Biology effects us everyday, more often than we can imagine. Nowhere can we see this more clearly than in something we rely on for life- water. During class, we watched the movie “FLOW”- and that got me thinking. Water is a valuable resource, and so often we don’t even realize it.
Check out the Film: http://www.flowthefilm.com/takeaction
Without water, life on earth wouldn’t exists: waters’ special properties, its polarity, allow life as we know it to be here.
The world is running out of our most important resource- clean, fresh water. While alternatives for energy are being searched for, there isn’t an alternative to water-we need it, for life.
Rivers here, in the country, including the Colorado, are running low. Here, in this country, we are running out of water. This isn’t a remote problem. And yet very few people actually realize this is a problem. We lack awareness.
OVER A BILLION PEOPLE lack access to safe water, clean water.
Everyone deserves water. Everyone needs water to live. Clean, safe, fresh water that we can drink without fear- but we don’t have this. We aren’t anywhere close.
Water should be put on the UN charter of basic human rights- it ISN’T already on there. Making water a right won’t fix everything, but it could help. Sign this- and help make water a right: http://article31.org/
In places where water runs out of a tap, where water, hot or cold, is always available, we pay no attention to this crisis- it doesn’t seem like anything that will affect us. FLOW, if it successfully raises awareness- it’s a wake up call, an alarm clock.
Globally, private companies are taking over, particularly in developing regions where the governments are in debt or incapable of providing water to all of there people. As regional waters become more and more polluted, people become reliant on other sources- and often they can’t afford to pay these private companies, and must resort to drinking polluted water. Water belongs to us all- companies have no right to take peoples water and sell it back to them at rates they can’t afford.
As humans change waterways, building aqueducts and dams, we change ecosystems and impact our environment, with no regard for the impact. We are using our resources up scarily fast. Diverting and changing the natural paths of water only makes the damage that much harder to reverse, that much quicker in getting us to a point where all of us lack water.
Through this film, I got a chance to explore something I hadn’t thought about much before- the scarcity of the resources we take for granted. I got to dream of changing the world- of making a difference, and I hope we can continue to dream on together, and perhaps, if we are lucky get a chance to realize this future. We get to examine the problems facing up, and figure out how to divide our resources effectively and fairly. The planet has enough for us, we merely have to figure out how to use it.
At what point are we obligated to help? We know this is affecting us. We know this is affecting our world. If we know we have the power to do something, aren’t we obligated, as members of the human race, to do anything we can to help, to make a difference, to give future generations of clean, safe, free water, so that no-one is deprived of this basic right. Nothing is more important then water- so turn off the tap.
Thanks for reading-
Serena
Explore, Dream, Examine
Explore Dream Examine- Biology 
Serena,
FLOW sounds like an interesting movie. We have a movie, here at home, about water in the southwest US, and political activists encouraging water conservation, keeping rainwater for home irrigation, xeriscaping, etc.
As you hint at (and I don’t know whether FLOW covers this or not) there is a connection between water and energy; for example, one can use energy to make clean water from seawater; one can (ab-) use water (for example in fracking) to get at natural gas from underground formations.
Keep on writing!
Martin
I think this movie kind of stressed me out thinking about how we are destroying our environment and the water supply. I feel so helpless. I mean I know people say “You can make a difference.” But honestly at this point that isnt really true. And to answer your question “Why isnt water a right?” Well because companies want to make money. Plus water bottles are never going to go away. So companies will always be looking for places to get water they can bottle for as little price as possible. It sucks but it is a reality. These companies wont stop unless they are forced to stop, which is very unlikely.