There’s a joke my father used to tell us kids when we were little that I somehow got a kick out of even though each time he told it I knew the punchline. It is part of a repertoire of dirty jokes he would entertain us with. Gasp! Oh yes. My mind fell into the gutter way before joining engineering school. I remember the dirtiest one of them all which I finally have the courage to share in public. Make sure there are no children in the room please.
Daddy: Want to hear a dirty joke?
Little Karen: Yes (but secretly…oh boy! I am a big girl now because I get to hear the “adult” jokes.)
Daddy: OK. Here it is.
Little Karen is on the edge of her seat, legs swinging above the ground, in patient anticipation.
Daddy: Three white horses playing in the mud.
GONG!
What a disappointment! And then the one that always followed was:
Daddy: Did you hear the one about the hole in the ground?
Little Karen: No. Tell me.
Daddy: Well, well, well.
Double-GONG!!
Luckily, as I became more mature and “worldly” the jokes improved, but perhaps those innocent little giggles were in reality…foreboding.
Who would have guessed that muffle-ty years later a concept known as “peak water” would be spilling from my fingertips onto a web totally unrelated to spiders and tuffets as a splash of what life as a human is about today. Yet here it is in a bucket we are already kicking because it isn’t quite as full as it used to be.
As humanity turns the crank and sends the ever expanding cauldron deeper and deeper into the earth’s crust, we are creating holes in the ground everywhere that are not very well at all.
As we deplete the world’s aquifers for irrigation, industry, and the biggest scam in the universe (yes, even the Borg are jealous they didn’t think of it first) — bottled water, the “well” is indeed just the punch line of a very bad joke. Sorry Dad, it’s a tough crowd these days.
According to this insightful and hard-hitting article published at Ecowatch, “Today some 18 countries, containing half the world’s people, are overpumping their aquifers. Among these are the big three grain producers—China, India and the U.S.—and several other populous countries, including Iran, Pakistan and Mexico.”
How are we addressing the issue as a united planet?
Well (pardon the pun), we aren’t.
There are many independent NGO (Non-Government Organizations), foundations, charities, and local communities working independently doing fantastic work to fight the human fires. But as the bellies of the thirsty and the hungry continue to burn from the inside out, as far as I know, there is no globally committed endeavor to join all these silos of good together as one mind sharing and collaborating over one common non-partisan, non-territorial, non-commercial purpose for the preservation of all life. If you know of one, please type up. Grown-up Karen is all eyes.
Maybe we have just forgotten Who Water Is.
We are one water. The quest is upon us whether we accept it or not.
One drop to rule them all,
One drop to find them,
One drop to bring them all,
And in the water bind them.
Will you join the Stewardship Of The Drop?
Photo Credit:
One ring via Flickr Creative Commons. Some rights reserved.
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