Scientists get very exited when they discover water on other planets, with good reason. its prescence is a good indicator that an essential element for life as we know it exists.
It is then a bit ironic that we treat our own water worlds so badly.
By water worlds I mean our seas, and our freshwater enviroments, seperate but linked, and both vital to life on our planet, our home, earth.
Throughout our history water has been symbollic. The Bible is littered with references to it. For where there is water there is usually life. The act of baptising someone, in water is highly symbollic.
Water is important. If theres not enough we pray for it. If theres too much...well, we dont like that either.
Over the years our relationship with water has changed. A vital source of life, it could also take life. It was something to be valued, respected, feared.
Now we pretty much take it for granted. Many of us now are privileged to have water on demand,
Our recent history, has been marked with our increasing efforts to conquer, control, and use our water worlds. Examples of this include our reclaiming land from the sea, flood controls, barriers such as dams, extracting water for our consumption.
We exploit our waters by fishing, which brings its own problems. We treat our waters as dumping grounds for our sewage, and the waste generated by our modern society, including radioactive waste and dangerous munitions.
The dumping is often intentional, but it can also be accidental, as we bombard the world with chemicals which often end up in our water systems.
The climate changes we are unleashing bring with them their own challenges and changes, which are changing the acidity levels of our seas, which are also increasingly full of dangerous plastics and trace elements of chemicals that have no place there.
Food chains are being distorted disrupted obstructed destroyed. Hardly noticed by us, significant declines inmany species populations are happening everywhere.
The living planet report (www.panda.org) highlights a massive 81% reduction in invertebrate life in our freshwater world since 1970. Effectively within my lifetime.
That is some acheivement. If we had set out with the intention to do that, I am not sure we could have done it better.
Where theres water their is life. But when you see statistics such as this you have to conclude that life on our lovely lanet earth is struggling for survival.
Pure water. Symbollic, important.
Many people in the world still have great hardship to obtain it, yet our modern society is bringing with it dramatically escalating personal usage. All those usefull gadgets that we stuff into our homes use an awfull lot of it.
We have become spoiled . We expect a stream of water, when we want it. Our habits change. We cease to value it. We waste it . We defile it.
Water.If you try to do without it for any meaningfull length of timeyou will soon learn to appreciate it
This is a huge subject and I have only rippled the surface of it here. It is a huge problem , which deserves a huge response.
When our element of life is struggling so hard to sustain its life, a storm is coming.
Do we really have to be the defilers, the destroyers?. Can we not be the creators with the wisdom to enhance and contribute to a stronger natural world.
Its time to evolve. Time to transcend the negativity we have brought into the world.