To Swim in the Seine
As I daydream during this thunderstorm, I’m thinking of the spring rains in Paris, where every raindrop is an opportunity to heal, restore, and recognize the rights of the Seine.
As I daydream during this thunderstorm, I’m thinking of the spring rains in Paris, where every raindrop is an opportunity to heal, restore, and recognize the rights of the Seine.
Gies takes readers on a global journey, highlighting researchers and engineers who “share an openness to moving from a control mindset to one of respect,” and seek to support what she calls a “Slow Water” movement.
In letting go, in providing space for coastal ecosystems, we acknowledge the power of waterlands—to hold water, to hold carbon, to hold life, including us.
With factors as precarious as climate, failing infrastructure, increased global population, pollution, and excessive groundwater pumping, it is no wonder that the concern for water scarcity has garnered the attention of authorities across many agencies and sectors.
In recent years, this remote pueblo of 400 full-time inhabitants in Jalisco, about two hours from Guadalajara, has stepped into the national spotlight, standing up to a total of eight governors in two different states over the years and taking their fight all the way to Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. If the townsfolk get their way, it will probably be the first time that a mega-dam will be dismantled before it is ever used.
If disasters related to droughts, floods, and other extreme weather seem more common globally, it’s because they are: according to a United Nations study, between 2005 and 2014, an average of 335 weather-related disasters occurred per year, nearly twice the level recorded from 1985 to 1995.
As the temperature and population continue to rise in the southwestern United States, water becomes scarcer than ever. How did we get here?
There are likely a lot of East Coasters wishing they lived in sunny, dry (and comparatively warm) California right now. But Californians know their weather is anything but a blessing these days with a drought that’s being called “unprecedented.”