Climate Change and Clean Water

 

This coming year 300,000 children will die, not because of climate change, but due to a lack of clean water.

Climate change doesn’t kill 300,000 children annually

Turn on the tap and instantly there is a flow of clean, parasite-free, we take water for granted.

We are so used to our abundant water, many people turn on the tap to brush their teeth and leave the tap running. We water our gardens, wash our cars, brew beer, and play in our swimming pools without acknowledging this easy access to freshwater is a luxury.

In some parts of the world, safe water is not so easy to access.

The figures make for stark reading.

According to the World Health Organisation:

·In 2017 29% of the global population lack easy access to safe, uncontaminated drinking water. Of these 2.2 billion people, 829,000, including 297,000 children under 5, died from diarrhoea alone.

• 785 million people lack even a basic drinking-water service, including 144 million people who are dependent on surface water.
• Globally, at least 2 billion people use a drinking water source contaminated with faeces.
• In the least developed countries, 22% of health care facilities have no water service, 21% no sanitation service, and 22% no waste management service.
• Contaminated water and poor sanitation are linked to the transmission of diseases such as cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and polio. Absent, inadequate, or inappropriately managed water and sanitation services expose individuals to preventable health risks. 

Diarrhoea is mostly preventable and yet we waste billions of dollars every year “fighting” climate change, arguably a fight that has only claimed energy-poor victims. Not a single person has on their death certificate “Cause of Death: Climate Change”.

The demand for more money to fight climate change has risen inexorably to the extent we are projected to spend trillions of dollars on a non-issue, whilst the annual cost of a genuine, fixable issue providing clean, safe water is estimated at $22.6 billion.

I accept recorded temperatures are rising. I don’t accept the mild warming we are experiencing in some parts of the world will be anything but benign.

Our species was born in Africa, only migrating out of Africa around 60,000 years ago when the climate became dryer and colder. We seek warmth, which is unsurprising since we are essentially hairless apes.

My issue with recorded global temperatures being lumped together on an annual basis and presented as a catastrophic road to hell is: I don’t think there is a global average temperature. I’m not even sure if there is a local average temperature. There are local average daytime temperatures and average nighttime temperatures for days, weeks, and possibly months of the year. The concept of a single global average temperature for a whole year seems far-fetched to me.

A global average temperature is a complete red-herring.

Helping the clean water impoverished millions is a relatively cheap and easy task compared with “fighting” climate change, a fight only nature will win.

So why aren’t we doing it?

                       Redge at whatsupwiththat.com