Drinking fountains are marked “Do Not Drink Until Further Notice” at Flint Northwestern High School in Flint, Mich. . (AP/Carolyn Kaster)
Last week, Michigan’s top prosecutor announced that five officials, including the state’s Health Department head Nick Lyon, will face charges of involuntary manslaughter for a death resulting from the Flint water crisis.
This week, in New York City, representatives from more than100 countries will begin collaborating on an international treaty, first proposed in 2016, to ban nuclear weapons forever. It makes sense for every country in the world to seek a legally binding ban on nuclear weapons. It would make even more sense to immediately deactivate all nuclear weapons. But, by boycotting and disparaging the process now underway, the U.S. and other nuclear armed nations have sent a chilling signal. They have no intention of giving up the power to explode, burn and annihilate planetary life.
A Palestinian boy fills tankers with drinking water for sale at a drinking water station in Gaza City. Poor sewage treatment is a feature of life in Gaza, a result of infrastructure damaged during wars with Israel and a chronic shortage of electricity to run wastewater plants. (AP/Khalil Hamra)
According to conventional wisdom, a rising population must result in poverty and famine. Yet, human beings can innovate their way out of scarcity by increasing the supply resources or by developing substitutes. Human ingenuity, in other words, is “the ultimate resource” that makes all other resources more plentiful, including water.
One of the joys of life is outsmarting the bureaucrats and regulators. They are constantly seeking to ruin our lives with demands that we comply. Free men and women must resist.
What happens in Haiti doesn’t stay in Haiti. Sooner or later, it comes to places like Michigan’s Benton Harbor and Flint. Our destinies are linked. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish aristocrat who long puppeteered United States presidents from behind the curtains, has written: “America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America’s power, especially its capacity for military intimidation.” I concur.
Flint resident and founder of Water You Waiting For, Melissa Mays.
FLINT — For nearly three years, the residents of Flint, Michigan, a city located just 70 miles north of Detroit, have had contaminated water running through their pipes, poisoned by lead and other dangerous metals. The crisis began when local authorities decided to switch the city’s main water source in April 2014, choosing to pull water from the notoriously polluted Flint River in the interest of saving money.
As Donald Trump axes America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Accord, the Kingdom of Bhutan’s Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay finalizes Bhutan for Life, a fund that will give the country the funding required, meeting its commitment to remain carbon neutral forever.
A protester takes part in a rally against the privatization of the state-run water utility, in Thessaloniki, Greece.(AP/Nikolas Giakoumidis)
A few years ago I saw a film of a weak and hungry mother leopard hunting day after day to try to find food for herself and her teenager, a son less adept at hunting than she was due to his being young. It was impossible since drought created water deficits indirectly caused in part by climate change impacts.[Read More...]
