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Annotation #8 11/10/12 //Blue Gold: World Water Wars//

Sam Bozzo directed //Blue Gold: World Water Wars// which was released in 2008 (Blue Gold). The main focus of the film was the corporate theft of the world’s fresh water supply. The idea he was working from was that people need water to survive and you can’t deny people what they need to live. The movie was fairly successful in its attempts to get its points across. It uses many numbers and statistics to enhance and strengthen the argument. It also focused on interviews with those who believe we are in or are entering a water crisis. Those who did not speak English had subtitles for what they said instead of dubbing them which is always much more believable in my opinion. Although there were some interviews and clips involving the private water industry, more interviews with them to create a more balanced surveyed pool of people would have greatly enhanced the movie to seem more educational as to why this is an environmental issue. Also, as I was taking notes during the movie, sometimes statistics would pop up on the screen and I would miss them since they weren’t outright stated; they were almost there as background information but it would have been helpful to hear the numbers out loud too. Even with this, I believe the film was directed at those who may take for granted our access to water and inform the general public that governments may unintentionally be creating problems for other counties that could have been avoided. Using words like theft and murder tend to appeal to a viewer’s compassion and draw them to act.

To make its point, the movie talks about many different problems that make the privatization of water a sustainability problem, the main ones being ecological and political with some technological and economic as well. As water is drawn out of the environment for human usage, sinkholes and dry soil are becoming more common. This leads to sparse vegetation and the declining numbers of certain animal species. The water sheds are being depleted which is reducing the percentage of fresh water around the globe. Bozzo seems to believe in the power of human ingenuity to use the resources we have available now to continue providing water to the world, but he also cautions us by saying that not all solutions are ideal no matter how good they are on paper. Before 1992, this wasn’t an issue as that was the first time that water was considered a good instead of a right by the United Nations. It does not help that when someone is placed in governmental office in the U.S., they become much more susceptible to corruption. Water companies know who has the power therefore they don’t have to worry about governments rising up against them. The people on the other hand can rise up. For example, in Bolivia, the people rose up against privatized water when they could no longer afford the prices asked for water and were prevented from collecting rain water. These people were successful, but I think too many Americans take for granted that we don’t pay as much, comparatively, for water. They take advantage of other countries forcing their workers to work for less and allow for a cheaper flow of materials which benefits the U.S. economically but hurts other countries. The solutions of this process involve defining what a renewable supply is and what is necessary to live by those guidelines. It is necessary to return to a “natural” water cycle and develop low impact systems that put back what the environment deserves in nature.

As always, I was astounded to hear the phrase “quest to conquer nature” used throughout the film. The more American’s think this way about the environment, the quicker its natural beauty will be lost. Buildings like dams directly work against what is naturally expected. The other thing that I liked about the movie that I hadn’t necessarily thought about before was the idea that the water cycle as we have always learned it is no longer in affect. Humans will have to work to simulate that until the environment is at least close to back to the way it was originally. However, I was not compelled by the idea of ingenuity getting us to this point therefore being part of the solution to get us out of this mess. I think that at some point human ingenuity won’t be able to counteract some of the problems that we are faced with as a result of our own greed, therefore we need to focus more on what can we do with what we already have or what small changes will allow for more sustainable practices.

One thing that I was curious about was MCWC. Before now I had never heard of the group but they seemed to have a decent stake in the claims against Nestle in Michigan. The Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation was developed in 2000 and according to its History Highlights was originally developed and still currently spends most of its time fighting against Nestle on state standards for hydraulic fracturing. I was not able to find any sort of mission statement for the group however (MCWC). The other thing I was wondering was how do desalination plants work? Essentially they filter out large particles first then smaller ones. After that filtration, the water is pressurized to remove bacteria, viruses, and salt. This along with 60% of the water is mixed back into the ocean (Water Corporation). While I feel that there should be concerns about the new concentrations of salt within waters near these plants, it is at least a transitional solution for lack of fresh water.

References: “Blue Gold: World Water Wars.” Purpleturtlefilms. Accessed: 10 Nov 2012. Updated: 2012. . “History Highlights.” Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation. Accessed: 12 Nov 2012. Updated: 2012. <[]>. “Community Update-Southern Seawater Desalination Plant.” Water Corporation. 2007 <[]>.

Annotation 8 Document