Most likely today you reached for a glass of cool refreshing water. If you took it from the tap it is because you are certain it is government approved, scientifically tested and safe. If you grabbed a designer bottle you are also trusting you will be getting the one thing that after air is the most essential for life – clean water.
Me, I drink water from a spring and enjoy some of the best tasting, cleanest water I have ever had…but then, this isn’t about me and my good fortune, it is about what is happening to far too many people in our country and around the world.
What if you lived in Flint Michigan, where elected officials consciously provided tainted water for nearly two years? Or the Reservation in South Dakota, where the recent oil spill has people questioning the unknown – how long does it take until oil seeps into the aquifer and harms drinking water?
The Nebraska PSC has approved the Keystone XL pipeline to course tar sand oil through their state – from Canada to the Gulf to be sold on the foreign market. We will get a drop of the $$ exchange – but not enough to run the risk of polluting one of the most important aquifers in North America – and jeopardize the water for millions of people and life there.
But before I glaze your eyes over with details… My point to you is this: the most sinister of all factors in this ugly assault of man over earth and greed over common sense… is about the fact that far too many of us do not care. We have our glass, it is easily filled and what’s a little oil spill in Nebraska or the Gulf have to do with me?
The enemy, my friends, is not the oil or the faulty pipelines or the lies about energy security and jobs…the enemy is that we can turn our backs on one another. The enemy is that we are willing to debate that which is not debatable: we all need clean water.
We still have a chance to get this right. Let’s make it right.
This piece aired on “Consider This” Dec 7. You can listen in to WDRT 91.9FM every Thursday at 5:28 pm CST.
photo: compliments of NOHO
let kindness win 