Breaking Through on Water

By Mike Magee

We've finally broken through on Global Warming. Most denial has fallen away; Al Gore has a Nobel Prize; The Today show and NBC Nightly News have green peacocks and have "covered the Earth"; and everyday people like you and me are wondering what our "personal carbon footprints" are. If you want to know what's next, what in the next year will be coming around the corner - think water, the planet's most scarce and increasingly threatened resource. Like global warming, water is a complicated story. That's why I've written a book on it, created a website, and produced a one hour multi-media presentation for large screen audiences. But for traditional health audiences, there is still the feeling that water isn't a health issue. My view, of course, is that if it's a critical human issue tied to survival, famine, disease transmission, natural and man-made disasters, urban policy, population growth, gender equality and the realization of full human potential - how can it not be about health? One step in the right direction is that the language and strategies that popularized global warming and energy conservation as everyone's responsibility (think EnergyStar ratings and footprints) are beginning to be transfered on EPA websites and elsewhere to water. Case in point - the "Water Footprint". Take a moment to calculate your own water footprint -- which is simply a measure of how much water you use every day. And visit www.healthy-waters.com to take the "Water Quiz". You may be surprised!