Water

I have a big stack of magazine clippings beside my computer desk -- stuff I pulled that was meant for blogging. Here's some material from an interesting chart that was in Mother Jones almost 2 years ago (by Jen Phillips):

Did you know that almost 600 gallons of water are needed to produce a pound of cheese? Beef = 1857 gallons (though hamburger = only 634). Chicken = 467.

It takes less water to make a pint of beer (20 gallons) than it does to produce an equal volume of Diet Coke (33). A comparable amount of wine needs 128 gallons; coffee = 148.

And that's one reason I don't drink Diet Coke or coffee and rarely drink wine.


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Malaria and World Politics

Over the years, I've mentioned malaria on this blog quite a number of times. It is a preventable disease, but also a human security issue (and affront to human dignity). It is responsible for killing almost 900,000 people per year -- and nearly 90% of the victims are children under age 5 (though infection rates have been "halved in nine African countries since 2000"). Scientists say that global warming contributes to the spread of the often-deadly infection.

Despite this prior coverage, I've never before noted the political history of malaria. Time had an excellent report in the June 21, 2010 issue:

The history of malaria is a long one. Originating in West Africa, it spread to half of humankind by the mid–19th century and has killed tens of millions and infected hundreds of millions more, including eight American Presidents. Malaria played a role in stopping Alexander the Great in India. It contributed to the fall of Rome, the relocation of the Vatican and the U.S. defeat in Vietnam.

In short, historically, great powers have not been immune to this disease.

Alex Perry, the author of the Time story, notes that the U.S. and other affluent countries have contributed billions to fighting malaria over the past half-decade. However, "bad government" commonly leads to failure in particular states.


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Don't love that dirty water

I turned in the last of my grades yesterday and have spent part of today sorting out my home office. It didn't take long to find a stack of clippings torn from newspapers and magazines -- mostly articles I intended to blog about over the past year or so. Oops.

From June 2008, for example, I had pulled a Maude Barlow piece in The American Prospect on water-borne disease:

Every day more and more people are living without access to clean water. As the ecological crisis deepens, so too does the human crisis. More children are killed by dirty water than by war, malaria, HIV/AIDS, and traffic accidents combined.

...the World Health Organization reports that environmental factors, including contaminated water, are implicated in 80 percent of all sickness and disease worldwide. In the last decade, the number of children killed by diarrhea exceeded the number of people killed in all armed conflicts since World War II. Every eight seconds, a child dies from drinking dirty water.

Barlow is head of the Council of Canadians and her article was part of a special insert on the global fresh water crisis.

A sidebar piece a few pages after Barlow's article (adapted from her book Blue Covenant) noted that "The annual death toll from water-related diseases is estimated at more than 5 million."


Title apologies to the Standells, who played a terrific guitar riff in their song "Dirty Water."

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