On water

Water, it’s easy to take for granted when, with the flick of a wrist, you can get it pumped directly into your sinks, your showers, your toilets. The human body can survive for a substantial amount of time without food, that number varies depending on body composition and other factors, but it’s typically estimated anywhere from 8 to 21 days. That isn’t to say food is unimportant, just that on the hierarchy of needs, water is king. Depending on the circumstances, you may not even last a full day without it, so what do you do when you don’t have any?

It’s an ever evolving story around here, first with the whole deadly plague thing that no one is talking about, then almost freezing to death, and my personal favorite, no water. It really does feel like everything is trying to kill you, when everything is — in fact — trying to kill you. According to the latest news, the weather brought with it a loss of water and power for most of us here. The loss of power and the freezing temperatures apparently even caused a man to freeze to death in his recliner (seriously).

Yet, one of the more pressing concerns is the lack of drinkable water. While the temps are low and you’re not sweating a lot, you don’t need a lot to survive, but you still need some! It’s part of the reason it’s so infuriating to see places like flint, Michigan (remember them?) without drinking water for so long that people still don’t trust the water. I don’t blame them! This isn’t the first time water has been weaponized against people who are poor here in the US (DuPont…) and I am willing to bet my life it won’t be the last.

It’s the reason the people in power don’t care about global warming. It literally won’t affect them. In fact,a quick investment in water and suddenly they are once again profiting from people’s misfortune. Don’t think it will happen that way? Water is already being traded as a commodity (source), that doesn’t bode well for our future. We need water to survive and while the bottled water industry is making millions on tap water (literally), there is still more money to be wrung out of human suffering. It’s a feature of the system, not a bug. It’s why billionaires were basically celebrating the fact people were dying without power (source).

Water, clean drinkable water, should be a human right. Just like food and shelter should be a human right. If you are suddenly concerned about where the money would come from to provide that kind of support for the poor, well just look at our national defense spending, or better yet just tax billionaires. It was never a money issue, it is simply that our system is built on suffering, the more suffering there is, the better the bottom line is. Ironically, profit matters to the people who have more money than they could ever possibly spend in their lifetime.

It’s easy to take water for granted. Yet, we’re constantly fighting the powers in charge of protecting us to supply us with clean drinkable water. I haven’t had clean drinking water in a week and I’ve lost water for at least the next week due to a burst pipe near me that the city will have to fix. When you can’t even shower, when you can’t flush a toilet, when you have to conserve the water you have because the people dolling it out are so hard to get to, you start to realize how a little thing like clean water, isn’t such a little thing afterall.