World Water Day, Eduardo Galeano
We are made of water.
From water life bloomed. Rivers of water are the blood that nourishes the earth, and of water too are the cells that do our thinking, the tears that do our crying and the recollections that form out memory.
Memory tells us that today’s deserts were yesterday’s forests and that the dry world knew well enough to stay wet in those remote days when water and earth belonged to no one and to everyone.
Who took the water? The monkey that raised the club. If I remember correctly, that’s how the movie 2001: A space Odyssey begins. The unarmed monkey, meanwhile, got clubbed to death.
Sometime later, in the year 2009, a space probe discovered water on the moon. The news sparked plans of conquest.
Sorry, moon.
Eduardo Galeano, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. New York: Nation Books. 2013.
Everyday we’re reminded that water is in short supply. Many millions lack potable water (see the Last Well Project) and spend much of the day working to attain even modest amounts (see United Nations report). According to the Last Well Project, “Globally, 785 million people lack even a basic drinking-water service¹. That’s over twice the population of the United States! Drinking contaminated water can transmit diseases and back in 2017 nearly 1.6 million people died from diarrheal diseases.” California and Texas are running out of water and the world is on fire. The next disaster is coming to the Great Plains. In the meantime, the average American household uses 320 gallons of water per day; and more than half of the outdoor water, about 30%, is dumped on lawns and gardens.
The 2020 bushfires in New South Wales, Australia killed untold millions of animals. And the North Complex wildfire in California left more than 318,000 acres burned and loss of animal life.
