Maude Barlow on Water: The Myth of Abundance

[Kätzchen]

Maude Barlow was recently on my campus at the Chiles Center and she delivered the most amazing speech on where we stand with the issue surrounding water shortages. Her speech was titled: Water: The Myth of Abundance.

For those of you who are not acquainted with her and her activism, she is a Canadian author and activist who has been awarded 8 honorary doctorate degrees; she is the national chairperson for The Council of Canadians; she chairs the board of Washington DC based Food and Water Watch; the co-chair of Blue Planet Project; and is also an executive member of the San Francisco based International Forum on Globalization, and a councillor in Hamburg, Germany for World Future Council. She has also been a featured guest on NPR Radio news shows!

LINK<~~ see this link for further background information on Maude Barlow.

The speech she gave has not yet been converted to DVD format and is available on YouTube in 8 sequenced videos: The first two videos I have not included here - these are introductions to her speech and you can double click on any video below, to take you to YouTube if you are interested in watching the preceding videos. I'm embedding videos 3-7 - her speech. Videos 8-11 are filmed sequences of her taking questions from the audience and expounding further as she addressed specific audience questions.

I've yet to decide what and/or where I will concentrate in my future career - but I've always been attracted to environmental issues: In the past, my focus has been on Timber because of my love for trees and how unique they are at cleansing the air and as stakeholders who have no voice in contemporary human culture.

Maudes speech set my soul on fire. I won't give away the central tenets of her speech; but I will say that I agree with her 100% that the human use of water and why the water footprint needs to come to screeching halt immediately or there won't be a life worth living in (as Maude has characterized the current situation) 5 to ten years.

Please watch her video and listen to what her message conveys. It's so important. Without water, we will die a slow death in agony. So will Trees.

With love,
~ALK

PS/ please feel free to begin a conversation if you would like and talk about things or ask questions among yourselves or leave any comments you would like to with regard to her speech. I would add this caveat: I don't know much about water rights issues or use issues or current policy in our local regions, states or at a federal level or even on a global basis; but Maude is an expert and she has devoted her life to advocate for water. I believe that in one segment of her speech she tells about how one city (a location) has named water as a human right - in order to develop effective policy to protect water sources in that particular location. I've only heard her once and I need to re-listen to her message several times. Her speech is dense and rich with a wealth of information that most people do not hear about.

Without further ado, here's Maude's speech (videos 3-7) at University of Portland's - Chiles Center!!!


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