Posts Tagged ‘climate change’
On Water
The view where I write is of an inland sea. Today the sea before me melts, unleashing the power of water untethered as fully as it curbs the equally awe inspiring power of ice on the march. Indeed, the power of water is inexorable and undeniable in any form. After all, it was the glaciers of an epoch long gone that carved the great crevasses of the earth that we call canyons. Anyone with a flat roof can attest to the stealth of water as liquid, endlessly, tirelessly seeking the smallest weakness and pouring through once it does.
Water is the most valuable and least appreciated resource on our planet. Least appreciated, that is, until you are denied access to it. The water intakes of Lake Erie were frozen solid for some 24 hours this week, in some cases rendering indoor plumbing a concept of the mind only. In West Virginia all uses of all tap water are forbidden, a tasteless and odorless poison carried like a parasite on the back of the whale. Indeed, water lubricates the politics of states and nations, literally, as they fight in ways large and small over who controls the water.
In the end we will discover, to our inevitable surprise, that it is the water that controls us.