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Commentary: Copenhagen’s missing ingredient is water

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 30, 2009 at 7:39 am

From the Los Angeles Times, this commentary by James G. Workman, who has advised national water ministers around the world and is the author of “Heart of Dryness: How the Last Bushmen Can Help Us Endure the Coming Age of Permanent Drought.”:

“Climate change conjures up factory smoke, corn ethanol, cap-and-trade, hybrid cars. It also evokes Al Gore, drowning polar bears, African famine and Hurricane Katrina. All these triggers and the issues they invoke, backed by mounting evidence of irreversible risks to humankind, will converge next week in Copenhagen.

Our collective political will may yet secure the Earth’s equilibrium through an overarching deal — though short of a treaty — by the end of the U.N. climate-change conference there. Or it could all come unglued. Delegates from around the world chosen to decide our fate have deliberately removed the one element that can tip the scales.

We know fossil fuel emissions matter immensely. But the most volatile chemical compound isn’t methane, nitrous oxide or even carbon dioxide. It’s water.

Scientists stress water’s profound link with climate change, and how wise water management could bind global efforts to cool our warming planet with local efforts to absorb its unavoidable shocks. Even the public gets it. Yet our delegates wallow in denial. In a misguided effort to avoid dissent, they have erased water from their working draft, forgetting how water is the planet’s one common denominator. … “

November 30, 2009 · Filed Under Climate change & water supply

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