DAVOS — Check out Jerry Linenger’s appearance on YouTube, answering the Davos Question. More soon from the World Economic Forum.
Jerry spent five months on board the Russian space station Mir, surviving numerous life support systems failures and the worst fire to ever occur in space. But he says what really can concern an astronaut is the state of fresh water on the planet.
Let me indulge in some timely self promotion for my colleagues at Circle of Blue, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars China Environment Forum and the Pacific Institute. The Circle of Blue team, which I direct, publishes today its compelling multimedia report, “Reign of Sand,” about the water crisis in Inner Mongolia, China. The multimedia package comes as China’s spring dust storms approach. Scientists say the severity and frequency of the dust storms reflect worsening conditions, including: dryer climate, stronger winds, water shortages, over-grazing, population growth, and a clash between nomadic herders and the government over range and farmland management.
We’ve said before in this space that it will take powerful narratives and an informed public to respond to these unfolding crises. Take a look and be sure to click to suggest your story ideas, where we should send a team of reporters and why.
By Keith Schneider
Circle of Blue Senior Editor
(posted from Modeshift.org)
The era of global climate change has produced such rainy and warm conditions in northern Michigan that a winter’s worth of snow and ice melted completely here over the last two days. Meanwhile it’s dry, desperately so, in several huge and significant regions of the country.
The striking contrasts are putting strains on the culture and economy in ways we’re only starting to understand. Yesterday I stood in a driving January rain talking to Jim MacInnes, the chief executive of Crystal Mountain, our local ski resort. He was interested in new economic data he’d read online. I was watching the deep gullies forming at the bottom of Buck, the resort’s steepest slope.
The signs of changing climate and an economy that has been slow to respond, are everywhere.
Judging by the thickening white sashes of salt lining Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the largest reservoirs in the United States, the drought on the Colorado Plateau is not only deepening, it is pushing water supply conditions for roughly 25 million people from serious toward dire. The moment of reckoning over water supplies, anticipated since the 1960s, appears to have arrived.
Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and southern California form the fastest growing region in the country. All are served by the Colorado River, which provides drinking water to Las Vegas, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and hundreds of smaller communities. Lake Powell, north of the Grand Canyon, and Lake Mead, which lies just south, are less than half full and dropping steadily. Both are 105 feet lower than their full pools, and dropping about eight to ten feet a year.
The ring around the reservoirs is beginning to be seen as a noose around the neck of the region. Not surprisingly it’s become politically palatable to consider changes in water management and use once deemed impractical. Conservation measures were put into effect in Phoenix, and in Las Vegas the water district is paying homeowners $1 a square foot to tear up their lawns and install desert plantings.
The Colorado Plateau states and California last month finished an agreement that provides both more flexibility and certainty in who has the right to what’s left in both reservoirs, and sets triggers for declaring emergencies that dramatically cut use. The Metropolitan Water District, southern California’s major water provider, announced in November that they will buy 65 billion gallons of water annually from Central Valley farmers north of Sacramento.
Orange County is preparing to turn on a new waste treatment plant that will pump “highly treated wastewater from their new purification plant to percolation ponds in Anaheim. Eventually, the recycled water will be delivered to about 2.3 million people.” And all the desert states are more intensely eyeing the Great Lakes.
Hot Atlanta
The other region of the United States where water demand is outrunning supply is the Southeast. There’s been more rain there this week; Nevertheless, for the first time in the lives of most of the 10-county Atlanta region’s 4 million residents, turning on the tap is an invitation to consider the limits of growth. The U.S. drought map continues to show that precipitation, soil moisture, and lake and river levels are in “extreme” dry condition.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a nice piece on the region’s inability to plan and invest in water supply infrastructure. And Atlanta Water Shortage keeps a near-daily update of conditions.
Texas Too
Water authorities in the Texas Panhandle late last month said they were cutting the water supply from Lake Meredith to 11 cities, including Amarillo, Plainview, Lubbock, and Brownfield. The reason, according to the Houston Chronicle: “brutal drought conditions in two of the past three years.”
By Keith Schneider
Circle of Blue Senior Editor
excerpted from Modeshift.org
Late last summer we sent a reporting team to Inner Mongolia, China to cover the front lines of the freshwater crisis in Asia. The members included a writer based in South Korea, a Getty Images photographer from Malaysia, an artist and grasslands specialist from Beijing, and Eric Daigh, a videographer and multi-media producer from Circle of Blue’s main office in northern Michigan.
Circle of Blue’s strategy is to merge great independent reporting with the new online multi-media production and dissemination tools to elevate freshwater scarcity to a global priority.
Circle of Blue is finishing its “Reign of Sand” multi-media report from Inner Mongolia, which includes more motion reports, articles, photographs, and mapping. Here’s a taste of the great work to come from this collaborative journalism project that’s covering the front lines of the global freshwater crisis.
http://www.circleofblue.org/video/reign_daigh_notebook.php
At the opening reception last week for Water Stories at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, we talked about iconic images that define and punctuate eras. Matthew Brady’s plates of the Civil War that captured the still, anonymity of death. Eddie Adams and Nick Ut’s black and white photographs from Vietnam that etched war’s horrors on our collective mind’s eye. And the first self portrait of Earth taken from the Moon. Moments that engage, involve, inform, defy, horrify, inspire.
While Atlanta suffers severe drought and the Great Lakes levels are dropping, I’m reminded of the iconic imagery produced during the Great Depression. Few are as engrossing as Dorothea Lange’s image of a migrant mother and her family. When I hear scholars speak of water refugees, I think of Florence Owens Thompson and her hardships (see below). And I think of the faces captured by today’s photojournalists, chroniclers of our time such as Brent Stirton. One of these faces of the modern water crisis is Francisca Rosas Valencia, whose tears belie the deep sorrow for her family as they leave their drought-stricken farmland near Tehuacan, Mexico.
Photograph by Brent Stirton/Getty Images for Circle of Blue
TEHUACAN, MEXICO — Francisca Rosas Valencia dabs away tears while praying for her son, Florentine, who left this drought-stricken valley to work in Los Angeles. (Read her story from Circle of Blue’s coverage in Tehuacan: Divining Destiny).
In this era of digital media, there are bound to be many iconic images from the front lines of the water crisis. Will it be the stranded polar bear looking at us with longing eyes? Or perhaps the hands of a Bangladeshi farmer, crippled by arsenic poisoning? Or the precipitous drop in a river’s flow to its delta? Or the overwhelming beauty of rainfall in the desert? These images will call to us with a duty to see. To see that so many of the world’s struggles are about water.
The photograph that has become known as “Migrant Mother” is one of a series of photographs that Dorothea Lange made of Florence Owens Thompson and her children in February or March of 1936 in Nipomo, California. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. In 1960, Lange gave this account of the experience:
I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her, but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was thirty-two. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean- to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it. (From: Popular Photography, Feb. 1960)
Nearly three years ago, I was part of a group of journalists convened by the Aspen Institute to address climate change and why, at the time, it was so hard to look at ourselves in the mirror and admit that we had a problem. Why do we deconstruct complicated science and politics into oversimplified “he said, she said” dictations? we asked ourselves. All this while there were powerful dramas unfolding, from human migration to conflagrations of political careers. And why weren’t we doing the in-depth reporting necessary to tease out the nuances — and sweeping impacts — that climate will have on all facets of the news, from international diplomacy to lifestyle? It’s a complicated issue, we agreed, that required comprehensive, all-hands-on-deck coverage. Crucial, relevant reporting that needed the talents of every staff member in the newsroom.
We left the three-day session with a resolution to tackle climate head-on with seriousness and depth, and not hide behind excuses that the issue was too complicated, boring or politically belittled. We resolved to identify the spinmeisters and shine light on their motives. And we pledged more resources to cover climate with voracity. (See our report, Slow Fuse: Journalistic Responses to Climate Change)
The water crisis is proving to be equally complex, even more so. While it’s skipped the political hot potato stage, it’s knocking at our front door and few are listening. And the mainstream news media has been rendered incapable of answering. The depth, the vision, the resources, the patience no longer exist in our 20th-century newsrooms that are necessary to frame this extensive restructuring of the water supply on every corner of the planet.
I had coffee the other day with a leading climate and water expert in Washington who was worried that the recent attention to climate — although long awaited — would steal the thunder from the equally urgent (many argue, more urgent) crises of water. Here we have a complicated challenge that has a relevancy to everyone — from dying children in Africa to drying lake beds in Mongolia to forthcoming water rationing in Atlanta to pollution in the Great Lakes that are the water supply for the Midwest. Yet we can’t seem to muster political will for coordinated response.
Take this excerpt from Tuesday’s New York Times about the drought in Atlanta:
Others wondered why the calls to conserve came so late.
“I think there’s been an ostrich-head-in-the-sand syndrome that has been growing,” said Mark Crisp, an Atlanta-based consultant with the engineering firm C. H. Guernsey. “Because we seem to have been very, very slow in our actions to deal with an impending crisis.”
And this commentary from Melbourne, Australia:
There are alternatives to our wasteful use of water
Melbourne, Australia
John Langford
October 3, 2007
Climate change is happening more rapidly than expected and its effect on water resources seems to have caught everyone by surprise so that many of the water management plans we made only 12 months ago are now obsolete. Static plans are no longer adequate. We need dynamic planning.
Scientists seek 99 per cent probability before making links between events such as this drought and climate change. However, water managers must operate on a much lower burden of proof, as the risks are simply too great. We cannot run a city low on water while we sit around waiting for it to rain.
So here’s the Big Story of the century unfolding before our eyes and we still can’t make the connections. Most of us seem unwilling — or incapable — of grasping the gravity and intersections of the larger story. And as that slow fuse burns on this 35th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, our equitable, reasoned responses evaporate by the day.
Resources
The World’s Water - Pacific Institute
Silent Tsunami: The Urgent Need for Clean Water and Sanitation
At the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, Circle of Blue’s commitment to ‘to elevate the freshwater crisis to a global priority and to generate the knowledge, civic will, technology, and resources needed to solve this crisis’ was recognized. J. Carl Ganter (l), Circle of Blue director, and Keith Schneider (r), Circle of Blue senior editor, represented the project, a nonprofit initiative of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Pacific Institute, one the leading research organizations focused on water, climate, energy, environment and security. President Clinton was joined at this year’s meeting by “1,300 leaders of business, government and non-governmental organizations, who traveled to New York from six continents, including 50 current and former Heads of State.”
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States, the world’s great space powers, celebrated the eve of the first satellite launch 50 years ago with a pact to use Russian technology on NASA missions to seek water on the moon and Mars.
Perhaps through this potent partnership humanity can find clues how to better manage — and hold onto — this live-defining resource here at home.
Dr. Peter Gleick, President of the Pacific Institute, weighs in on the importance of water and its crucial role for all living things
BY KEITH SCHNEIDER
Senior Editor, Circle of Blue
(Also posted on Modeshift)
NEW YORK — The three-day Clinton Global Initiative concluded with a flurry of new commitments including a five-year, $4 billion pledge by Pacific Gas & Electric and Ausra to build solar thermal generating stations that both companies says is cost-competitive with fossil fuel generation. California-based Ausra will build at least 1,000 megawatts of solar power plants and PG&E will purchase at least 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal, and the deal will eliminate over 36 million tons of CO2 emissions in California and neighboring states over the next 20 years. Other projects announced here were these:
FourWinds Capital Management said it will invest $300 million to develop investment programs that focus on tplanting, harvesting, and processing of novel sources of bio-fuels using emerging technologies in tropical regions that offer significant environmental and social benefits in addition to alternative energy sources. The investment company also said it would develop a $1 billion global investment program to assist large cities and rural areas in improving their environmental infrastructure, with a particular focus on waste and water management systems.
Geothermal Power Company of Iceland committed to spending $150 million to help countries in the African Rift Valley develop geothermal energy resources. The project will invest in comprehensive research into the geothermal potential of Djibouti, and if successful, will build a large power plant driven on geothermal power.
Sea Studios Foundation, a Monterey-based documentary film production company, will produce a $16 million integrated media initiative to help audiences understand the connections between seemingly unrelated problems-and solutions-in global health, poverty, climate change, and the environment. Using television, the Internet, and new media, the studio’s “Strange Days on Planet Earth 2020″ series will include periodic primetime television events featuring Edward Norton; an interactive Web site hosted by PBS.org, an iTunes video Podcast series, ongoing “Search for Solutions” contests to foster user-generated content and showcase high-impact opportunities to make a difference, and live screening events involving the public, business leaders, opinion leaders, and policymakers.
The Apollo Alliance, the City of Newark, and the Center for American progress committed to organize Newark’s Green Future Summit in the Spring of 2008. The idea is to identify best practices and mobilize the resources to help Newark catch up with Chicago, Portland, Seattle, New York and other cities that are showcases for prosperity that emerges from developing a clean energy-efficient, green economic development strategy.
These and more than 200 other commitments announced this week were said by President Bill Clinton to touch “at least 100 million people worldwide.” The scope and numbers are stunning, even if half of what was announced here this week is actually executed. Mr. Clinton asserted that nearly 10 million children not in school around the world will enroll for the first time. Some 50 million people will gain access to treatment for neglected tropical diseases. Some 170 million acres of forest will be conserved and restored, area equal in size to Italy and Switzerland combined. And 11 million adults, most of them women, will gain access to industries and durable jobs.
I wasn’t the only observer who found the proceedings disorienting. There really isn’t anything quite like this conference anywhere on the planet. The Aspen Ideas Festival convenes a similar array of prominent thinkers and voices. The World Economic Forum is much larger and, I’m told, more perceptive and far-reaching in its choice of subjects and how far it asks panelists to advance their thinking. The United Nations, which also convened in New York last week, attracts more global leaders. But none of these, nor any other international conference, does as well in attracting such diverse leaders, such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu (see pix). And none is motivated so clearly by one person seeking to make the world a better place and successfully making the ask so that not $millions, not $billions, but that something close to $10 billion is committed by individuals, companies, governments, and foundations to execute an incredible array of worthy projects. More was done to help solve the global warming crisis in these three days than the United Nations or the United States has done in half a decade.
Several more big ideas of the 21st century are at work here. The first is that important industrial companies, particularly those in pharmaceuticals, energy, utlitities, and online media see the value of reducing human and global stress to improving their bottom lines. There’s money to be made in solving misery, not only in the development and delivery of new products, but also in fostering collaborations that help companies gain access to new global markets. The second big idea, one that is becoming Mr. Clinton’s signature in this phase of his life, is the value of what he calls “giving back.” He frames this in the context of the difference between I wish and I will.
There were a lot of willing people in New York last week.
BY KEITH SCHNEIDER
Senior Editor, Circle of Blue
(also posted on Modeshift)
NEW YORK (September 29th, 2007) – Live television images from the various plenary and working sessions are everywhere at the Clinton Global Initiative. They appear on screens as big as king size bed sheets in the main conference hall. They illuminate flat screens that stand in the halls and smaller meeting rooms. A row of small screens decorate a refreshment area close to the lobby of the Sheraton New York.
This demonstration of televised ubiquity is just the leading edge of a communications strategy that also includes a well-designed and easily navigable Web site, live web casting of every panel discussion that also is archived and retrievable. There are five interior Wi-fi channels for conference participants and a small army of writers and videographers, most of whom represent online publications and networks, few of which – like treehugger.com — that you’ve ever heard of.
It’s noticeable that the mainstream media is barely here. The Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times did nice wrapups Friday morning. Forbes and Fortune are covering the conference on their Web sites. The New York Times, though, published just three Associated Press and Reuters pieces. The major papers are still useful as arbiters of importance, but as sources of information about the nuances and transitions and ideas explored here this week they played no role whatsoever. The reason: In the age of the Internet and muti-media, it’s not only essential for organizations to tell their own stories, but they now have the tools and skills to do it better than traditional news organizations, and they can reach huge audiences with their own media.
The Clinton Global Initiative, staged by Scott Givens, understands those lessons well. The initiative generates the sort of idea excitement that translates well on television. Invite interesting and knowledgeable people to talk about vital ideas. Carefully set lights and cameras at the right angles. Array the conference with various kinds of titans — movie stars (Jolie and Pitt), media stars (Martha Stewart), political and diplomatic stars (Tony Blair, Al Gore), business luminaries (Larry Page) and grassroots heros (Jane Goodall). Then turn the conference into an eight-hour-a -day talk show broadcast live on the Web.
The beauty of the Web is that all of that content can be archived and readily downloaded for those who didn’t watch in real time. Then producers supplement the video with digital photographs, blogs, and various other print formats — including a running compendium of commitments. The result is that the online visitor can see for themselves on YouTube, MSN, the CGI Website and elsewhere what happened and generate their own narrative. If they need help, they can search the the dozens of blogs written here and brought to the fore by Google and Technorati. The combination of self-generated media, mainstream media, new media, all of it instantly available, provides the hundreds of thousands of online visitors who are paying attention this week a kind of instantaneous digital access to this very hopeful global event. Bill Clinton said this afternoon that MSN put the initiative events on its home and that YouTube’s archive of the initiative had generated 500,000 page views.
This afternoon, as if to emphasize the presence of new media here, Larry Page, the Google co-founder, shared the stage with Mr. Clinton and YouTube co-founder Steve Chen to talk about a new section YouTube is building to help non-profits raise money. The company’s news release described the new project this way: “YouTube’s 2007/2008 Clinton Global Initiative commitment enables nonprofit organizations (in the U.S. those with 501c3 tax filing status) that register for the program to receive a free nonprofit specific YouTube channel where they can upload footage of their work, public service announcements, calls to action and more. The channel will also allow them to collect donations with no processing costs using the newly launched Google Checkout for Non-Profits. YouTube’s global platform enables nonprofits to deliver their message, showcase their impact and needs, and encourage supporters to take action.”
It’s important and representative of the current media age that this event, which is defined by news of opportunity and promise, is taken so seriously by the new media. The news conferences are dominated by bloggers and independent news organizations from around the world.
The transparent and unavoidable conclusion is that the 20th century American journalistic principles and values — if it bleeds it leads — don’t fit here. The BBC broadcast a half-hour talk show from here that featured Mr. Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg discussing the green economic development strategy that has revived the city’s economy. No American national broadcast devoted even a few minutes to the initiative’s ideas or personalities.
The sort of transactions that occur at this conference — funders putting projects together with government and non-profits to do such things as educate women in Africa — are understood as vital to the world’s progress by the new media. They’re not, however, seen as news by enough conventional American news organizations. As a writer who contributes to both I worry. The old media’s frame needs to adjust to new conditions. The new media’s capacity to develop the revenue streams that enable its writers and producers to really dig in needs to improve. The unmistakable conclusion I draw is that with the complexity and confusion that abounds in helping the world understand itself, people just need solid facts and real stories. The world, in short, needs great media in whatever form it’s produced.
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