World Ocean Radio - Fresh Water
This week we're discussing the circulation of water worldwide, and the importance of our waterways--canals in particular--as the great highways and distribution centers of our busy lives, now storing and transferring water and energy, and revitalized for recreational use and enjoyment of natural spaces.
This week marks the 750th episode of World Ocean Radio: 15 years of weekly short audio that reaches millions around the globe, sharing concepts, demands, and solutions related to ocean technology and science, policy, examples of best practice, personal reflections, and solutions for how the ocean connects, sustains, inspires, and engages us in common history, traditions, sustenance, communication, community, and well-being. Thank you for listening!
This week on World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill reflects on the importance of water in our lives, our culture, our memories, our very being. Water, he argues, is the essence of home, and the grace and gift of knowing it’s there for our return.
Pope Francis, outspoken voice for climate and the environment, passed away on Monday, April 21st. Throughout his reign as leader of the Catholic Church, he was very clear in his views on climate change as a real factor in today's world, and expressed that we must understand and respond to these problems for our future survival. In 2015, Pope Francis issued a papal encyclical entitled "Laudato Si--on Care of our Common Home" in which he addressed the moral imperative to steward our natural world for the benefit of succeeding generations. At many times in the address, he mentions fresh water and oceans; this week on World Ocean Radio we revisit some of the Pope's ideas and perspectives that demonstrate a deep reverence for natural systems.
ter·ra·que·ous
/terˈākwēəs/
Adjective: consisting of land and water
Mud season: a special time of year in the northeastern corner of the United States, when winter and spring collide in a soggy muck: the rains come, ice and snow melts, saturating the land, creating a terraqueous mess for cars and boots. This week on World Ocean Radio, in celebration of World Water Day, we're applying the metaphor of "mud season" to fresh water and ocean systems, to climate and biodiversity, to the human condition, to community--all the cycles and systems that rely on the balance of nature.
March 22nd is World Water Day, a celebration of what Jacques Cousteau called The Great Hydrosphere, expanded beyond Ocean to include the entirety of the water cycle: the one natural system that controls our planet's utility. From mountaintop to abyssal plain, water is the great circulatory system that connects all things. This week on World Ocean Radio we pay homage to water, without which we would not exist. Think about it: where and when is water not present in our lives?
"Power is like water. It flows all around us at all times. Sometimes it takes the liquid form of politics-in-action...Sometimes it takes the solid form of settled law: policy is power frozen. Sometimes it is like vapor in the air, invisibly shaping the climate and our behavior in just the way beliefs or ideology or emotions do..."
So states Eric Liu, founder of Citizen University and Director of the Aspen Institute Program on Citizen and American Identity. This week on World Ocean Radio, founder Peter Neill expands upon water as metaphor for our changing political landscape and exceptional time of transition.
What are the five key reasons for ocean conservation? What are the five areas where progress matters most? With the world in an off-axis state of turmoil, W2O founder Peter Neill is taking stock this week, asking the questions and distilling the essential reasons why the ocean is central to human survival.
Eustacy is a word used to describe worldwide changes of sea level. This is a new word for us: even though it seems we live in a eustatic world. We're using this newly-discovered word to distill the five areas of our existence where the ocean matters most: fresh water, the ocean-fresh water continuum, energy, food, health, and exchange.
This week we are discussing two technological innovations—both bright ideas that could have huge impacts for useful, sustainable change for the future. The first is WaterCube, a machine that pulls vapor from the air and condenses it into liquid form for household use and disaster relief; the second is Sway Seaweed Packaging, a farmed seaweed application designed to create a compostable packaging that is biodegradable and chemical free.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're sharing some methods and means to make small and large changes that can have effects on the climate and sustainability challenges that are caused in large part by the consumer choices we make every day.
What are the five areas of our collective existence on earth where the ocean matters most? If we are looking for a context to drive motivation and action, we have in our view the necessary clear focus through these absolutes--water, energy, food, health, and exchange--that can guide us toward a sustainable future, with the ocean at our center.
We are nearing the end of the RESCUE series. This week, in its 30th edition, we're talking about water: the well-spring of world ocean health and the essential natural system that sustains us all, thus its protection and sustainability are the key strategy for RESCUE.
This week we continue the multi-part RESCUE series with defined programs and relationships that apply technologies toward public good, such as a universal grid system, battery generation and storage, desalination, and better understanding of natural systems and our relationship to them. RESCUE as an acronym offers a plan for specific action and public participation: Renewal, Environment, Society, Collaboration, Understanding, and Engagement.
Climate change is accelerating change to all global systems. Do we have the power and the will to break the systemic corruption of the global water cycle and take risks to intervene and change?
Millions of people worldwide do not have access to adequate water supply for drinking, cooking and basic sanitation. According to a February report, more than 3.5 billion people worldwide live in areas that experience water scarcity. This week on World Ocean Radio we're discussing the need for invention and some prospective ways forward: not just new ideas and technology, but taking what we already know and applying it differently, locally and internationally, to scale.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're weighing in on the debate of water as food. Many are certain that it is not because it does not have the same essential nutrients as food, while other maintain that it is. Is water food? We say it is--food for the soul.
This week on World Ocean Radio we're defining "backwash" as the movement of water for filtration, for desalination, and for clearing of debris and toxins, and we're discussing methods that clean and protect Nature, using the strategies of bio-remediation to detoxify and cleanse against the human-caused destruction of natural systems.
There are numerous examples of the ways that water consumption and use go unseen in our daily lives. From clothing to food, from paper to metal and wood products, from packaging to smart phones, automobiles to energy extraction, and so much more. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we argue for the ways that water use and consumption should be rated and labeled on every product we consume as a means to calculate the true cost of the most important and valuable resource on earth.
In the middle ages, alchemists for a time believed they could turn base metal into gold. This early endeavor may be the origin story for modern invention and transformative technologies that benefit mankind. This week on World Ocean Radio we introduce listeners to GivePower, an NGO working in coastal communities around the world challenged by the fresh water crisis, to turn brackish seawater into enough drinking water for more than 35,000 people each day. Could desalination be the new modern alchemy for a sustainable future: turning undrinkable water into liquid gold?
How many ways do we hear the sound of water? In this episode of World Ocean Radio we explore water, the most essential element on earth, and the ways that we need it to thrive and survive, to nourish our bodies and our souls, and to sustain our families and our communities.
This week on World Ocean Radio host Peter Neill reflects on the magic of water and the ways it defines our urban spaces. This episode focuses on Tokyo and its network of often unseen and forgotten rivers, streams and canals, and a budding plan for their restoration and revival.
Increasingly, people around the world are experiencing a fresh water crisis. More than 17 countries are under high water stress, and one fourth of the world's population faces running out of water. In this episode of World Ocean Radio we discuss the ramifications of continued and increased disruption if we cannot solve the water supply crisis through local action, conservation, protection, infrastructure improvements, and regulatory enforcement.
What if we were to accept water--in all its forms and functions--as the system around which we organize and calculate value as a contribution to profit and loss? What if we did the same thing with fossil fuels, more accurately presenting the true cost of expenditure and consequences? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill argues that we need a new way to value water, and that if we accept water as both a basic human right and the new capital, it can become an investment of endless return.
This week on World Ocean Radio we talk about springs, those fresh water seeps that serve as an integral part of the earth's water system. We introduce listeners to a new app, Hide and Seep, developed by the Spring Stewardship Institute in collaboration with the US National Parks Service Bureau of Land Management and ESRI. Hide and Seep is a mapping software tool that allows citizen scientists to locate water sources and add them to a vast database of fresh water springs.
