World's Water Crisis

[trenton]

@zurew I find it interesting how pursuing this efficiency was necessary for humanity survive diseases and to grow our population.  It just doesn't account for our entire relationship with the earth when we were pursuing survival in this regard.  We forgot about a more all encompassing survival because we valued our lives as humans the most.

Also fascinating is the bias you are pointing out with factory farming.  Nowadays we take for granted that animals are just stupid and can be used as food.  It is like a psychopath who thinks stupid people deserve to be exploited.  I like how different religions place a higher value on animals even though it now feels natural and obvious to us that animals are inferior.  It feels like reality, but really it is no truer than paganism.  Our biases can be hard to see from within a single culture.  These biases can change quickly if our survival demands if.

A similar example is how we treat our resources now versus how we will treat them in the future.  I imagine that punishments for wasting water in 20 years will be much worse than they are now in places like California.  This is how survival shapes morality and animals are just another example.

I didn't normally account for all of these geopolitics when I though of these issues before, so it is good that I am seeing a bigger picture now.  Our survival demands that we compete with other nations for oil, hence there is so much controversy about the private military contractors for oil companies in the middle east.  In a sense they must be there.  The issue feels very different when there is no clear bad guy.

As for the chevron scandals, I think addressing something like this is our best bet.  Companies will continue to exploit cheap labor and resources so long as they are able.  Our consumerist culture will worsen the issue until the prices are raised by making the true cost of efficiency paid for.

Basically, chevron owes over 50 billion dollars in lawsuits in 31 different countries.  Of the 70 lawsuits they owe, one particularly bad one is in Ecuador.  A prosecutor named Steven Donziger won a 16 billion dollar lawsuit against them for the environmental damages.  If companies had to pay for this, then put consumerist culture would slow down because of the increased prices.  Chevron had this man arrested through an unfair trial and still didn't pay the lawsuits.  Congress woman Rashida Tlaib of the 13th district of Michigan confronted the CEO who pretended the lawsuits didn't exist.  There were some petitions to free Donziger, but there would need to be more action to hold the company accountable.  Like Tlaib said, this is not about demonizing big companies, it is about accountability and paying the true cost of our livelihood.

I'm sure you know about the Apple sweatshops and factory riots.  When workers are not paid a minimum wage of helps Apple sell the cell phones at a cheaper price.  If they paid the real price for labor by enforcing business transparency throughout the global supply chain, then this would grind our consumerist culture to a halt when the goods are much more expensive.  People have to think "do I really need the cool new cell phone?". You can learn more from the global slavery index.  There are about 91 billion dollars worth of electronic products at risk of slave labor being imported into the U.S.every year.  Clothing, fish, and other products are also included.  There are still cotton picking slaves in Uzbekistan according to anti slavery international.  This feeds our consumerist culture by keeping the price of clothes low.  One important detail about slavery is that although we can force of stop temporarily, it will come back so long as global poverty and overpopulation leaves people susceptible to this exploitation as the abusers try to survive through crime and corruption.

The goal is to frame environmental protection as a human rights issue because the injustice invokes a strong negative reaction in those who learn about them.  The argument is "Although slavery has a lot of good economic benefits, we should still abolish it because the cry for freedom cannot be suppressed forever.  Our way of life is unsustainable so long as we must exploit this cheap labor while failing to pay the true cost for our consumerist culture."  Imagine a Republican making this argument today like they would have before the 13th amendment.

It looks like the world needs more human rights activists, social justice warriors, and environmentalists.  Just be warned that these companies will imprison you on the grounds of false defamation lawsuits and the legal system will likely not listen to you.  They will use their advantage in money to drown you in impossible debt should you try to challenge them legally.  There must be large scale movements to confront these companies so they can't arrest us all, just like MLK.  This approach makes me more optimistic.