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Topic: Water Conservation "It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life." ~ Rachel Carson Book Review When the Rivers Run Dry: Water - The Defining Crisis of the 21 st Century by Fred Pearce Reviewed by Robert Keim,UUMFE Board Member UUMFE Fall 2006 Newsletter Getting the 2006 Statement of Conscience on Global Warming passed so resoundingly at General Assembly was a landmark moment - one that breathed life into our 7th Principle and called congregations and the UUA itself to action. And while it speaks directly to the issue of climate change, this multi-dimensional SOC is much about "environmental justice" - justice for our descendants, for the fish who swim the oceans, for the forests and their inhabitants, for all those who will be most affected by a warming Earth. And even more important, passage of this SOC was not an ending, but only a beginning. At the same GA, the Director of Beacon Press, in her Annual Report, announced a number of new books being released by their house. Among these is one of timely relatedness: When the Rivers Run Dry, by Fred Pearce, or as it's subtitled, Water: The Defining Crisis of the 21st Century. Traveling to water-stressed areas around the world, Pearce recounts, in stark fidelity, a litany of resource debacles - from the $27 billion dollar "Great Manmade River" in Libya to mass fluoride poisonings in India that may affect up to 60 million people to the Aral Sea, which is drying up at a rate twenty times the size of Manhattan every year. Then there's the High Plains Ogallala Aquifer, one of the largest hydrologic systems in the United States, now being depleted eight times faster than nature can replenish it. The result is land subsidence and the disappearance of the water table, which has already fallen more than one hundred feet. It's a list that goes on and on and on, around the world. And, as Pearce notes, future water demands will continue to be exacerbated by four factors not yet slowing under control: population growth, environmental misuse, commercial consumption and pollution, and the effects of climate change. Meanwhile, nations have already threatened or gone to war with one another over water. With so many social, political and environmental crises looming on the horizon, it can be challenging to maintain hope and focus, but it's absolutely necessary that we do so. As Pearce writes, "We need to relearn some of the old lessons of sharing if we are to manage water better. We must realize that water has to be given back to nature. The environmental case for insuring 'conservation flows' in rivers and on wetlands is unanswerable. This is not an optional extra for 'tree huggers'." While response to the matter of climate change is the defining issue of our age, we won't move very far without taking care of the waters that sustain us and the world in which we live. We could focus, as do our friends at UUSC, on the human right to water a principle at times strained or downright abrogated. Or we might immerse ourselves in local work, such as Legislative Ministries is doing in the Sacramento Delta Area in California, or the Sierra Club in the Caloosahatchee River basin in Florida. The point is that water flows through every life, and running out or excluding the thirsty poor are not options. The more aware and involved we are, the better able to meet the future we will be. Get a copy of When the Rivers Run Dry. Read it and get on board, before it's too late.