Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25253
bOOKS •• •• THE WATER CRISIS IS AN EXTREMELY COMPLEX ISSUE SO IF YOU'RE SEEKING TO GO DEEPER, TRY READING ONE OF THE FOLLOWING BOOKS ON THE SUBJECT. BELOW, THE BLUE LIST OF LEADING WATER THINKERS' MOST RECENT TOMES. BLUE GOLD: THE FIGHT TO STOP THE CORPORATE THEFT OF THE WORLD'S WATER (Maude Barlow, Tony Clarke, The New Press, $25.95) A dramatic and thorough description of the scientific, political and ecological phenomena whose convergence has created the global water crisis. If you have any confusion about why and how the plan- et is running out of water, turn here: Why glaciers melting creates less water. not more; Why wide scale traditional irrigation, ulti- mately dries out farmland through salinizing; Why even "treated" waste water released into fresh water supplies contains contami- nants ranging from pesticides to traces of birth control pills, in the United States and Germany. The answers to the above, as told by the authors, are both fascinating and frightening. If any of the above still baffle you, read on and it will all be clear as a prehistoric stream. -Sandy Barnes WATER: THE DROP OF LIFE (Peter Swanson, NorthWord Press, $30) World luminaries such as Kofi Annan, Mikhail Gorbachev and of course Ted Danson, lead readers through fifty global hotspots for water; investigating present- day problems, promising technologies, and ancient waterways. From thousand year old cis- terns in Petra, Jordan, to the disappearance of the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan, to DRiWATER, a gelatinous water packet that is being used to irrigate olive trees in Egypt, "Water" is a valuable journey through the history and future of water. Water is a coffee-table crash course in the lifeblood of our planet. -Aaron Clark CADILLAC DESERT: THE AMERICAN WEST AND ITS DISAPPEARING WATER (Marc Reisner, Penguin Books, $17) Reisner tracks the rise of development and agriculture in the American West, from the first Mormon settler irrigation ditches in the Utah desert to the large dams built after the Great Depression, illustrating how water issues have helped shape the nation. The story is one of religious fervor, the conversion of dust to dirt, and the American belief that its man's destiny to dam and divert our most precious resource. Meticulously researched and with elegiac prose, Reisner's book is one of the most important pieces of American envi- ronmental writing ever. -Aaron Clark WATER WARS: PRIVATIZATION, POLLUTION AND PROFIT (Vandana Shiva, South End Press, $14) Twenty thousand people died in the Orissa Supercyclone, a killer storm that crossed Eastern India in October of 1999. According to the author this was not a natural disaster but a "man-made ecolog- ical crisis" released through the combined forces of climate change, industrialization and deforestation. "Corporate terrorism," politi- cians such as George W. Bush, the World Bank, IMF, and "globaliza- tion" are responsible. Shiva's book is about privatization and the growing number of water related political conflicts worldwide; but along the way she passionately unmasks how first world consumers are impacting indigent cultures around the globe, paying particular attention to her native India. -Aaron Clark OCEAN'S END: TRAVELS THROUGH ENDANGERED SEAS (Colin Woodward, Basic Books, $15) Mandatory reading for anyone interested in the status of our planet's current and future food supply. Colin Woodward's objective account of humankind's destruction of ocean habitats makes is fascinating. Topics range from the total demise of the once massive fish supply of the Black Sea to Belize's coral reefs to how the Eastern Orthodox church has introduced a new religious sin: environ- mental destruction. Learn about Eutrophication, high-grading, farmed fish and more, all through the first hand journeys ofthe author to the endangered regions in question. - Sandy Barnes LAST OASIS: FACING WATER SCARCITY (Sandra Postel, W.W. Norton, $13.95) Anyone interested in learning more about global water supply issues should · add "Last Oasis" to their list. In it, Postel travels around the world, calling attention to the strains placed on the water systems we take for granted, and how our continued practices threat- en to destroy our very way of life. Postel is cur- rently the Director of the Global Water Policy Project in Amherst, Massachusetts and a Senior Fellow at the Worldwatch Institute where she served many years as the Vice President of Research. ~arenJarnes