by Marc Phillippe Babineau

Created on: September 08, 2008   Last Updated: October 02, 2008

Climate change is just that, a change in the climate from what it was like before the industrialist age. It is not a myth, nor is it fairy tale spun by scientists seeking more research funding. The climate is changing in a manner that summers are now a bit cooler and wetter, and there's a lot more cloud cover than there was 50 years ago. The winters are warming, and in Canada, many cities are now getting used to green Christmases, where they used to have 3 to 5 feet of snow every Christmas. The Arctic Ice Cap is breaking apart and melting, and not unlike the wicked witch of the north, it will not come back (at least not until the next Ice Age).

The melting Glaciers do have some positive impact in providing fresh waters for the rivers that fees from them, but the negative impact is, well, that they are melting, and not replenishing. With trillions of cars spewing billions of tonnes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere yearly, the sky keeps getting more cloud covered, trapping these polluted particles and reflecting the Earth's heat back down to the planet's surface, instead of off into space. UVA and UVB rays from the Sun are passing through the atmosphere in unheralded and unheard of amounts.

So, how is climate change affecting the provisioning of water to people in the poorest regions of the World? The rainwater that was so prevalent throughout the world is now concentrated on smaller and smaller areas, and most of that rainfall is contaminated and not fit for human consumption without first treating it. Villages with thousands of people are being supplied by muddy creeks that trickle water at a snails pace, if they are lucky enough to have access to any water at all.

Meanwhile, trillions and trillions of dollars are being spent on bullets and missiles, tanks and jets. Money that, if spent on water treatment, storage and distribution could save millions of lives a year. Why does this not happen, it seems like such a simple solution; just stop fighting wars and start helping people. Why can this not be done?

The economy, in a word, is heavily reliant on two things; the war on terror and the war on drugs. Between the costs of both, the water problems, as well as farming and in turn many, many jobs could be addressed. Prosecuting and housing hundreds of thousands of people in jails for possessing small amounts of marijuana, and the costs of running wars anywhere that the flow of oil may be in jeopardy represents hundreds of trillions of dollars a year woldwide.

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