falling, and wetlands are
disappearing. Irrigated lands are declining in
productivity and being lost to salinization.
Fisheries are collapsing. Conflicts among
nations and groups over-access to shared rivers
or fisheries are escalating, creating serious
prospects of water wars.
Finally,
global warming is a potential source of great
instability if marine currents, rainfall,
coastal flooding, and weather undergo as
significant a shift in pattern as anticipated by
many scientists. The nation of Holland is
examining the feasibility of constructing a huge
offshore dike to offset flooding in case global
warming causes an expected rise in ocean levels!
The entire state of Florida is near sea level,
and even a small rise in the oceans could deluge
it and innumerable coastal areas worldwide.
Global
water use has quadrupled since 1940, but it is
very unevenly distributed. Average per capita
U.S. use (the highest in the world) is 7,200
liters a day; and in India it is 25 liters. (2)
Around the world, water tables are falling:
in Bangkok, they have fallen some eighty feet
since 1958, and continue dropping some 12 feet a
year; in Tamil Nadu, India, they have fallen
some hundred feet in the last 20 years.(3)
The giant Ogallala aquifer in the U.S. Central
Plains, supplying 20 to 30 percent of all U.S.
irrigation water, has been severely depleted,
forcing major reductions in irrigated acreage,
especially in Texas. China, with 22 percent of
the world's population but only 8 percent of its
freshwater supply, is now the world's fastest
growing economy. But Beijing, Tianjin and the
North China Plain are all facing very serious
water shortages.(4)
At
least 26 countries are now considered
"water scarce". Many of them are in
the Middle East and Africa, with rapidly rising
populations in already politically volatile
regions, and they share with several neighbors
river basins that are virtually their only
source of water. In fact, 40 percent of the
world's population lives in river basins shared
by more than one nation.(5)
In
the Third World, at least 1.5 billion people
lack access to unpolluted drinking water. The
resulting diseases kill millions annually (up to
25,000 a day). About 70 percent of India's water
is polluted, and 41 out of 44 of China's large
cities have polluted groundwater.(6)
Recent
studies link chlorine, the very chemical used to
disinfect water, to cancer. Sporadic crises
erupt in urban water supplies ? Milwaukee's
infamous 1993 cryptosporidium outbreak, New
York's scare that same summer, and high lead
levels in many municipal water systems.
The
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a
nonprofit environmental watchdog, found 250,000
violations of the safe water drinking act in
1991-1992, when 43 percent of the nation's water
systems had violations. A U.S. Public Interest
Research Group (PIRG) study found 21 percent of
the nation's largest industrial and public waste
treatment facilities in chronic serious
violation of their discharge permits, and
another 19 percent with occasional violations.
In 1993, some 31 states reported concentrations
of toxic contaminants in freshwater fish tissues
that exceeded public health standards.(7)
The
damming and diverting of nearly every major
watercourse on Earth has, along with pollution,
had such a destructive effect on wetlands,
lakes, watersheds, and all riparian habitats
that freshwater aquatic species are the most
threatened form of life on the planet. One-fifth
of the world's freshwater fish are endangered or
extinct.
Modern
agriculture is a water hog, the largest user and
waster of global freshwater supplies. Poorly
conceived irrigation projects and meat-centered
agriculture are among the main culprits.
Agriculture is also arguably the most polluting
sector of the economy, dumping millions of tons
of animal wastes, nitrates and phosphates from
fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and
fungicides into our water.
Although
industrial "point source" pollution
(traceable to one source) is now more strictly
monitored in industrial nations, violations are
still rampant, and the very products of industry
pollute. Many synthetic plastics, detergents,
fibers, solvents, and pesticides can be toxic
and resist degradation. Phosphate contamination
of water rose sevenfold from 1940 to 1970.(8)
Carcinogenic PCBs are detectable in mother's
milk throughout the world.
Even
industries with reputations for modernity and
"lab coat" cleanliness, such as the
computer industry, turn out to be lethal
polluters. California's Silicon Valley contains
the largest concentration of hazardous waste
cleanup sites in the U.S. (23 on the EPA
Superfund list). Much of Santa Clara County's
groundwater is contaminated with
trichloroethylene (TCE) and other toxic
compounds used by the computer industry.
Miscarriages and birth defects among computer
industry workers and "cancer clusters"
in Silicon Valley neighborhoods have all been
reported.(9)
Many
people became aware of ocean pollution in recent
years when high bacteria levels caused by
overloaded sewage treatment plants, raw sewage
discharges, polluted storm water runoff, faulty
septic systems, and the dumping of boating
wastes forced numerous local beaches to close
temporarily. In the United States alone there
were 484 beach closings in 1988, climbing
steadily to 2,619 in 1992.(10)
The coastal portions of oceans are the most
threatened, and they are precisely the richest,
most biodiverse regions of the sea. Around 90
percent of the world's fish catch is taken in
the one third of the oceans closest to coasts.
Is
it any surprise that coral reefs throughout the
world are in serious decline? Or that red,
green, and brown algae toxic tides
(phytoplankton blooms) are occurring far more
frequently, even in waters where they have never
appeared before, resulting in tragedies such as
the poisoning of 200 Guatemalans (including 26
fatalities) and the 1987-1988 deaths of up to
2,500 dolphins on the U.S. East Coast?(11)
Or that polluted seafood in Peru caused a
cholera epidemic that killed 3,000 people in
1991?(12)
All
these signals point to a beleaguered water
supply. The emerging consciousness of our
dependence on the liquid biology of Earth is
forcing a literal "sea change" in our
attitudes toward water. Although the bioneers
show that the solutions to these problems are
within our reach, the very first step is to
acknowledge the scope of our mismanagement of
Earth's waters.
SOLUTIONS
We
are learning to treat water as the precious
substance it is. We are recognizing the
immediate need to stop our massive dumping of
toxic chemicals and sewage into the Cleopatra's
bathwater of a finite, closed-loop system.
Learning to stop "spitting in the
soup", as President Lyndon Johnson once
said, obviates the need for cleanup in the first
place. Like stopping smoking cigarettes, the
mere act of pollution prevention will cause a
great surge in positive ecological health and
save huge amounts of money.
Pricing
water to reflect its true value encourages
better use, a trend now emerging in European
industry. Wasteful agricultural irrigation is in
the process of radical reform around the world.
Proven methods exist that could save 30 to 90
percent of agricultural water use. Reducing a
water-consumptive, meat-centered diet would also
drastically reduce water use and pollution. Many
cities are starting to mandate watersaving
household appliances, such as low-flush toilets.
Numerous southwestem communities are also
encouraging xeriscaping (dry landscaping), and
discouraging water-consumptive lawns and golf
courses.
We
can restore aquatic biodiversity by stopping
coastal overdevelopment and curtailing massive
dam and irrigation projects with smaller scale
technologies such as microdams, low-tech solar
pumps, and shallow wells. Wherever these simple
technologies are applied, almost instantaneous results
are visible. The precipitous drop in fish
catches from overfishing worldwide is starting
to force a global transformation toward
ecological ocean management. After threatening
their own source of livelihood by overfishing,
fishermen in New England are being compelled to
adopt harvesting standards within ecological
limits.
WHAT
YOU CAN DO
As
an individual, you can use water-saving devices
for home and garden that will greatly reduce
your demand on our finite water supply. Home
systems are becoming available for natural water
treatment. You can join a local watershed or
environmental group to learn how water defines
your region. Gaining the direct experience of
knowing how water shapes the ecology of your
place will change the way you experience the
world.
You
can bring your knowledge of natural treatment
systems to your municipality or local
industries. They will save money while cleaning
up the local environment by adopting such
methods. (See the Resource Section of my book, Restoring
the Earth, for more information.)
As
John Todd's work illustrates, and as Jennifer
Greene describes so eloquently, world cultures
have long associated water with human emotions
and with the sacred oneness of all life. Water,
the great dissolver, teaches us that we cannot
finally separate ourselves from the environment.
Ultimately,
as the bioneer visionaries interviewed in my
book reveal, by learning from natural systems
and emulating them cleverly, we can start to
restore Earth's degraded waters. Both John Todd
and Donald Hammer (whom you can meet in my book)
have looked deeply into the heart of nature to
discover the nature of water. They have emerged
with practical solutions so dramatic and so
simply elegant that their work has begun to flow
into the mainstream. It seems inevitable that
these natural treatment systems will continue to
spread worldwide and help cleanse our water more
effectively, cheaply, and aesthetically.
References.
This
articles was excerpted from
Restoring the Earth: Visionary Solutions From the Bioneers
by Kenny Ausubel
Info/Order
this book.
About The
Author
This article was
excerpted with permission from the book "Restoring the Earth"
?1997 by Kenny Ausubel. Reprinted by permission of H J Kramer, P.O.Box
1082, Tiburon, CA 94920. All right reserved.
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