'Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis' - Sneak Preview

Publishers Weekly provided this brief sneak preview of Cynthia Barnett's forthcoming (20  September 2011) book,  Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis.

Shill alert! You know the drill.

Barnett will be keynoting the AWRA's 2011 Annual Conference this November in Albuquerque, NM.

Here's the review:

Barnett, an award-winning journalist specializing in environmental and water issues, proposes that we need a new "blue revolution" comparable to the green one, warning that "like the unending bull market, or upward-only house prices--the illusion of water abundance is a beautiful bubble doomed to pop." She compares America's problematic water policies to nations that take floods and droughts more seriously: the Dutch use community consensus and compromise for the public good. Singapore's top-down policies, along with changing the tiny nation from "postcolonial pigsty to one of the world's most successful economies," are freeing it from dependency on imported Malaysian water as it gains self-sufficiency through intensive engineering, recycling wastewater into drinking water, and a conservation agenda "to bring people closer to water so that they can better appreciate" and protect it. Barnett believes that our water problems, from the devastation of Katrina to fights over the Colorado River, derive from "America's widespread lack of respect for water," and that we need to develop a water ethic that values and conserves water, keeps it local, avoids overtapping of aquifers and massive water projects, and leaves as much as possible to nature. Although water activists may be mystified by Barnett's lack of discussion of water privatization, the book provides an eye-opening overview of the complexity of our water-use problems and offers optimistic but practical solutions. (Sept.)

We've got a ways to go till late September, but it will be worth the wait.

"There is a spiritual side to our connection with the planet. And in this material world, that's anathema. It is somewhat worrying. What I say.. it makes life. It gives us fulfilment. It makes us whole human beings. And without it, we make mistakes. And, boy, are the leaders of the world making mistakes at the moment.' -- Bob Brown

Comments

[PAUL F MILLER]

'Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis' - Sneak Preview ...

I dare say America is well past the point of any sneak preview of the water dilemma we created and now are about to have need to come face to face with ...

If history is our guide ... then government at all levels have chosen to solve the water crisis as they see it by gifting water to private interests under the guise of that private interest's can and will provide SAFE water cheaper and more equitably than can they... Truly a sad commentary no our expectations of government ...

Our water dilemma is upon us ... today ... and unless "we" (public) choose to get our head out of the sand and get involved the opportunity will be taken from us ... courtesy of our corporate owned Congre$$ ... $upreme Court ... and Office of the President ...

Forget political party ... race ... creed ... sex ... Republican .... Democrat ... they are all owned by corporate interest$ ...

[Preeti]

After reading this article it reminds me about a documentary "Nîm, or the Fresh Water Sinner" in which it explores that water is the most important and valuable resource in our life. Without water either humans or plants or birds and animals no one can survive longer. Earlier there was no scarcity of the resources, there was plenty of resources to survive. But now due to global warming slowly we loosing our resources in which the main resource is water. Some years before people lived well because there were trees, water and all other resources but now everywhere there is the scarcity of all these resources.

To watch please visit - http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/5770