Mohamed ElBaradei Quotes

Commenting on a drought that threatened the New York State's water supply:

The nest year California Governor Jerry Brown imposed a form of water rationing.

Water has always been in short supply in the Middle East. For thousands of years in the past water rights and possession was the cause of many conflicts. The rapid increase in fertility and population in the Muslim countries of the Middle East has placed even more stress on the water supply while waste is common. Fortunately Israel and Turkey have developed many techniques of using water efficiently. However, the rest of the Middle Eastern nations are slow to adopt these methods of water conservation, water generation and production, and agriculture that requires much less water than in the past. Politics, religion, and culture can be barriers or facilitators.

The Rio Grande River flows through New Mexico on its way to Texas. However, for many reasons the river flow is diminishing and only a little water makes it to Texas. Some Texas politicians wanted the New Mexican farmers, who were miles from the river and have paid to drill wells which they use to pump water for their irrigation, to limit their water pumping. They argued that the pumping was diminishing the water in the underground aquifer, and this was causing some of the water flowing down the river to flow into the New Mexico aquifer thereby diminishing the river flow. The New Mexican farmers argue that they paid a great deal for that land because it came with water rights under the ground and the water is theirs. This was one of the many intractable problems of agricultural water allocation in the West where farmers plant many crops that would not normally survive in that part of the country without artificial irrigation.

Even before the drought the California (and other Western States’) water distribution system has been unfair, inefficient, wasteful, and irrational. There is only so much to go around and the demand it greater. Farmers sometimes pay only 1 percent of the cost the state incurs for the water they us. And far less than poor city or suburban dwellers. Few California farmers use the efficient drip irrigation system developed in Israel. Some farmers get most of the water they want while others get nothing. The taxpayers in the rest of the country pay for the California cheap water while they themselves pay many times the cost of the water. Ironically, Conservatives who almost always want market based solutions oppose it in the case of water as then the large corporate farms would not have the huge water subsidy that they have now.

There are many American communities where this is the case. However there are others where there is not enough water (especially in drought conditions) for the large agricultural use and a growing population. In Denver, they have enough water, but not a sufficient infrastructure to distribute the water to all.

Agriculture, in most of the country, uses much more water than the human population does for personal drinking and hygiene, but in a number of places there is just not enough water to support all the uses in our growing nation. Agriculture has been organized and has been willing to spend large amounts of money to bribe and/or lobby legislators to block many efforts to develop water supplies for cities large and small under the theory that the more water that went to cities, the less there would be for agriculture.

Coca Cola is mostly water with sugar and a little syrup for flavoring. In addition, water is used heavily in the manufacturing processes of bottles and cans.