CITY DIARY 3.26.13

 New York Water Towers show is currently at The Joint at 471 Myrtle, in Brooklyn until the end of April. This work is part of an upcoming book which chronicles 25 years of  New York's  beautiful wooden tanks. © Ronnie Farley

CITY DIARY 3.24.13

                    Sunset on water tower, New York City, 2007 © Ronnie Farley

It was "World Water Day" two days ago and a large symposium was held at the United Nations to commemorate this day--and address the daunting issues that face the world regarding water.  Was there a spot of news about any of this in our mainstream media? There was a billboard at Times Square that had an animation about water that would flash a few of times an hour (according to a New York Times blog called "Green"). The Times also had a "Picture of the Day"--a girl from India with water dripping from a spigot. That was it. I guess at least there was some kind of nod towards the issue. But folks, this is our life's blood, the Earth's blood! Shouldn't there be more concern over this in our mainstream media?

The arm of the global energy interests reaches far into our mainstream media outlets—whether they are owners, investors, board members, or major advertisers.

Almost half, that is HALF of the water consumed in this country is used for 'thermoelectric power generation.' Simply put, that is the production of electricity through steam driven turbine generators—burning fossil fuels like coal, natural gas, or petroleum to create steam, which propels the turbines that create electricity. Then, the machinery used to produce the electricity needs to be cooled down—hence using more water, then that water gets too hot and needs to be stored to cool off, before being drained into a lake, a river, the ocean, or some kind of holding pool or drainage system (Nukes is not the alternative because they use even more copius amounts of water—especially to cool the rods, and nukes also create waste from spent uranium, which also needs to be cooled, often by immersion in water).

In addition to the use of water in the creation of electricity, there is an enormous amount of water used in the extraction, processing and transport of these natural resources to the power plants, usually contaminating the local water source with toxic by-products of the mining operation. Oftentimes the communities with power plants in their back yard are Indian reservations or low-income areas, who suffer high cancer rates as a result of the toxins in the water they drink

Water is our most precious resource and yet we have created machines that are sucking our life blood out of the Earth, and in turn, killing us. All for the profit of a few, under the guise of "making life easier." We've created a social, economic, and political system completely dependent upon electricity and at the same time, we are writing ourselves onto the endangered species list. As we dive headlong into our technological future, it is my hope that the generations to come will address this madness and embrace a way of thinking that works with the laws of Nature rather than against her, and create technologies that advance us forward towards life-sustaining ways. The responsibility of technology is  'Kapieren und Kopiernen'—first understand Nature, then copy it. If we continue to think we will harness and bend Nature to our will, we are further coercing her destructive powers to save herself from our hubris.