Chris Chris Chris

Is there a single instance where putting a price on something was good for the poor?

Are the poor of the world better off that oil and other forms of energy costs lots of money? Because according to your logic Chris they should now have more energy than they know what to do with.

Great, so the idea is to maybe give people on welfare a "water allowance" like their "shelter allowance"? Oh ya, that will work, look at how the poor are so well housed now.

Hopefully your book will provide lots of examples of where making the poor pay for something that had previously been free actually made them better off.

I'm also looking forward to your next column on why we should start charging people for oxygen.

Anybody who thinks that the

Anybody who thinks that the "marketplace" is the solution is nuts, or paid off.

The marketplace is dead. It is now controlled by a few multinationals, who are syphoning off the stolen the benefits to their own gang, with the power of imaginary capital created for the purpose.

The world's food supply is now controlled by a couple of corporations, who are destroying the family farm system all over, killing producers with a conspiracy of low prices, half of what we were getting 10 years ago, while raising them in the supermarkets.

The privatized water systems, all over the world are filthy disaster areas, causing major epidemics, while collecting record profits for the corporate mafia.

The Fraser Inst. had a propaganda publication, authored by Arnold Block, some 20, or so years ago, urging the privatization of all lakes, rivers and even of the seas and oceans, as "environmental protection measures" .

Is this writer part of this same advertising outfit, or a paid admirer of it ?

While the situation is definitely getting desperate, with wells going dry all over the interior of BC, the loss of public control would be the biggest crime against humanity and the environment.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Just look at what Maggie

Just look at what Maggie Thatcher did to the public water system in Great Britian when she privatized it; The water rates doubled overnight, and then the water police were on everyones ass to try and get them to stop using water because the water companies didn,t want to spend the money on upgrading the systems; the water companies were more interested in making a profit. If one was fortunate enough to have a stream go through their property the water police said you couldn't tap off of it to even water your own garden. Also check out what privatizing the water meant to the South Africans and Bolivians when it happened there.

Mrketplace solutions?

Y'all might want to read "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast and see what privatization of water utilities has done for developing countries and in Maggie Thatcher's Britain. Maude Barlow is right on and our leaders have all been bought.

Other cock-ups!

There was another water commoditization screw-up in South America as well - if memory serves.

Start charging industrial users if you like - but, more important than that, start doing some long-term analysis of water needs and potential supplies before any more fresh water is squandered on stupid selfish money-making schemes.

An excellent way to generate some revenues, Chris, would be to start charging (or outlawing) the idiots who are selling tap water in little plastic bottles. Some high-end restaurants have taken the lead in the U.S. and stopped selling this crap in their establishments.

http://www.polarisinstitute.org/files/June%202007%20NewsBytes%20from%20the%20Polaris%20Institute.pdf

Just another example of why commodifying H20 is a really BAD idea.

Go the Whole Mile

If we're all ready going to privatize water, Mr. Wood, let's go the whole mile all ready, Bolivia style. Sell our public water rights, including the rain water to Bechtel, or some other such wise "market" institution and watch the good times role.

And by good times role I mean street warfare whereby the people violently and efficiently (you know, market style) kick out their government and the corporations and institute a new equitable order.

It's been a while since we had at least a general strike in this country.

Do something about the coming water crisis

Organize a showing of "Thirst" a documentary about the corporate theft of our water and what citizens are doing about it.
Website
http://www.thirstthemovie.org/
Put in a request to your library to buy this film

Make sure your library has many copies of Maude Barlow's new book "Blue Covenant"- this would be a great Christmas present too.
This is a important book despite what Chris Wood thinks.

Fight water privatization attempts when it comes to your commmunity.
It is usually called "waste water treatment".
The Council of Canadians has successfully stopped water privatization. Contact them
http://www.canadians.org/

For gawd's sake - don't drink bottled water. This is draining our ground water, the plastic bottles are adding tons of garbage and we are fortunate enough to have access to good clean public water that we all pay for.

correction to my comment

It should have read that The Council of Canadians has successfully stopped water privatization in some communities i.e. Whistler.

Water Privatization

Ultimately it is better that water remain a commonly held resource on behalf of the people by governments. This does not mean water should always be free. Reminds me a bit about the water story in our town. For years the municipality has charged a flat fee for water and sewer services. This year water meters were installed and water has remained at the flat rate for the first year while consumption figures are gathered. Next year rates will be set at a level designed to provide water at close to the same historical flat rate cost IF a household practices a reasonable level of conservation. While the water system remains owned by the district municipality, the job of installing, maintaining, and reading the water meters was contracted out to a subsidiary of Terasen Gas. The financial pressure on municipalities due to the large porportion of the municipal budget devoted to water and sewer infrastructure, prompts municipal officials to try to save money by privatizing part or all of the system. This is taking the easy way out. We actually need even more investment in water infrastructure to include the development of greywater recycling systems and ecosanitation (sewer) systems to reduce water use further and prevent contamination of fresh water, so that clorination is not essential. Clorination should be replaced by ozonation. All this takes money. I am not opposed to paying for water and even sewer on a volume basis if it would pay to build better systems than we have now. The status quo is unsustainable. I own property outside of the municipality where I do not pay monthly water bills but my water is still not free. The cost of my well and septic systems was paid up front all at once and the cost was not at all insignificant, but still far lower than the cost of municipal water infrastructure. The residents of my rural subdivision proposed bringing in municipal water and sewer to the neighboring town. The cost in taxes for just 1-2 years was more than my private system cost. The changing weather patterns and the resulting droughts have taught me to practice conservation at all times even when water is seemingly abundant.

That Mr. Woods believes that

That Mr. Woods believes that selling our water down the river to private business as determined by market forces (ie. closer integration with Americans) would result in the "protection of our fresh water" is unbelievably naive.

If Iraq and recent events in Atlanta are indications of what's to come, you can be assured that the Americans will pay or take waht they need. Market forces, indeed. And you can be assured that, in the process, the they will be as humanely concerned with the future drinking water shortages of their friendly neighbour to the north (us) as as they have been of the limbs, eyes, and hearts of the the millions of beautiful, but now dead, Iraqi children on the other side of the world.

Mr. Woods needs to understand that corporations are not in the business of "protecting" anything, with the exception of their own moneyed market interests. Clearly, to gain that money means a FURTHER depletion of our resources, NOT A PROTECTION of those resources. What is it about that simple economic concept he doesn't understand? The American Southwest could easily suck up every drop of our water in a few decades, and will do we get in return? Crapola paper - greenbacks.

Mr, Woods claims to support "a national policy for the protection of fresh water," yet he nitpicks and criticizes Maude Barlow's call for exactly that. Let's be clear. Ms. Barlow's demand to our politicians and citizens that we take control of and protect our water by banning NAFTA and the SPP, etc. is the ONLY viable and sensible solution.

Woods mocks her for having an "anti-trade, anti-business bias." You bet she does. And good for her. Keep in mind that thinking citizens don't call protecting essential life-sustaining resources a "bias," but a principled and wise mandate. If Barlow is anti-anything, she's "ANTI-THEFT," fighting against brazen thievery from the new breed of voracious commodity barons who current scour the world - like parasites on the prowl for their next victim s: the unsuspecting and duped sheeple.

If the U.S. is so damned desperate for water, they can start by intelligently conserving their own water resources, first, by educating their own citizens and passing laws that outlaw shameful waste. (Canada, too). THEN we can talk. This will never happen, of course, however, because our politicians are in the back pockets of the corporations and market forces are ALREADY IN PLAY.

While I think it would be wise to put a ridiculously high premium price on Canadian household water over and above a standard, LIVEABLE (human rights) AMOUNT, the kind of market forces our government has in mind are international ones - those that allow our neighbours to the south to pay whatever price they determine appropriate - which, I can assure you, is very little when the golden value of water is taken into account.

Say bye-bye to your grandchildren's drinking water. Watch it float down the river. Watch it turn into a trickle.

Will fight to keep it Fresh and Clean

Here is one for you, I live in Coquitlam BC, our family homes water supply comes from a drilled well and at present the quality and abundance of it is fantastic. Here is the rub, over the next decade Burke Mountain is going to be developed in a big way, that being said and water, good clean water is becoming more and more scarce what if the development of the future adversely effects that water supply? Lately in the news wells in the Fraser valley have become contaminated. Is there a connection between development and this phenomenon? probably. We as a family have learned and are still learning about looking after our land and what we put on it, because in our case it effects us directly and of course our neighbors who might also be in the same situation as we are. Fresh water now being in short supply, I hope will take precedence of the mighty development dollar.

Jim Van Rassel

Mr. Wood needs to think again

Wood wrongly conflates the notion of privatising with achieving efficiency through pricing. Maude Barlow doesn't make this basic error.

Rangergord and alda are right -- dealing with the efficiency problem will require paying sigificantly higher prices for water AT THE MARGIN. This is entirely consistent with much lower rates for a "lifeline" supply at household level. It is also totally consistent with public ownership and management. Indeed, the main difference between a public and private system is that much of the "profit" can go to the consumer and system expansion in the public system while corporate owners get it all under privatisation. Dressing up a plea for corporate owners under the guise of improving efficiency is a classic ruse, which succeeds only too often.

Another essential point is that to secure the "efficiency benefits" of privatisation while meeting public interest requirements depends upon efficient and knowledgeable government oversight and monitoring of the private operator. This means the government has to be clear about policies, and then engage monitoring staff who are smarter than the supervised firm. But governments that privatise public services do so because they don't believe governments are capable of securing requisite skills and abilities! The normal result is a giveaway with toothless regulatory mechanisms (think BC Ferries).

It's not irrelevant that the beneficiary firms make large contributions to the government parties promoting privatisation.

In reply...

My, what an uproar. Let me try to respond, briefly, to the flurry of criticisms my essay/review evoked (something, btw Rick W, I began drafting before I saw your post :-) !).

Curiously, very few commentators addressed the important consensus among three studies which I admired. Virtually all leapt to the defence of Maude Barlow and her ‘rights and commons’ nostrums.

Most comments have clustered within these themes:

That I am indifferent to the poor, and would leave them at the mercy of heartless corporations.
That I am “for” privatizing water and/or water utilities, in principle.
That by advocating ‘market mechanisms’, I embrace cut-throat free-market absolutism.
That I would turn all of ‘the public’s’ water over to the same heartless corporations to sell back to us (or to greedy American cities) at a predatory profit.
That business, trade and private enterprise are inherently and irremediably malevolent toward both people and nature.

Let me take these one by one.

In reply...2

‘I am indifferent to the poor and would leave them at the mercy of heartless corporations.’

If I were inclined to, I might take offence at this, but it is really too laughable an accusation.
I am indifferent neither to the poor in my own community nor to those in other countries, but it bears pointing out that the problems they face differ in kind and scale. What might best alleviate the plight of the poor in developing countries may already be available to those in wealthier ones (public education and the right to vote both come to mind). I feel for the hundreds of millions of people suffering in the world, but I don’t believe it is my place to lecture them or make their choices for them on issues such whether or not to ‘privatize’ utility services.
Just as important, I am sharply aware of the limitations of what I (or even ‘we’, meaning all of us living in the comparative luxury of Canada or the United States) can as a practical matter do to help them with their water problems. In many places, those problems are more deeply rooted in corrupt, incompetent, irresponsible and unaccountable local governments, as they are in the purported villainy of private investors. But it is not our job as citizens of Canada to clean someone else’s house; we have enough dust balls to worry about in Ottawa, Victoria and City Hall.
As to those of us living at the bottom of the income scale here in Canada, numerous comments mocked the idea of subsidizing their access to water while charging wealthier citizens a more realistic estimate of its value. Yet we do this every day with food as well as energy and housing. Broadly, it works (although doubtless there is a case for more generosity on all accounts). The alternative is to charge the great majority vastly less than they can afford for water in order to set its price low enough for the very poorest to pay.

The invidious aspect of that, of course, is that it encourages people who are far more likely to own lawns, have cars to wash, multiple bathrooms and swimming pools, to guzzle water as though it were, well, free. For that very reason we don’t do the same thing with food. If we did, there would soon be no farmers and people would starve (just as they routinely did in those communist nations that tried to treat meat, wheat and potatoes as a ‘public commons’).

In reply...3

That I am “for” privatizing water and/or water utilities, in principle.

Several commentaries seem to be under the misimpression that I am “for” privatizing water and/or water utilities, in principle. Neither is true. All water is local. Water utilities must be so in the nature of their function, and the choice of whether to have a public or private (or semi-public, or public-private) entity manage their water system should be made by the local folks whose water is at stake. I am entirely neutral in their decision.

In reply...4

That by advocating ‘market mechanisms’ I embrace cut throat free-market absolutism.

I don’t. The least fettered market may produce the most ‘efficient’ outcome, but the least fettered market we know of is the law of the jungle and we have spent the last 60,000 years leaving it behind.

Instead we have a whole ecology of markets, all of them subject to greater or lesser regulation. Some (such as pharmaceuticals) are closely overseen, or even limited to only credentialed participants (pharmacists). Others (freelance writing, I'm personally grateful to say) are open to all comers.

Like most things in society, regulation can be both overdone and underdone and must be subject to perpetual adjustment. But once again, well-regulated markets broadly work to deliver more goods, more services and more liberties to citizens of those countries that enjoy them than to those where they are absent. (Note the qualifier: the United States at the moment is experiencing the consequences of eight years of regulatory sabotage by credulous market theists.) It is not coincidental that those are generally also the countries whose environment's are on the post-industrial mend.
Implicit in this thread of comment is that governments will always provide better, cheaper services than private business. This is debatable in principle but demonstrably untrue in many developing countries. There, private vendors frequently supply the daily water requirements that governments for a variety of reasons (not always lack of funds: Nigeria and Mexico come mind) have failed to provide.

In reply...5

That I would turn all of ‘the public’s’ water over to the same heartless corporations to sell back to us (or to greedy American cities) at a predatory profit.

This would be stupid and most voters are not stupid, so in countries like Canada where democracy crudely works, it is not very likely to happen.

But the source of the criticism bears examination. It may arise from the time-honoured tradition of inflating an opponent’s points into a straw man ripe for denunciation. Puff away.

It’s more worrisome if it is founded on the fear, (constantly evoked by the Council of Canadians and its echo-chamber), that the ‘sale’ in any fashion of any volume of Canadian water in bulk to anyone, would automatically open every pond and creek in the country to stand-and-deliver corporate ultimatum. This is simply spurious. Nothing in the law or trade agreements supports this charge. The detailed chapter and verse are tedious but easily enough found on-line for the persistent. My forthcoming book provides a digestible version. (And yup, that's a shill alright. But then, so was Maude's interview tour, eh?)

In reply...6

‘That business, trade and private enterprise are inherently and irremediably malevolent, toward both people and nature.’

Something like this seems to fuel many social critics' persistent animus toward trade and business in all its forms.
The relationship of corporations to the society around them is always evolving. Several aspects of that relationship concern me deeply: the farcical notion (particularly popular among market absolutists) that corporations and consumers enjoy a rough parity of negotiating power (try that on with Microsoft or Apple some time); the skewing of economic reward to an expanding class of plutocrats; the ability of corporations to arbitrage regulatory weaknesses in different jurisdictions to, for example, manufacture in places with poor environmental enforcement.
These and numerous other defects beg attention. But the demonizing of business and commerce ignores two inescapable realities. One: trade and exchange are fundamental human activities; they have occurred throughout history and pre-history in every society of which we are aware. Two: most Canadians work in the marketplace of private enterprise, whether as loggers, or retail clerks or baristas or software designers or entrepreneurs or, yes, corporate managers. Most Canadians are not evil or malevolent. Most want to prosper and enjoy life and eventually see their children do the same. A growing number are also aware that our society must change many of its ways if that is to happen. As this awareness awakens in all Canadians (as events will ensure that it shall), those of us who work in the private sector will unavoidably bring that understanding to the decisions we make there (indeed, that is already happening).
Demonizing business, and those who work in it, is therefore not only an indefensible indulgence in malignant stereotyping; it is counter-productive.

In reply... the last word (really).

Finally, I find it interesting that comments ignore the costs implicit in the Barlow dogma.

The weather is changing around us. We are facing extremes of water excess and shortage that strain and may soon exceed our ability to manage. 'Do nothing'--the practical sum of the rights-and-commons prescription, is the worst possible response. It amounts to passive nostalgia for a vague Arcadia of beau-sauvages living in unblemished nature. If it could be accomplished, this would necessarily entail the removal of many millions of people from the earth.

If that is seriously the ‘solution’ Maude and her disciples advocate, they owe it to us to be candid about which of us are to be removed from existence, and on what basis.

(Why do I somehow have the feeling I might make the list?)

Chris, as a private

Chris, as a private enterpriser and business owner in BC since 1957, I have seen what the state capitalism of the Soviets and neocon/neoclassical capitalism have done to real private enterprise and human rights.

Trade is not commerce and the collectivization of hundreds of companies under a singe ownership, as it exists in the food, oil, etc. businesses, is not a marketplace.

I'm just on my way out to pick up the mail and there should be a cheque for the 8 calves I took to the sales last week. When I get back I'll post exactly what I have received. Meanwhile look up under how many hundreds of names Nestle, Kraft etc are operating and the records of Cargill and Tyson. Also, how much you pay for their meat in the supermarkets, while hundreds of BC ranchers are going broke as we speak.

Opposing this corporate mafia is not "anti business", but "pro democracy and pro business". Real business, not collectivized corporate dictatorship we're experiencing under the NAFTA and the coming secret deals under the SPP.

The slightest chance that these multinational crooks may get hold and control over Canada's waters under NAFTA, WTO and SPP is unthinkable.

By the way, although I'm no Barlow fan, at least she's doing something, instead of uttering platitudes. My membership number in the CoC is 3295, which means right from its beginning.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Yes, let's be candid - part 1

As a start, “I don’t believe it is my place to lecture (the poor) or make their choices for them on issues such whether or not to ‘privatize’ utility services” is a pretty significant straw man and an interesting place to start your ‘defence’.

You don’t believe it’s your place to lecture powerless people. How noble.

But you’d accentuate their powerlessness by diminishing their own ability to have, free of charge, clean and safe and at the turn of a tap one of the most basic needs of life.

And you’d do that by conspiring with for-profit enterprises to turn that basic need into just another commodity.

I think you were doing better before you started to defend yourself.

Without even addressing the fact that you apparently care nothing for the ‘poor’ right here in Canada; whose plight, in the sense of a localized natural resource like potable water, is far more important than dragging out the red herring of the poor in any other jurisdiction. We ought to be doing what we can in those countries too – but not as entrepreneurs, I’d submit. In any case, the poor of the rest of the world are not really part of this discussion anyway.

The differences between the market and the law of the jungle are simply matters of degree – especially when it comes to such basic human needs as water and breathable air. In fact, I think the further one goes from market solutions the better. This is not to say that a strict regulatory regime is not needed – but far better that than a program where the wealthy – merely through the fact of their wealth – can continue to use water in a fashion which is entirely analogous to the way they use their luxury vehicles now.

You assert this is not true: ‘That business, trade and private enterprise are inherently and irremediably malevolent, toward both people and nature.’

Sadly, and I won’t go into chapter and verse, this statement is nearly always true – and, when applied to a basic democratic human need like water, it simply isn’t worth the risk.

If it weren’t true the environmental and economic situation would not be as dire as it already is, sadly.

Regulation and management – for the general good - is a far better risk in this kind of area. The fact that not a single commenter agreed with your take ought to tell you something Chris.

Let's be candid - part 2

As to trying to shift this conversation into an attack directed at Maude Barlow, please, spare me. Barlow to the contrary, you have written enough things that need serious reconsideration already, without attempting some kind of guilt transference for making her case more eloquently and logically than you have made yours.

The problem with water planning and use now is largely an amalgam of:
1) Serious regulatory shortfalls;
2) A crumbling urban utilities infrastructure that has been permitted to compound even as senior levels of government preen over their successive budgetary surpluses, and
3) A significant shortfall in the tax revenue base for municipalities generally; combined with
4) An almost pathological fascination with the ‘idea’ that corporate concentration and commodity exports will effectively inure to the benefit of actual real human beings (outside of the corporate structure) without an independent and ethical regulatory infrastructure.

The record is clear. The irresponsibility of corporate greed has gotten us to this pass – they will not get human kind, or Canadians, out of it.

Chris Wood

Thank you for responding to our posts Chris, much appreciated.

In your response you deny you're a far-right libertarian wanting markets to run everything. But you do defend "markets" as an efficient way to allocate scarce resources, including water.

Now I don't deny that markets do lots of good things on the basis of sending price signals which prevent us, in theory, from spending our resources on things we don't need. (The facts unfortunately don't support what is a good theory as the article here on the Tyee about earth's new "continent" demonstrates)

So I assume therefore that you wish to introduce a price signal into the use of water. Make people pay for it in order to prevent obscene waste like letting a cold shower run all the time as a form of air conditioning. Something that all of us would agree should stop.

However, when the rubber hits the road it still leaves the problem that once people have to start paying for something that was free it will leave those at the bottom having to decide between water, food, shelter and school supplies.

Now I realize that it will be said that won't happen, everyone will get a guaranteed annual amount that will cover their basic needs. And at the start of your new program I'm sure this will be true.

But it won't last. Just like universal programs like healthcare, family allowance, public pensions, welfare, garbage and so on, it will only be a matter of time before that too is eroded and we will get two-tier water. Those at the top will continue to get lots of good clean water at a good price while those at the bottom will constantly be complaining of not getting enough water at all, getting water that has to be boiled before it can be used or getting water that is undrinkable altogether.

And since the less well-off have no political clout their plight will be ignored just as it is in other instances of where we used to have universality but decided to introduce market mechanisms.

footnote :

The difference of course is that we don't need farmers to grow water. There are no water-farmers to support. If we could get food without farmers are you saying you'd put a price on it to keep it from being "wasted" by the less well off?

Just One or Two Questions:

How much are the oil companies paying for the water they consume extracting the oil at the Tar Sands, and how much are they putting into some sort of trust for the cleanup of same, as well as for the environmental degradation this "used" water precipitates before it is "remediated" ? As well, what disposal methods are in place for the detritus left after this water has been "remediated"?

Who pays? Who profits?

Quote:

"That I would turn all of ‘the public’s’ water over to the same heartless corporations to sell back to us (or to greedy American cities) at a predatory profit.

This would be stupid and most voters are not stupid, so in countries like Canada where democracy crudely works, it is not very likely to happen."

But it is happening right here, right now in BC. It has little to do with the stupidity of voters and more to do with the subterfuge, the legislated crimes of the greedy and the powerful.

Arundhati Roy:

Quote:

"The case is development for whom? Who pays? Who profits and where do you begin? ... it's about egalitarianism. It's about sharing things more equally. It's about access to natural resources. It's about those things. About the model of development. I'd say quite simply if I were asked to put my position on the table that what we're fighting for is to decrease or eliminate the distance between those that make decisions and those that have to suffer them... So how do you reduce that distance between the powerful and the powerless? "

Chris has right subject, wrong solution

Well Chris Wood is entitled to his strange opinion, however I got the feeling he was playing "The Devil's Advocate",to see what kind of response it would stir up and to get people thinking.

At this time the issue of human right to potable water and it's delivery is a no brainer.
As this is a highly complex subject,is it possible on the delivery end, that a meter that shuts off at a predetermined per capita 24 hr flow,through a public utility, would solve some of the urban water problems ?

To Chris

Chris, you said, "Most Canadians work in the marketplace of private enterprise... are not evil or malevolent."

Of course, evil isn't DELIBERATELY perpetrated by the average Canadian worker. Rather, it is an inconvenient by-product of the upper echelons of corporate management due to their ignorant or not-so-ignorant rapacious quest for growth and shareholder profit - in the pillaging of world resources, in the grave destruction of the environment, and in scathingly unfair labour practices, regardless of social and eco consequences, worldwide.

The fact that many well-meaning, "good" citizens work for big business does not repudiate the fact that they are cogs in destructive global practices -- corporate domination that is all too often, yes, malevolent, if one considers the bigger ecological and social long-term picture. If Canadian workers understood how their seemingly lily white corporations and companies played part in the destruction of land and water -- and thus their own children's future -- I believe most would be stunned and appalled beyond belief. Thus, the average citizen's abject ignorance of world events and corrupt political machinations is an absolute --and encouraged--necessity in order for global business to continue as usual.

"A growing number [of Canadians] are also aware that our society must change many of its ways if that is to happen."

While there very well may be a growing awareness of how despicable things truly are, the feeling in the environmental movement is that it is already "too little, too late." In any case, if enough Canadians REALLY were aware and REALLY cared, you can bet that they'd have voted in very different governments than the Tweedle-dee-Tweedle-dum twins they always do. It's enough to make thinking voters pull their hair out, election after election.

Water and the Tar Sands

Extracting the oil from the tar sands takes a tremendous amount of water. It is so wasteful. The water is polluted after this process.

This new book is all about the environmental damage of
the tar sands:
"Stupid to the last drop : how Alberta is bringing environmental armageddon to Canada (and doesn't seem to care)" William Marsden.

Another great gift this upcoming holiday season.

Free?

Water that which falls from the sky, tapped from your own well, is in the ocean or down by the riverside is free but treated water is not.

Municipalities that permit unlimited usage volumes of tap-water ensures profligate use. It's surprising environmentalists don't scream.

It's laughable that Vancouver frequently has so called shortages of fresh water when one can actually see, from the city, mountains brimming with snow-pack. Flying out of Vancouver and going north-east it's clear that there's plenty of water in them thar hills. In 312BC, 2,320 years ago, the Appi aqueduct was built to bring water into Rome. At 16km in length that would reach the north shore watershed were it needed for Vancouver. Meanwhile, in Vancouver water shortages are a mite melodramatic.

Nevertheless, infrastructure for more water for Metro Vancouver will be needed. The question as to whether governments or private corporations or combinations thereof build it and manage it is open. Can one trust more a government or a company that has the expertise?

Were there to be a catastrophic event to the south of the city and Washington State need fresh water the 'Sharing is Good' dictum would have to kick in. As Lynn points out within her quote from Arundhati Roy, " .. it's about egalitarianism. It's about sharing things more equally. It's about access to natural resources.", and abstract yet real international boundaries cannot stop people from a basic right as defined in many international declarations.

Question isn't open

Governments are - at least nominally - the creature of the people, democratically (if imperfectly) chosen.

Corporations are artificial constructs - of unlimited life - with an entirely different reason for being.

Sharing with people is a human necessity - profiting from their human needs is a human failing.

Commodifying water has nothing to do with treating it carefully and conserving it for the future.

The question, I'd say, is closed and, on the evidence - closed pretty comprehensively.

Sharing doesn't mean Stealing

First of all, r/man, in order to share something you must still have something to share, so you must care for and protect what is valuble to the common good.... and thus not allow it to be stolen or wasted by fools who see it only as a commodity to be market-manipulated through "pricing", having no respect themselves for its real value.... (and just a reminder, under Chapter 11, the US water and power needs/greeds will trump those of Canada's. We will wait in the dark for a drink of our own water.( That's what the corporate US calls "sharing".)

Anyway, I'm going to let Arundhati Roy respond to you. She's nobody's fool and she's been in this debate before:

"What we need to search for and find, what we need to hone and perfect into a magnificent, shining thing, is a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of slowing things down. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction. In the present circumstances, I'd say that the only thing worth globalizing is dissent. It's India's best export.

... in far away Holland, the World Water Forum was convened. Four thousand five hundred bankers, businessmen, government ministers, policy writers, engineers, economists-and, in order to pretend that the "other side" was also represented, a handful of activists, indigenous dance troupes, impoverished street theater groups, and half a dozen young girls dressed as inflatable silver faucets-gathered at The Hague to discuss the future of the world's water. Every speech was generously peppered with phrases like "women's empowerment," "people's participation," and "deepening democracy." Yet it turned out that the whole purpose of the forum was to press for the privatization of the world's water.

Arundhati Roy contd.

There was pious talk of having access to drinking water declared a Basic Human Right. How would this be implemented, you might ask. Simple. By putting a market value on water. By selling it at its "true price." (It's common knowledge that water is becoming a scarce resource. One billion people in the world have no access to safe drinking water.) The "market" decrees that the scarcer something is, the more expensive it becomes. But there is a difference between valuing water and putting a market value on water. No one values water more than a village woman who has to walk miles to fetch it. No one values it less than urban folk who pay for it to flow endlessly at the turn of a tap.
So the talk of connecting human rights to a "true price" was more than a little baffling. At first I didn't quite get their drift. Did they believe in human rights for the rich, that only the rich are human, or that all humans are rich? But I see it now. A shiny, climate-controlled human rights supermarket with a clearance sale on Christmas Day.

One marrowy American panelist put it rather nicely: "God gave us the rivers," he drawled, "but he didn't put in the delivery systems. That's why we need private enterprise." No doubt with a little Structural Adjustment to the rest of the things God gave us, we could all live in a simpler world. (If all the seas were one sea, what a big sea it would be . . . Evian could own the water, Rand the earth, Enron the air. Old Rumpelstiltskin could be the handsomely paid supreme CEO.)
When all the rivers and valleys and forests and hills of the world have been priced, packaged, bar-coded, and stacked in the local supermarket, when all the hay and coal and earth and wood and water have been turned to gold, what then shall we do with all the gold? Make nuclear bombs to obliterate what's left of the ravaged landscapes and the notional nations in our ruined world?
... Let's begin at the beginning. What does privatization really mean? Essentially, it is the transfer of productive public assets from the state to private companies. Productive assets include natural resources. Earth, forest, water, air. These are assets that the state holds in trust for the people it represents. In a country like India, seventy percent of the population lives in rural areas. That's seven hundred million people. Their lives depend directly on access to natural resources. To snatch these away and sell them as stock to private companies is a process of barbaric dispossession on a scale that has no parallel in history.

Groovy

As I said before, Lynn, whether or not we entrust our treated water supply to governments or to people that specialize in distributing it is open. I will add that I share your implied concern that complete corporate control could lead to exploitation but I also understand that complete government control can lead to criminal inefficiecies as is clear in the Indian state of Kerala, where Roy is from.

The simple mechanisims you cite being required to set the price for water would surely depend on local costs and we know what that could mean. It would be derived from those in power. Unfortunately, no more trustworthy than nasty corporations.

Meanwhile, were we to ponder and pontificate, people could go without. Were there to be a serious situation staeside it would surely be our moral obligation to transport and share our abundant water to those in dire need.

I don't think so.

The Americans would be entitled to short term relief (for free) and very little more. They've squandered their own resources even more profoundly than we have and any permanent amelioration of their crisis would be both unwise and dangerous. We must NEVER start to sell them ANY water – the precedent would be fatal.

The corporate masters who run the United States are not our friends and any Canadian administration that knuckled under to them and shipped our water south - especially given what the Albertans are doing to Canadian water now - would be pariahs.

Moreover, rightly so: We do not have abundant water now (that's one of the few things Wood IS right about) and in the face of increasing water shortages and global warming that situation is only going to get worse.

Not so groovy to betray your own country

G West wrote:

Sorry, realisticman but G West is right on.

Under NAFTA, it would become virtually impossible for Canada to restrict water exports once they are underway. Nice ol' Canada has every right and indeed an obligation to its citizens to stand up and defend its own interests, especially in regard to issues of sovereignty... and as in this case, issues of survival.

Regarding governance - what governance? The present crew in power think a vote gives them the licence to lie, steal and exploit the public's interests. It is criminal what is going on.

The people's holdings, in fact our very human rights, and consequently our children and our grandchildren's future has been ruthlessly and cavalierly sold off without our knowledge and without our consent. Is that not the most criminal, the most traitorous, the most despicable of behaviors you can imagine?

The only effective politics left as Roy makes clear is one of resistance, one of vigourous opposition. "The politics of forcing accountability. The politics of slowing things down. The globalization of dissent."

"Water in them thar hills"

Although I can't agree with Mr. Woods comments regarding his market-place solutions to water problems, I should have fairly mentioned that his earlier series of articles on water in BC were eyeopening and seem to have been well-researched (re: the coming drought in the Okanagan and the inevitable eyeing of the Kootenay as a future water supply).

If you've read them and Barlow's "Blue Covenant," and as well, you're not aware, for example, that the lakeshore of Lake Superior is down 14 METRES just this past summer alone - drained from the American side Canadian residents say ("Who pulled the bathtub plug/drain?" articles), you need to think logically about how quickly all that "water in them that hills" of BC would be appropriated/stolen for criminally irresponsible foreign use for California and Southern midwest lawns and swimming pools. (Dick Cheney "The American way of life is NON-negotiable.") In a blitzkrieg, that's how fast.

Water, water, everywhere but not a drop to drink

Chris used many more words to defend his attitude than he did to put it out. His dismissive comments on Maude Barlow ignored the main thrust of her argument which is not 'socialist' in nature but protective.

If one were driving down the street and noticed a power line spewing electricity wastefully into the air, it would be reported to the power company immediately. Under our feet, out of sight, water leaks at a phenomenal rate from watermains and pipes. Barlow is one of a few who try to draw the public's attention to this waste of resources and lays the blame for it at the proper place, the feet of those 'taxpayers' who complain bitterly about any use of public money for public good.

Privatization has never been proven to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people, and it never will. In the absence of personal responsibility, private enterprize stands ready to jump in and divert all profit to the benefit of the few. It's just the nature of the beast which is noted for its short-sightedness. Quarterly reports better show advances or else...

MYTHS OF WATER OUR POWER (2)

Here is the math. Under the decades old system of BC Hydro the public received 100% of the benefit of water power. Water power is BC's free energy. Our system is the envy of utilities worldwide. We are losing it because they are sneaking it away from us. Our big dams are so big we can store year’s worth of the water it takes to run the generator that powers our homes and businesses. We make power at about $5.00 sell it to ourselves at home at about $65.00, to industry at $37.00 and to our trading partners at about $50.00. We buy power from our trading partners at night for almost nothing because they can't shut down their fossil fuel generators and so we do them a favour and take it when they can’t store it and then we sell it back to them when they can’t meet their own demand and we have lots of stored power. It is and was a perfect system.

What was needed was a crisis. Licenses were quickly issued on a first come first serve basis for every hydro capable watershed and wind site and tidal site all for pretty much nothing. Speed is what counted in 2002. Now we are issuing purchase orders to buy power from these private companies for $100.00 these largely secretive numbers are about $30b so far. Almost thirty rivers have been converted to private power producers and there are a lot trying to get hooked up before you do anything about it.

Absolute power in BC is absolute private power. Reduced corporate risk means public pays to give renewable energy assets away. The numbers look like this. We pay private power people $100.00 for the electricity they make from BC Rivers. We sell that power to industry at $37.00 to our trading partners at $50.00 or the spot market price currently about $50.00 and to ourselves at $67.00

We aren't stupid and neither is Maude Barlow. Keep your recorders running because you children will want to know what happened to their water, their rivers, and their wind and of course the public wealth that could have surpassed oil wealth as BC is the one place on the planet with more value in renewable energy wealth than Saudi oil wealth? All you have to do is stand up for your ownership and right to steward your environment and you could keep it for your kids. Imagine that. The rail frauds and the rest of the frauds of this government will be lost in the stories of the way in which Gordon Campbell extinguished native rights and transferred the free energy of an entire province in a heartbeat.
Keep up the good work Maude.