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Rocket Trike Diaries—Week Five

Tom Weis
May. 07, 2012 05:00AM EST Energy

Tom Weis

Welcome to Rocket Trike Diaries—a 10 week video tour of the 2011 "Ride for Renewables: No Tar Sands Oil On American Soil!" Join Renewable Rider Tom Weis as he pedals his rocket trike 2,150 miles through America’s heartland in support of landowners fighting TransCanada’s toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline scheme. Here are the video entries from Week Five:

Video Entry #30: Alex White Plume Rides Rocket Trike

Renewable Rider Tom Weis watches as Alex White Plume take the rocket trike for a spin through Kiza Park near Pine Ridge, S.D.

Video Entry #31: Chief John Spotted Tail: "You've Got to Take a Chance in Life."

Renewable Rider Tom Weis hears Sicangu Lakota Hereditary Chief John Spotted Tail talk about the Keystone XL "Tour of Resistance" solidarity rides in Pine Ridge and Rosebud. John explains how the tar sands pipeline is a violation of treaty (Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1868) territory and why it must be fought.

Video Entry #32: The Rosebud Sioux Tribe's Green Energy Dream

Renewable Rider Tom Weis speaks with Ken Haukaas, Economic Development Advisor to the Chairman of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, about impediments to achieving their green energy dream. Ken talks about how destructive overcrowding in the home, 80 percent unemployment, and record suicide rates are destroying the social fabric of his people. The Tribe is doing their part to develop local economies by investing in energy efficiency, solar pv, solar thermal, small wind, industrial-scale wind, geothermal, sustainable timber for homes, and greenhouses for locally grown produce, but needs the federal government to honor their trust responsibility by meeting them halfway.

Video Entry #33: Why He Joined the Keystone XL "Tour of Resistance"

Renewable Rider Tom Weis hears Shane Red Hawk of the Sicangu Lakota Nation talk about why he stepped up to join the Keystone XL "Tour of Resistance." Shane brought out his horses to ride in support of his 8-year old daughter and Mother Earth. He poetically describes how we need to overcome division and differences, saying, "There's so much beauty in our diversity."

Video Entry #34: Protecting Keya Paha River from Keystone XL

Renewable Rider Tom Weis discovers the beautiful Keya Paha River shortly after crossing the South Dakota border into Nebraska. He talks about the importance of protecting this river—and others that most Americans have never heard of—from TransCanada's Keystone XL toxic tar sands pipeline.

Video Entry #35: Nebraska Woman to Obama: "Stop Giving the Public Lip Service"

Renewable Rider Tom Weis meets Alesiah Dart of Royal, Nebraska, who has a message for President Obama regarding Keystone XL: "He needs to stop giving the public lip service... he needs to just stop the TransCanada pipeline." She says, "I can live without oil, but I can't live without drinkable water."

Video Entry #36: Nebraska High School Student Hitting Keystone XL "Head On"

Renewable Rider Tom Weis meets Thomas Higgins of O'Neill, Nebraska, who explains why young people should join the fight to stop Keystone XL. Thomas' grandpa is featured in the documentary, "Pipe Dreams," with the pipeline slated to cross his family's land. Thomas proclaims, "I'm hitting this head on... gotta get it stopped while you can...”

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water crisis

Water Inequality Used to be a Developing World Problem Only. Not Any More.

Insights + Opinion
Protestors marched outside the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey on Monday, August 26, during the MTV Video and Music Awards to bring attention to the water crisis currently gripping the city. Karla Ann Cote / NurPhoto / Getty Images

By Will Sarni

It is far too easy to view scarcity and poor quality of water as issues solely affecting emerging economies. While the images of women and children fetching water in Africa and a lack of access to water in India are deeply disturbing, this is not the complete picture.

The city of Flint, Michigan, where dangerous levels of pollutants contaminated the municipal water supply, is a case in point — as is, more recently, the city of Newark, New Jersey.

The Past is No Longer a Guide to the Future

We get ever closer to "day zeros" — the point at when municipal water supplies are switched off — and tragedies such as Flint. These are not isolated stories. Instead they are becoming routine, and the public sector and civil society are scrambling to address them. We are seeing "day zeros" in South Africa, India, Australia and elsewhere, and we are now detecting lead contamination in drinking water in cities across the U.S.

"Day zero" is the result of water planning by looking in the rear-view mirror. The past is no longer a guide to the future; water demand has outstripped supplies because we are tied to business-as-usual planning practices and water prices, and this goes hand-in-hand with the inability of the public sector to factor the impacts of climate change into long-term water planning. Lead in drinking water is the result of lead pipe service lines that have not been replaced and in many cases only recently identified by utilities, governments and customers. An estimated 22 million people in the US are potentially using lead water service lines. This aging infrastructure won't repair or replace itself.

One of the most troubling aspects of the global water crisis is that those least able to afford access to water are also the ones who pay a disproportionately high percentage of their income for it. A report by WaterAid revealed that a standard water bill in developed countries is as little as 0.1 percent of the income of someone earning the minimum wage, while in a country like Madagascar a person reliant on a tanker truck for their water supply would spend as much as 45 percent of their daily income on water to get just the recommended daily minimum supply. In Mozambique, families relying on black-market vendors will spend up to 100 times as much on water as those reached by government-subsidized water supplies.

Finally, we need to understand that the discussion of a projected gap between supply and demand is misleading. There is no gap, only poor choices around allocation. The wealthy will have access to water, and the poor will pay more for water of questionable quality. From Flint residents using bottled water and paying high water utility rates, to the poor in South Africa waiting in line for their allocation of water — inequity is everywhere.

Water Inequity Requires Global Action — Now.

These troubling scenarios beg the obvious question: What to do? We do know that ongoing reports on the 'water crisis' are not going to catalyze action to address water scarcity, poor quality, access and affordability. Ensuring the human right to water feels distant at times.

We need to mobilize an ecosystem of stakeholders to be fully engaged in developing and scaling solutions. The public sector, private sector, NGOs, entrepreneurs, investors, academics and civil society must all be engaged in solving water scarcity and quality problems. Each stakeholder brings unique skills, scale and speed of impact (for example, entrepreneurs are fast but lack scale, while conversely the public sector is slow but has scale).

We also urgently need to change how we talk about water. We consistently talk about droughts happening across the globe — but what we are really dealing with is an overallocation of water due to business-as-usual practices and the impacts of climate change.

We need to democratize access to water data and actionable information. Imagine providing anyone with a smartphone the ability to know, on a real-time basis, the quality of their drinking water and actions to secure safe water. Putting this information in the hands of civil society instead or solely relying on centralized regulatory agencies and utilities will change public policies.

Will Sarni is the founder and CEO of Water Foundry.

Note: This post also appears on the World Economic Forum.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Circle of Blue.

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