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- ConversationAge, on 03/22/2009, -2/+48We take water for granted. Yet access to safe drinking water is still our world's top issue. World Water Day is an opportunity to reflect on this awareness.
- chrisbaskind, on 03/22/2009, -2/+38You can dig a good, safe water well for an African village at about $200 a pop. I'm trying real hard not to think of the trillions in bailout money, and what impact a fraction of this amount would have if applied to small-scale water projects. Ugh.
- serif69, on 03/23/2009, -2/+19I don't mean to be insensitive (because I'm about to be), but the majority of the cases of unsafe water are a result of improper sanitation practices, not lack of water. We shouldn't be raising awareness of water shortages (not yet anyway; it's coming), but rather awareness that there are still cultures that condone bathing and defecating in and near viable clean water sources. The first step is teaching very basic sanitation to the people who are so unfortunate as to live in squalor, not conserving water in the West.
These "awareness days" are just chest puffing exercises. Taking a shorter shower isn't going to magically make clean water appear halfway around the world. Instead of raising awareness for things, they should be raising money for organizations that are actually on the ground helping people. - PityDaFool, on 03/23/2009, -0/+15Not that I disagree with you, but haven't people been digging wells for thousands of years? Why does it take someone from another country to go to Africa and dig a well? I would think that would be near the top of my priority list if I lived in a village with no clean drinking water. Maybe I'm missing something...
- PityDaFool, on 03/23/2009, -1/+14Weren't wells invented in Africa?!
I'm all for helping people out when they need it, and there may very well be something I'm missing here, but I hate how people act like people in Africa are incapable of digging a whole in the ground, growing crops or herding animals without outside help. - archivedigger, on 03/23/2009, -0/+9We take so much for granted.
- inactive, on 03/23/2009, -1/+9You guys are both ***** retards
- linuxpenguin, on 03/23/2009, -1/+9I wonder if people realize that there are relatively cheap and easy ways of making clean water accessible. . .
For example not taking a dump and bathing in the same river you drink from. And boiling water to kill the germs from someone who did, and getting a water purifier to get rid of the other gross stuff in the water. - qerplonk, on 03/24/2009, -1/+7Not really. Although it may seem weird to some to have property rights over water and charge for it, it keeps the water clean and abundant. If no one has this vested interest, resources usually decline -- google "tragedy of the commons." Although we have to pay water bills every month, it lets us enjoy water. The charge we incur is an incentive for us to not let the hose run all day and night wasting water. Our bills would go through the roof!
We've dumped hundreds of billions of dollars into Africa over the past several decades, and haven't even scratched the surface with solving their poverty. Even with all the Bono concerts in the world, Africa isn't going to thrive unless their leaders stop screwing over their people with totalitarian rules and allow more entrepreneurs to take control. - inactive, on 03/23/2009, -0/+6http://www.pottersforpeace.org/
- chrisbaskind, on 03/23/2009, -0/+6Someone else needs a hug, it seems. Did you actually read the article down to naming the agencies you can donate to? Or do you just troll headlines?
- InfinitySnatch, on 03/23/2009, -0/+6Also, don't kick people into wells.
- stanleyford, on 03/24/2009, -0/+5I never considered it before, but now that I think of it, can you think of a better way to ensure clean, potable, efficiently managed water than to make someone's livelihood dependent upon providing it to others? If the way I fed my family was by providing clean water to my neighbors, you can bet no children would be dying from drinking my product.
- belzner, on 03/23/2009, -0/+5At the very least, it's articles like these that start a conversation about living conditions in Africa, even if the real problem lies with sanitation or purification practices.
- chrisbaskind, on 03/23/2009, -0/+5Someone stole your puppy, huh?
- JoeParanoid, on 03/23/2009, -3/+8Privatizing water is putting corporate greed over human survival.
- Ecochick, on 03/23/2009, -1/+5I thought getting broken up today was bad- this puts my petty nonsense in perspective.
- blu3bird, on 03/23/2009, -1/+5or boil the damn water and poof, basic clean sterile water. 1,000 kids saved.
- roxgod666, on 03/23/2009, -0/+4What the ***** does that have to do with anything? This is not your blog, nobody gives a ***** about your political feelings.
- PityDaFool, on 03/24/2009, -0/+4You don't have to be an a-whole about it. ;-)
- Hetman, on 03/23/2009, -0/+4The problem is regardless of how much monety we spend there it always ends up lost. When you have corrupt government officials. Giving money to them to spend on there citizens does not seem to work. They would rather keep the aid themselfs and not fix the country.
- inactive, on 03/23/2009, -0/+3fox news sucks!
- Biscuitz, on 03/23/2009, -0/+3And here you are, spouting off on Digg instead of doing something...
- monkeywithgun, on 03/24/2009, -0/+3You know, the governments of the world really just don't care!
They commit to the bare minimum in aid for P.R. purposes but beyond that, forget it. There is no money to be made helping impoverished people no mater where they live.
Look, an answer to this already exists yet nothing gets done. There is plenty of water on this planet for every living thing. Two thirds of the planet is covered in water. There are plenty of methods to get clean water but they take investment with little to no return, monitarily that is. I mean we have pipelines that transport oil across nations but no one's going to build one to carry water unless they can charge you more than you can afford for it.
Every year somewhere in the world there is massive flooding and almost none of it is collected and transported to areas in need even though the flooding has mostly occurred in the same regions for hundreds, even thousands of years.
Dean Kamen has a vapor distiller that can make clean drinking water from any source of liquid no mater how polluted and that includes salt water from the oceans and seas. It has no moving parts, no filters to replace and is relatively cheap to produce and is packaged with a Stirling generator for power. He has gone to governments around the world, approached private investors and they all love it but have told him that they wont put up cost of building a plant to manufacture them because there is no profit to be made by doing so. End of story. No one really cares about other people outside of the people they know unless there is a profit to be made. I'm generalizing so don't bother with the exceptions to the rule. I just gave you Dean Kamen!
Dean Kamen Esquire interview Nov. 24, 2008
Back in his office, Kamen fires out explanations for why the Slingshot hasn't taken off yet. It starts with the day Deka finished the first prototype and realized -- shades of the Segway -- there was no real market for it. The poor people who needed it couldn't even begin to afford it, so no big corporation wanted to invest $50 million or $100 million or more to tool up a factory and take it to market. "So now you've got these things, and you go, 'Wow, the kinds of companies that we do business with have to make their return. They're not going to do this.' A few of them said, 'Dean you're --' "
He stops himself before he says the word. But he knows these big corporate guys, and they're good guys, this is just an example where the great power of capitalism fails. So where do you take an idea that's not right for big companies? How about the United Nations? The World Bank? This was something he had never thought about before. What does the World Bank do? Does the World Bank loan money to poor people? Does the World Health Organization flood the Third World with doctors? Does the United Nations unite nations?
"I absolutely thought you could go to the United Nations or the World Bank or the World Health Organization or USAID or any of these organizations that have moral imperative and even a legal obligation to find the best solution to a given problem. You'd think they would be obligated to look at this. But they'd say, 'Great, Dean, as soon as you have these in production, call me, I'm here to buy them.' "
Okay, so what about the big foundations? What about Bill Gates? "I've come to learn, a foundation makes big government look like a bunch of entrepreneurs. They make Fortune 500 companies to be these agile little groups."
So he talked to people like Mohammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank, who won the Nobel prize for giving microfinance loans to poor villagers so they could start small businesses. That's the model for the twenty-first century, rock-skipping over the traditional infrastructure of telephone poles and IBM to the cell phone and the personal computer -- perfect for the Slingshot! But they all said the same thing: Great, give me a hundred or a thousand machines.
So he did some field trials, putting the distiller in a village in Honduras and the Stirling in a village in Bangladesh. And they worked. Marvelously. Magically. He proved that. And still nobody would finance them. It makes his brain hurt. To think that 20 percent of the people alive today are perfect -- more than perfect, desperate -- customers for this beautiful technology and organizations like the UN and WHO are so rigidly organized and their thinking is so monolithic and their model of risk and reward is so narrow that they can't conceive of taking a prototype to production even if it will save millions of lives.... - moxley, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2All you people mentioning population control sound kinda ***** retarded...
Of course population control would have prevented this, are you going to go back in time? Okay, let's talk about the future...How will you implement it? WIll you kill these people? Forcibly sterilize them? How will you get them to control their population and what will you become to do so?
Tell me...Because I want to know how you're going to do it...Because you know what? You aren't going to do *****....
*****, we already have people cold enough on this planet to try to engineer a solution to population in Africa with a bioengineered virus that's working quite well at it's purpose.
This problem could be solved a lot of ways - but nobody wants to pay for the easy ones - we don't have our brightest minds trying to engineer a more complex solution, though I have seen some pretty cool technology like a straw that automatically filters and purifies water - I think it was called something like "lifestraw" or something.. when you're dealing with large populations living in absolute poverty iven our current geopolitical situation there isn't much that is going to be done...it's pathetic. - Tecton1c, on 03/24/2009, -0/+3My church participates in donating to this organization in a big way. Every year all of the "tithes" or gifts during the Christmas services are given to this charity. It doesn't take a lot to change a ton of lives through giving clean water!
http://www.water.cc/ - dhughes, on 03/24/2009, -0/+3 That's the point, it's not the amount of water some people have it's the quality of the water, there are places where water is abundant to the point of people dying from floods, but there isn't any water that is safe to drink.
- inactive, on 03/24/2009, -0/+3CHINA is already doing it
- clvngodess, on 03/24/2009, -0/+3Well, we need to be aware because water is the new war. Don't forget Cochabomba (sp?) or Shasta County in California. And don't forget Coke in India, currently. There are big nasty companies vying for water profits. It's time to pay attention.
- replaysMike, on 03/23/2009, -3/+6or being able to spell hole correctly.
- Byronn, on 03/23/2009, -0/+3I recently saw a documentary called Flow: For The Love Of Water. It was very informative, and is a great watch for anyone interested further in the distribution, privatization, and awareness programs about water.
- byrdboy, on 03/23/2009, -2/+5This is how it should be. Keeps the population in check.
I'm not saying it's easy, but if it isn't water, it's food. If it's not food, it's pollution. If it's not pollution, it's disease...
And if it's nothing at all, if we solve all of humanities problems with unlimited resources, it'll be overpopulation. You won't be able to walk without touching somebody. - blatantly, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2I think population growth is the worlds top issue.
- dragon76, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2The problem is finding a place to dig where a well wouldn't be polluted. There's lots of wells in Africa, it's just most of them aren't clean.
Also boiling water doesn't make it safe to drink, and can in fact make it toxic.
http://health.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=69403 ... - GovernmentsGun, on 03/24/2009, -1/+3Joe, I guess you missed the story here a few months ago about how most government water systems are in trouble. For years they've been telling people conserve water, but now, because people have followed through, the government water projects don't have enough money for needed upgrades and maintenance.
What you don't realize is that government has, by the laws of economics, to act like a business. And besides, do you seriously think that just because someone takes up a government job, their greed ends? - scoottie, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2give them some beer then
- zagatbuzz, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2What a great article, everyone should help support these kids by donating for World Water Week
- fordlyn, on 03/23/2009, -0/+2wow. Great article. You're right, it's heartbreaking.
- GovernmentsGun, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2That is a neat project. I'm glad it's going on. Do you know if there is a secular group doing the same?
- Tecton1c, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2I can't speak to the quality of these organizations, but these came up right at the top of a Google search for "clean water organization":
http://www.globalwater.org/
http://www.cleanwateraction.org/
Be sure to research charitable organizations before giving. The Living Water organization I know as fully legitimate due to seeing video footage of pastors at my church on trips to new well diggings, so I have no question my money is going to a good cause with them. - Pother, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2Ah, world water day... didn't know about that one.
But that would explain the radio story this morning about some restaurants charging for tap water and donating the proceeds to that group, UNICEF... which I believe I recall is in itself a controversy. - AlmightyCushion, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2Did reading this article make anyone else thirsty?
- Pother, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2I'm going to vote you up just so I can talk you down...
1a.) There aren't enough resources... there's plenty... its just not being used intelligently, nor is it a priority to use it intelligently... we tend to have "monkey vision" when it comes to things like this... (I think you can search Digg to find out about "monkey vision".)
1b.) There isn't enough "fresh water"... we've got people freaking out about how much "fresh water" will melt into the oceans and causing the oceans to rise... so how about we go get it BEFORE it goes into the oceans? We pump oil out on one side of the planet, and ship it to the other, why not water? We could yeah, but there's that priority of "making a profit" vs. "providing clean water"...
2.) Human population spreading like a virus... take a look at any ecosystem, and I think you'll find LIFE in general does that... only it usually balances itself out... notice most of us are not completely killed off when we contract a viral infection... usually the ecosystem the virus lives in changes in some way the virus stops spreading...
3.) Outright irresponsible having children at all at the moment... well yes, if you're a "generally stupid" person, please don't have any children. We don't need anymore "generally stupid" people. But if you're an "generally intelligent" person, then yes, please be sure that your intelligence is replaced, because the "generally stupid" people need "generally intelligent" people to teach them how to:
a.) dig wells
b.) not defecate in or pollute said well
c.) not allow themselves to be governed and overrun by other "generally stupid" people with guns.
4.) The Earth can't cope... yes it can, and if temperatures rise enough to melt all that fresh water in Antarctica and in Greenland, then about 5/6's of the human population will be killed off, maybe more if disease then spreads, and famine, and then war... so yes, Earth can cope. - scarz99, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2Yeah and probably 1,000 will also die from not having any water to drink.
- GovernmentsGun, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2@Tecton1c
Thanks. I appreciate that. - moxley, on 03/24/2009, -1/+3Like Kanye said: "Barack Obama doesn't care about Black people."
....oh...wait.. - Biscuitz, on 03/23/2009, -0/+2And there you are again, running your fingers instead of being out, helping...
- GovernmentsGun, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2There are a lot of innovative devices out there now that, once they hit mass market, should help many people in poor areas get access to fresh water. I saw one the other week on digg called the Water Cone or something like that. The guy that invented the Segway also has a device coming to market.
I love innovation. :) - KloroFormd, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2I work at a sports bar, and we're doing that now. Though we don't charge, we ask for a dollar donation.
- partrow, on 03/24/2009, -0/+2Do you mean an average of 1000 will die?
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