The Progressive: Maude Barlow Interview

Colleague Paul Pickett sent me this link to David Barsamian's interview with Maude Barlow from the December 2oo8 issue of The Progressive.

Some of the gems spewed forth:

"It’s really only in the last thirty to forty years that we started polluting water with massive urbanization."

Wonder if she has heard of the Industrial Revolution in the developing world, and what the waterways looked like before 30 or 40 years ago? Massive urbanization/industrialization caused terrible pollution.

It stuns me how quickly we’ve destroyed water tables with our technology, with the ability to build great big pipelines and move water the way we’re now moving energy around in pipelines. There are bore wells going down into the west side of Lake Michigan that go as deep into the groundwater as Chicago’s skyscrapers go in the air. That’s how big they are. They are sucking that water so fast that for the first time last year the water in Lake Michigan reversed its direction. They are sucking in Lake Michigan water, not the aquifer water, which is a problem anyway because then they’re taking the water that feeds Lake Michigan. But now they’re actually taking from the lake.

When you have that kind of technology—and that’s only thirty, forty years old—then you have the ability to mine groundwater in a way that no other civilization has been able to do. I call it water mining because it’s like a gold-mining or a diamond-mining company: You come along and you take it all out, and when it’s gone, you move on, which is a very different notion than sustainable use of groundwater or surface water.

Drilling deep wells and pumping lots of ground water is a technology that is only "thirty, forty years old"? I don't think so.

I'll say it again: Barlow is now a UN Senior Water Adviser, not merely a Canadian activist. She needs to get her facts straight.

Here's what Aguanomics thinks of Barlow.

Enjoy!

"I do believe that water is going to be the great connector. The tremendous interest in this issue is just wonderful and gratifying and exciting. Also, people like the success stories. There are wonderful success stories, and people are hungry for those. This is a good movement to hang around with." -- Maude Barlow

Comments

[David Zetland]

Now -- damn it, Michael -- you're taking all my good material. What will we ever do if she stops saying such crap? We'll have to create another emotional, underinformed, biased person. Wait -- maybe Naomi Klein can step in?