water rights in each village. That’ s one of the things I was proudest of. It was also used in a campaign to boycott water meters in South Africa and on the campuses of Connecticut College and Brandeis University in Boston to boycott bottled water.
We can each look at where our water comes from and how we can protect it.
Q: Globally, in what ways should we be talking about water that we are currently not? It has shown me that a story that moves the heart really has the capacity to transform the world we live in. Q: How do you think people in the United States can take action to battle this issue? A: Water is really local issue. Every state has its own battles. In states like New York, it’ s about making sure we abolish fracking, which is the biggest threat to our aquifers. We’ re talking about the largest unfiltered drinking supply in the world in New York. We’ ve got to stop fracking and things that drill beneath our aquifers.
The thing I’ d really like to see is an Environmental Protection Agency( EPA) with teeth. The EPA was created under President Richard Nixon and I want to see an EPA where we don’ t have oil companies responsible for their own regulating. We need environmental protection and regulation.
I think one of the things we can do is to strengthen the laws that were created under Nixon. We can strengthen the Clean Water Drinking Act, which protects us from 91 chemicals but we now have a few thousand more chemicals we need protection from.
A: The thing is, when we talk about water in India, we don’ t need to teach people that there’ s a crisis. Clearly there is. India has less than 4 % of the world’ s water and 20 % of the world’ s population. It’ s not hard. India is a country that’ s been living with a water crisis for decades.
Here in the States, we need a wake-up call in a big way. We’ ve had crisis on top of crisis, whether it’ s chemical spills in Virginia or just plain evil mismanagement of what we are seeing in Flint where our children are being poisoned as a result of corruption.
Water is a precious, precious substance and we need greater foresight about our future. We really need to start thinking about water as part of our national security and essential to our lives.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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