Year 4, Month 4, Day 5: DiHydrogen Monoxide

The Washington Post runs an AP article on World Water Day, featuring that irresponsible hippie, Ban ki-Moon:

UNITED NATIONS — Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is warning that by 2030 nearly half the world’s population could be facing a scarcity of water, with demand outstripping supply by 40 percent.

Ban said one in three people already live in a country with moderate to high water stress. He spoke Friday at a U.N. event marking the opening of the International Year of Water Cooperation 2013 and the 20th anniversary of the proclamation of World Water Day.

He said “competition is growing among farmers and herders; industry and agriculture; town and country; upstream and downstream; and across borders.”

With a growing global population and climate change, he said international cooperation is essential to protect water resources.

“Let us use it more intelligently and waste less so all get a fair share,” Ban said.

Shrill, I know. March 23:

As Ban Ki-moon emphasizes, regional populations everywhere are coming under unprecedented environmental pressures. Even as extreme weather events increase, dumping huge quantities of rain or snow on ill-prepared communities, others are discovering that drought, once an unwelcome visitor, is now a permanent resident.

Barring new infrastructural technology that will allow regions buffeted by unseasonal precipitation to save their water and transport it to areas where it’s urgently needed, we can anticipate a profound humanitarian crisis. By delaying and hindering adaptation strategies, the climate-change deniers in our media and politics have ensured a tragedy of unprecedented proportions.

Singing of a “hard rain” in the early 1960s, Bob Dylan referred to nuclear annihilation. Fifty years later, his song’s an eerie prophecy of the burgeoning climate crisis — harkening to the “sound of a thunder, it roared out a warning,” and the “roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.”

Warren Senders