To reflect on World Environment theDay THE FUTURE OF WATER (Letter written in the Year 2070)
I just turned 50, but my appearance is that of someone 85.
I have serious kidney problems because I drink very little water. I am one of the oldest people in this society.
remember when I was 5 years old: it was very different. There were many trees in parks, houses had beautiful gardens, and I could enjoy a shower for up to one hour. Now, we only use towels soaked in mineral oil to clean the skin.
Before, women wore their beautiful hair. Now we must shave their heads to keep them clean without water. My father washed his car with a jet hose. Today, children can not believe that water is used that way.
I remember there were signs that said "SAVE WATER. But no one took into account, we thought that water was unlimited. Now, all the rivers, dams, lakes and aquifers are irreversibly polluted or depleted.
The amount indicated as the ideal water for drinking, was eight glasses a day per adult. Today I can only drink half a glass.
We had to go back to using septic tanks as in the past century because of drainage networks are not used for lack of water. The clothes are disposable, which greatly increases the amount of garbage. The appearance of the population today is horrible, emaciated bodies, wrinkled due to dehydration, full of sores on the skin by ultraviolet rays are not filtered by the ozone layer in the atmosphere, vast deserts constitute the landscape that surrounds us everywhere.
gastrointestinal infections, skin diseases and urinary tract. are the main causes of death. The industry is stagnant and unemployment is dramatic. Food is 80% synthetic. For the dryness of the skin young people of 20 years looks like 40.
Desalination plants are the main source of employment and workers with drinking water instead of salary. The assaults by a drum of water are common issue in today's desolate streets.
Scientists investigate, but no solution is possible. You can not manufacture water, oxygen is also degraded by lack of trees has decreased IQ of the younger generation.
been altered sperm morphology of many individuals, because many children with impairments, mutations and malformations.
The government even makes us pay for the air we breathe, 137 m3 per day per adult. People who can not pay are cast out of the "ventilated areas, which are equipped with gigantic mechanical lungs, solar powered, there is good quality but you can breathe, the average age is 35 years.
In some countries remain green zones crossed by rivers that is heavily guarded by the army, the water has become a very coveted treasure, more precious than gold or diamonds. Here, however, there are no trees because it hardly ever rains, and when it happens to register some precipitation, it is acid rain. Seasons have been severely affected by the atomic tests and the polluting industry of the twentieth century. It warned then that they had to care for the environment, but nobody cared.
When my daughter asks me to tell you about when I was young I describe how beautiful were the forests, I speak of rain, the flowers, how nice it was to bathe and fish in rivers and dams, drinking all the like water, how healthy people was. She asks me: Daddy, why is there no water? I feel a lump in my throat, I can not help feeling guilty, because I belong to the generation who destroy the environment or simply did not take seriously many warnings.
Now our children pay a high price and sincerely believe that life on earth will not be possible very soon because the destruction of the environment reached an irreversible stage.
As I would go back, and try to understand it all mankind, when we could still do something to save our planet earth! Document
extracted from the magazine biography "Chronicle of the Times" of April 2002 * Submitted by Florence Suqueli, ex - student of the specialty.
