Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Want to read something really sad? Probably not, but here’s a link to an article from WWF about their new report on the world’s rivers. They’re in trouble, grave, grave trouble.

You can download a PDF file of the report from their website.

I have posted about this before, exactly one year ago, but this new report is pretty depressing — and very scary. The possibility of running out of water for the world’s growing human population, not to mention all those other creatures that need it, is growing. In some parts of the world, water scarcity is already a crisis.

Anyway, beyond all that, I love rivers. I love them. I don’t know what else to say.

From WWF Global Freshwater Programme Director, Jamie Pittock:

Poor planning and inadequate protection of natural areas mean we can no longer assume that water will flow forever. Like the climate change crisis, which now has the attention of business and government, we want leaders to take notice of the emergency facing freshwater now not later…

The freshwater crisis is bigger than the ten rivers listed in this report but it mirrors the extent to which unabated development is jeopardizing nature’s ability to meet our growing demands. We must change our mindset now or pay the price in the not so distant future.

Will we? We haven’t done it yet. Just check out where population growth in the US continues to go nuts — Las Vegas, for example, or the desert surrounding Phoenix and Tucson, or the desert mountains of California.

We cannot stop ourselves, it seems. Are we really headed towards this terrible demise of the human species, simply because I have to get mine now, and the rest be damned? Are we?

[tags] WWF, rivers in danger, ecology of rivers, ecological damage to rivers, fresh water shortages, overconsumption of fresh water[/tags]