The simple truth is that the population of the world is abusing nature's water cycle through over-building, over-population, pollution and senseless intrusion. This is the theme of a wondrous new coffee table book, "Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World." Created by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, with an introduction by Robert Redford, the book has some of the most heartbreaking, informative and even optimistic images on the issue yet seen.
Iconoclast Books in Ketchum will hold a book signing of "Blue Planet Run" from 6 to 8 p.m. on Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22. Present at the signing will be Laura Furtado of Hailey, one of the 21 citizen runners who participated in the run. Though a native of Brazil, she has lived in Idaho with her husband for the past five years.
Starting in New York City on June 1, 2007, the Blue Planet Run was part of the fundraising platform of the Blue Planet Foundation, founded in 2002 by Jin Zidell. The runners, culled from all over the world, were on the move around the clock along a route that included the U.S., Ireland, the U.K., France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Mongolia, China, Japan and Canada. Each runner covered 10 miles a day. The Baton was passed more than 1,500 times and was captured in the media, fueled by well-organized events in major cities and an international public relations campaign. The Dow Chemical Company sponsored the run, which ended back in New York City, on Sept. 4.
Water is the commodity that soon will burst out as the factor over which countries fight. In fact, the disputes already exist in places like Darfur, Turkey, India, Israel and right at our back door over the Tongue and Powder Rivers between Montana and Wyoming.
Some of the statistics cited in the book are mind-boggling. For instance 1.1 billion people world wide, or one in six, is without access to clean water. More than a million children die each year from waterborne diseases. Forty million hours are spent each year in Africa hauling or collecting water. Two-thirds of the world's population will suffer from water shortage by 2025.
In essays by writers Diane Ackerman, Paul Hawken, Dean Kamen, Michael Malone, Bill McKibben, Jeffrey Rothfeder and Michael Specter, the nature of water is investigated.
"Water has always cleansed us—cleansed us literally, cleaned us of our sins, cleansed our minds and hearts," Environmentalist author McKibben writes. "Now we must learn how to return the favor, to wash water itself free of the thousand stains we've inflicted on it in our heedless rush toward prosperity."
Proctor & Gamble’s water purification project, PUR, filters water of debris, viruses, bacteria, protozoa and arsenic.
Photo by Stephen Digges
