California Free Press

Off the Top of My Head

Peace is Not Just the Absence of War

by John Lawrence

As an advocate for a Department of Peace, I do not advocate eliminating the Department of War (Defense Department) altogether. I think both are necessary but in a more balanced way. Most efforts toward peace in the world should take place outside the arena of war, that is as a preventative to war. This includes economic development in parts of the world that are liable to gang control. In fact I would advocate the use of the US military to go after the gangs that are controlling certain parts of the world, for example in Mexico where gangs are trafficking humans to the US border and controlling the inflow of drugs into the US. Haiti is another candidate for the use of the US military to eliminate the gangs while the Peace Corps is helping with economic development. In areas of the world that don't have mature institutions that can provide security for the populace, the US military could provide that while the Peace Corps is building infrastructure. The two should operate hand in hand. What China is doing with its Belt and Road Initiative is instructive. China is winning friends and influencing people by building infrastructure in many parts of the world. But much more needs to be done that China is not doing. Low level infrastructure such as clean water and sanitation needs to be built out. Approximately half the world does not have clean water or adequate sanitation facilities.  3.6 billion people are still living with poor-quality toilets that damage their health and pollute their environment. Inadequate sanitation systems spread human waste into rivers, lakes and soil, contaminating water resources.China is building high level infrastructure such as ports, railroads and trains. The US should complement their efforts.

There are around 750 U.S. military bases in at least 80 countries. Most of these bases are unnecessary and represent a waste of money. They are also sitting ducks for attacks by the likes of ISIS. They should be eliminated and the resources redirected elsewhere. With US sea borne and satellite military resources there is no need for land based resources. The efforts should instead be put into developing  infrastructure both in terms of economics and in terms of political institutions. What is important is helping to create stable institutions in parts of the world where instability results in chaos ^e.g. Haiti. Also if life was good in countries where there is a lack of stability and economic development, people would not be flocking to the US and European borders and asking for asylum. So military assets as well as Peace Corps assets could work hand in hand. Once war breaks out these efforts at creating peace in the first place are useless. A Department of Peace needs to have a diplomatic aspect as well as the Peace Corps division. Also person to person exchanges help to build understanding. In fact the largest efforts need to be made with those who are considered our worst enemies.

As an anti-war protester in the 1960s, I am still one today. Peace efforts or efforts at creating peace in the world today do have both an economic and a military component. In some countries peace workers would be slaughtered by gangs if they weren't adequately protected by the US military while they go about doing their jobs. So while I am anti war, I am not anti military. I just think that the balance of human and financial resources is completely out of whack. Less money and manpower (womanpower?) needs to be devoted to the military and more money and womanpower needs to be devoted to the Department of Peace which should include the Peace Corps (economic development), the diplomatic corps (institutional development)  and exchange corps ( person to person friendship). Less effort needs to be spent on proving to the rest of the world that the US way is the best way and more effort needs to be spent on creating stable societies with the economic and institutional resources so that people in all parts of the world can have comfortable and secure lives.

Bringing the rest of the world up to economic and institutional speed is of utmost importance today because, unless the whole world is operating cooperatively, it will be impossible to do much about our common enemy - global warming. In fact we have met the enemy and it is us. Economic development in the developed world has proceeded in such a way as to have created the global warming crisis. Now it must proceed in such a way as to eliminate it. Sustainable development and environmental responsibility should be the order of the day. Countries that have vast fossil fuel resources have no incentive to curtail the economic development of those resources if they are considered to be pariah nations by the rest of the world. Nations that are considered pariah nations have no incentive to convert from war time expenditures to peace time expenditures if they are not brought into the community of nations in a respectful way. Nations that are at war right now have no incentive to negotiate a peaceful resolution if their interests and concerns are not taken into account.

Tents Changed Everything About Homelessness. Will San Diego Acknowledge It?

As homelessness has emerged as the city’s most pressing problem, massive tent encampments have become its lasting signal. But the persistence of encampments even as we expand shelters offer a lesson, if we’re willing to listen.

by Scott Lewis March 14, 2022

Something happened 10-15 years ago to homelessness. I don’t know exactly what triggered it. But I remember walking through the Occupy San Diego protests – the tent encampments that sprang up at City Hall in 2011 demanding Wall Street accountability for the recession – and realizing many of the campers were not necessarily activists but homeless people who had come to live in what became a supportive village.  

After that, the tent – the personal tent, the nylon or polyester Coleman, Marmot or REI camping tent – came to define street homelessness across the country. It drastically changed the visibility and experience of street homelessness. 

Tents and homelessness are not a 21st Century combination. Tents and campers once filled the entirety of Mission Valley in the early 1940s as migrants from across the country clamored into San Diego to get the many jobs the defense industry created.  

But the tent encampments that sprang up in East Village, along the Navy Broadway Complex and throughout San Diego’s hundreds of canyon river beds, started to frame the conversation here differently. It was as if the unsheltered population were tired of two things: tired of hiding and tired of being cold.  

The tents privatized public rights of way and asserted homelessness into the public consciousness. 

They were a protest – a manifestation of our failure.  

The tents helped people create community and provide mutual aid. They created a sense of safety, privacy and even family life but also offered cover for crime and violence.  

Worse, though, are the concentrations of death and disease. An outbreak of the feces-borne hepatitis A led to suffering on such a scale in 2017 that it provoked city and regional leaders to take homelessness seriously in a way they had not, though the tent villages had expanded for several years. Now, even those most sympathetic to the tent encampments and the plight of their residents can’t deny the gruesome deaths they often host, whether it’s at the hands of murderers and traffickers or errant drivers who lose control of their vehicles.  More than 10 years on, we’re only now, barely, grappling with what the tents changed about homelessness. 

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said something recently about them that should provoke thousands of conversations and a wholesale rethinking of what we’re doing about this crisis.  

In an op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune March 28 about the homeless crisis plan he is pursuing, Gloria acknowledged the reality the tents have created: 

“One of the central challenges we face is that many of the folks camping on our sidewalks or in canyons don’t want to live in a congregate setting – which most of our shelters are – so they refuse offers of beds in these facilities,” he wrote.  

The city, right now, has 1,468 beds under contract in congregate or shared settings.  

People who have been working on homeless outreach and services have known that many people prefer their personal tents to congregate shelters for many years. There’s nothing particularly insightful about the mayor’s claim, except that he said it. And if he believes it, and he should, then it has enormous implications far beyond the city of San Diego. If others agree, we need to rethink how we are deploying millions of dollars meant to address the problem and how we are talking to people on the street.  

It’s like a taboo has finally been broken. People who are living in tent encampments don’t want to move to shelters. The data is overwhelming. Every time the city sweeps out a huge encampment, the vast majority of people outreach workers offer shelter to refuse. Why? Not because they want to remain homeless necessarily. But because their personal tents offer them dignity, privacy and enough shelter to survive.  

The congregate shelters, by contrast, can often be dystopic, dangerous and restrictive. Their incompatibility with healthy living became obvious, again, when disease struck. The very first thing former Mayor Kevin Faulconer realized as COVID-19 began spreading in the United States was that he needed to clear the congregate shelters. A bunch of people jammed into a poorly ventilated setting would have been ideal for the spread of the disease.  

COVID left homeless residents even less interested in those options as alternatives to their own camps.  

“If the environment they are coming into isn’t safe, clean or comfortable, what makes that different than being on the street?” said Hanan Scrapper, the regional director at People Assisting The Homeless, the city’s primary partner in many homeless outreach and assistance efforts. “When we do traditional shelters and response efforts, we’re not always thinking about dignity.” 

It turns out, unhoused residents are a lot like people who have homes. They want privacy. They want, though, to be close to community. They like pets. They like being together with loved ones. And yes, some of them like to do drugs or drink. All of these things, however, can be restricted or difficult in a congregate setting.  

So what are we even doing? Just last month, County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher announced the county was going to help prop up a new mega-tent shelter for 150 people in the Midway area. The mayor is supportive. But if the mayor agrees that congregate settings can’t compete with the tent encampments, why are we still supporting them? I asked his team.  

“Our goal on shelters is not to create the ideal situation but to put them in position to access services to become part of the system that ultimately leads them to housing and to get them off the street. It is not safe on the street,” said Rachel Laing, the mayor’s spokeswoman.  

But, the mayor himself said that’s not working? 

“Well, that’s where enforcement comes in. If we have enough beds, we are allowed to compel people to move,” she said.  

Now we are getting somewhere. We’re saying the quiet parts more loudly now. The congregate shelters, while helping some, provide a tool to the city. In a world where the personal tents changed everything and the widespread adoption of recreational camping gear by the homeless made life just comfortable enough, with just enough dignity, the large shelters allow the city to make homeless residents uncomfortable again.  

That’s what the mayor has decided to do. The tents make sense to some, he wrote.  

“But we simply can’t be a city that lets people set up camp wherever they please. It’s unsafe, it’s unsanitary and it speaks poorly of us all if we do nothing to address the destitution and despair,” he wrote.  

He’s also right about this but merely uprooting encampments sets off an endless cycle of uprooting and re-rooting. The people don’t disappear, they just regroup. The process is hard on the people on the streets, hard on the police who have to carry it out and if the ongoing presence of so much human suffering on our streets is itself a form of violence that traumatizes all who have to move through it, then the approach ensures the most people possible experience it.  

It may be worth, instead, rethinking this paradox. Sometimes when you are fighting something, you have to channel its energy rather than keep trying to destroy it. The personal tents are not good. But they represent a human desire to take care of oneself and to build community. The tents reveal not a desire to be on the street but a very human desire to build a home.  

There’s no reason our unsheltered population would not continue to do that on their own if given the space.  

“From our experience, what we’ve seen is when clients come into a clean, well-kept environment with good food and healthy culture, they try to take care of it. They see people care for them and it gives them hope,” said Scrapper.  

They want to build homes and yet we are spending so much of our resources and energy on trying to tear them down and force them into our system.  

It would be one thing if it were working but it’s not. Despite a mobilization of city, county and state resources, it is getting worse. More people are suffering. More are dying. More are living in filth. 

It’s no coincidence that our already extraordinary cost of living is skyrocketing just as the problem deepens. Homelessness is the lowest rung on the housing ladder. In place of cheap housing, they’re putting up personal tents.  

The mayor doesn’t want to accommodate them in a safe camping village, Laing says, because the city and providers cannot afford the support personnel needed to keep it safe. But he has also proven incapable of winning the war on the tents in the streets. 

If you’re losing a war and wasting money fighting it, it may be time to rethink it.  

The people on the streets are telling us they want space to set up their own lives. 

Whatever dollars we spend forcing them to consider our approach instead may be better spent keeping them safe and clean as they pursue their own.

Off the Top of My Head

Is San Diego Finally Facing Reality About Homelessness

by John Lawrence

In an article by Scott Lewis he finally sheds some light on what should have been obvious to most observers of the homeless situation. Fact: Homeless people would rather live in a tent on the street than in a shelter. It's not hard to figure out why. They want privacy, pets, their own space, consumption of beverages of their own choice. He writes, "It turns out, unhoused residents are a lot like people who have homes. They want privacy. They want, though, to be close to community. They like pets. They like being together with loved ones. And yes, some of them like to do drugs or drink. All of these things, however, can be restricted or difficult in a congregate setting." Make sense? I have long advocated that local governments set aside city owned land so that homeless people could set up their tents and have some basic social service like portable toilets, showers and storage. In addition social workers could provide them with their services like the city so often says they want to do. So why don't they do it especially if they are in one or more centralized location off the streets and somewhere that can be made into a more sanitary setting. Did I mention dumpsters? By the way the city actually did that temporarily during the hepatitis crisis in 2017.

I wrote previously:

So here is my solution, and then I'll tell you why it will never be implemented. Set aside land for free campgrounds just as a city sets aside land for parks. These should be open to all people not just the "homeless" at some snapshot in time. The financial savings from not building lumber and concrete housing would be immense. These campgrounds should have basic services like rest room facilities and showers. Also trash collection and security. The homeless can provide their own tents as they already have which are strewn all over public sidewalks. This solution accomplishes two very important goals: 1) it provides a marginally better lifestyle for the homeless with much better sanitary conditions and 2) it gets the homeless off the streets and sidewalks letting the general public feel safe in using them again. The money saved in police and hospital resources would probably more than pay for the minimal services provided. In addition social worker services in terms of mental health, drug counseling and job search might be provided as they say they want to provide today.

So this solution would make both the general public, who could reclaim the streets and sidewalks, and the homeless, who would have a marginally better and more sanitary life, better off and the whole scenario could be implemented on a very cost effective basis. Why would it never be implemented in America? Here's why. It heightens the fear among politicians and especially conservatives that the homeless population would continue to grow unabated as more and more people would choose to live in a campground than to pay exorbitant rent. Landlords would lobby politicians because they would fear losing their tenants. People on the lowest rungs of the financial ladder would lose their fear of becoming homeless as a free or almost free solution to housing in lumber and concrete becomes available. Most of the homeless already have rudimentary transportation ^i.e. bicycles. This gives them access to bus routes which can get them around the city. Most have some income which they use for food at fast food places which, while not nutritious, at least keeps them from starving. So my solution would not necessarily include food services or transportation services but it could.

Scott writes:

"The mayor doesn’t want to accommodate them in a safe camping village, Laing says, because the city and providers cannot afford the support personnel needed to keep it safe. But he has also proven incapable of winning the war on the tents in the streets.

"If you’re losing a war and wasting money fighting it, it may be time to rethink it.

"The people on the streets are telling us they want space to set up their own lives.

"Whatever dollars we spend forcing them to consider our approach instead may be better spent keeping them safe and clean as they pursue their own."

Really? "The city can't afford the support personnel needed to keep t safe." Yet they can afford $800K in overtime pay to deal with homeless problems on the street. Hospitals can afford millions of dollars in emergency room treatment for homeless for which they are not reimbursed. Businesses can afford homeless camping out in front of their doors. Is the city being penny wise and pound foolish? You bet they are. They get millions of dollars to build shelters which the homeless don't want to live in. Yet they can't afford some basic campground facilities on a vacant lot? Oh I see. The Kampgrounds of America would lobby against something for free which is a profit making enterprise for them. Yet the state of California can offer almost free camping in Cardiff, Sweetwater County Park, Campland on the Bay and elsewhere. Plenty of almost free campgrounds are available. The state, county and city could create more at minimal expense compared with brick and mortar facilities. And it might even bring down the price of rents.

The authorities should take note of Scott's article and do the right and inexpensive thing staring them right in the face. It would get homeless off the streets thereby making them safe for ordinary pedestrians. It would bring more people to local businesses that happen to be in neighborhoods where the homeless have set up tent camps. It would provide a sanitary location for the homeless to set up their tents. It would provide ready access to the homeless for social workers who would be there to deal with the problems that landed them up homeless in the first place. Instead of police being called to deal with homeless problems all over the city at random locations, on site security could minimize demands on police. It seems like a no brainer. I'm glad Scott finally called out the stupidity of the local, county and state authorities on this matter. I would also increase tourism in America's Finest (Potentially) City.

 

Off the Top of My Head

Beyond Meat and Cow Farts

by John Lawrence, February 24, 2021

About 19% of the 51 billion tons of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emitted into the atmosphere each year comes from agriculture. There are roughly a billion cattle in the world raised for both meat and dairy. The 2 billion tons of GHGs they burp and fart account for 4 percent of global emissions each year. Also pig poop accounts for half of all poop related emissions with cows making up the other half. Industrial cow and pig farms create ponds full of poop which then sometimes break through to streams and rivers. In an article, "A million tons of feces and an unbearable stench: life near industrial pig farms", we find the following:

"Fifty yards from Miller’s family graveyard is a massive open-air cesspool storing the pigs’ waste – a stagnant pool containing their feces, urine, blood and other bodily fluids – often referred to as a “lagoon”, one of about 3,300 lagoons across the state. When the cesspool reaches its capacity, its contents are liquefied and sprayed into a field across the street from Miller’s house via a large, sprinkler-like apparatus. The sprayer releases a mist of waste on to the field, which, according to court documents, is about 200ft from Miller’s home at its closest rotation."

In addition to the environmental, health and stench problems, pig shit lagoons are contributing major amounts of GHGs into the atmosphere. “Air pollutants from the routine operation of confinement houses, cesspools, and waste sprayers affect nearby neighborhoods where they cause disruption of activities of daily living, stress, anxiety, mucous membrane irritation, respiratory conditions, reduced lung function, and acute blood pressure elevation,” Wing and fellow UNC researcher Jill Johnston wrote in a 2014 study. They also found that the state’s industrial hog operations disproportionately affect African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans. That pattern, they concluded, “is generally recognized as environmental racism”.

The Guardian article continued: "North Carolina’s pork production industry has shifted dramatically since the mid-80s. Today’s industrial farms, often called concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs, raise pigs and other livestock in confinement until they are ready for slaughter. The hogs generally live in cramped quarters; Michelle B Nowlin, supervising attorney of Duke’s Environmental Law and Policy Clinic, estimates they typically get seven or eight square feet of space each." Chickens and cattle suffer the same fate of having to spend their meager existence in CAFOs.

As more people world wide become middle class, they want to eat more meat. This is not only a problem for the animals who suffer the most, but it is a problem for the GHGs that animal agriculture causes that contribute to global warming. But the nutritional aspects of eating animals are equally inefficient. A pig eats 3 times as many calories as we get when we eat it. Cows require six calories of feed for every calorie of beef that we eat. In China and other developing countries meat eating is becoming much more popular because of a growing and more affluent middle class.

There are several alternatives already on the market: plant based hamburgers called Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers. These burgers are a pretty good approximation of the real thing, but there are even more products being developed that don't only mimic the taste of meat. They actually are meat except they are created without having to pass calories through a cow and then slaughtering the cow. They use the same metabolic processes that a cow does to deposit meat on its bones. This meat though is created in a lab and is already on the market in Singapore according to The Guardian:

"Cultured meat, produced in bioreactors without the slaughter of an animal, has been approved for sale by a regulatory authority for the first time. The development has been hailed as a landmark moment across the meat industry.

"The “chicken bites”, produced by the US company Eat Just, have passed a safety review by the Singapore Food Agency and the approval could open the door to a future when all meat is produced without the killing of livestock, the company said.

"Dozens of firms are developing cultivated chicken, beef and pork, with a view to slashing the impact of industrial livestock production on the climate and nature crises, as well as providing cleaner, drug-free and cruelty-free meat. Currently, about 130 million chickens are slaughtered every day for meat, and 4 million pigs. By weight, 60% of the mammals on earth are livestock, 36% are humans and only 4% are wild."

If the world's consumption of meat can be converted to lab grown meat that looks, taste, and feels like the real thing, then we can eliminate the whole process of passing calories through a cow or pig or chicken first and still get the same end result. That alone will save about 10 billion tons of GHGs per year.

Off the Top of My Head

There is No Such Thing as a National Solution to a Global Crisis

by John Lawrence, October 9, 2020

The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation announced its 2020 Goalkeepers report with the above words. COVID-19 has killed more than 850,000 people worldwide. Every year until this one the world has made progress towards reducing poverty and disease. Notice the Gates foundation emphasis on the world as one coherent unified organism rather than just on US national boundaries. The pandemic knows no national boundaries. Until it's stamped out worldwide, the US is vulnerable. The foolishness of spending a trillion dollars a year on the US military which was powerless to do anything about the pandemic has been demonstrated. International cooperation is crucial to ending this pandemic, as well as others which are likely to follow, and reducing the conditions of poverty and disease in the world which breed war and terrorism. When will the US get its priorities straight?

The Goalkeepers report tracked 18 indicators included in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In recent years, the world has improved on every single one. This year, on the vast majority, we’ve regressed.There is also a worldwide recession that the military and military-industrial complex is powerless to do anything about. The US is not an island. Pandemics, global warming - these are problems affecting the whole world not just the US. Nations that have the resources need to assist other nations that don't have the resources. That means that the developed world has to help the developing world to combat these problems: disease, poverty, weaponization, global warming.

In 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to a series of 17 ambitious goals to end poverty, fight inequality, and stop climate change by 2030. The Global Goals are within our reach, but we must remain committed—embracing what works and addressing what doesn’t, while holding ourselves and others accountable. In 2016 President Trump dropped out of global cooperation with his America First policy. That has gotten the US nowhere. Whichever countries handle the pandemic intelligently are going to come out of the recession as world leaders. That won't be the US unless Joe Biden gets elected and is able to turn the shambles of Trump's response to the pandemic around.

The first and most important goal is ending poverty. Eradicating poverty is not a task of charity, it's an act of justice and the key to unlocking an enormous human potential. Still, nearly half of the world’s population lives in poverty, and lack of food and clean water is killing thousands every single day of the year. Together, we can feed the hungry, wipe out disease and give everyone in the world a chance to prosper and live a productive and rich life. The second goal is zero hunger. Hunger is the leading cause of death in the world. Our planet has provided us with tremendous resources, but unequal access and inefficient handling leaves millions of people malnourished. If we promote sustainable agriculture with modern technologies and fair distribution systems, we can sustain the whole world’s population and make sure that nobody will ever suffer from hunger again.

The third goal is good health and well-being. Over the last 15 years, the number of childhood deaths has been cut in half. This proves that it is possible to win the fight against almost every disease. Still, we are spending an astonishing amount of money and resources on treating illnesses that are surprisingly easy to prevent. The new goal for worldwide Good Health promotes healthy lifestyles, preventive measures and modern, efficient healthcare for everyone. The fourth goal is quality education. Education liberates the intellect, unlocks the imagination and is fundamental for self-respect. It is the key to prosperity and opens a world of opportunities, making it possible for each of us to contribute to a progressive, healthy society. Learning benefits every human being and should be available to all.

The fifth goal is gender equality. Gender bias is undermining our social fabric and devalues all of us. It is not just a human rights issue; it is a tremendous waste of the world’s human potential. By denying women equal rights, we deny half the population a chance to live life at its fullest. Political, economic and social equality for women will benefit all the world’s citizens. Together we can eradicate prejudice and work for equal rights and respect for all. The sixth goal is clean water and sanitation. This will require major infrastructure development. It's not rocket science. The techniques involved are well known in the developed world. One in three people live without sanitation. This is causing unnecessary disease and death. Although huge strides have been made with access to clean drinking water, lack of sanitation is undermining these advances. If we provide affordable equipment and education in hygiene practices, we can stop this senseless suffering and loss of life.

Actually I would put clean water and sanitation right up there with ending poverty. It would put an end to many of the diseases that occur in the underdeveloped world. The emphasis on healthy living and basic creature comforts needs to spearhead the use of resources worldwide. That means that developed nations have to give back to the underdeveloped ones instead of putting their further enjoyment and well being first which is the gist of America First. Global cooperation to combat global problems needs to take precedence over preparations for war and bullying other nations by the most powerful ones. The negligence and incompetence with which Trump has treated the COVID pandemic, the withdrawal of the US from universal institutions, almost assures that the US will assume a secondary status in the world unless the next administration can make up for the damage Trump has done and set us on a new and more constructive course.

Off the Top of My Head

The Relationship Between Poverty and Pandemic

by John Lawrence, July 20, 2020

Some people think these are 2 independent phenomena that have nothing to do with each other. In fact they're interrelated. The viruses spill over from animal host reservoirs into human beings when humans are in close contact with animals. As farms, villages, agricultural and mining operations encroach on animal habitat, spillover is not far behind. Many poor people get their only protein from 'bush meat', that is wild animals of all sorts. Especially in China but elsewhere as well people eat all kinds of exotic species. This makes it more likely that there will be a transfer of animal viruses to humans. The virus probably originated from a bat in Wutan's so-called 'wet market' where they sell all kinds of animals both wild caught and farm raised.

Sanitation in many parts of the world leaves a lot to be desired. Diseases of all kinds are rampant. Some of these are confined to local areas, but some like COVID-19 can spread to the rest of the world and cause a pandemic. An estimated 2.5 billion people, more than 35% of the world’s population, lack access to adequate sanitation. Disease started in these areas can spread to the rest of the world in a pandemic so the more the developed world can do to improve these conditions in poor areas of the world, the more the developed world is protecting itself from potential future pandemics. Unsafe drinking water, inadequate availability of water for hygiene, and lack of access to sanitation together contribute to about 88% of deaths from diarrheal diseases.

Water, sanitation and hygiene has the potential to prevent at least 9.1% of the global disease burden and 6.3% of all deaths. The impact of clean water technologies on public health in the U.S. is estimated to have had a rate of return of 23 to 1 for investments in water filtration and chlorination during the first half of the 20th century. Over half of the global population or 4.2 billion people lack safely managed sanitation services. (WHO/UNICEF 2019).

Furthermore, the strain on the world's potable water supply is being exacerbated by climate change. Glaciers store about 70% of the world's fresh water. They release this water gradually during summer months as the glaciers melt. Since the climate is getting warmer, glaciers are releasing water earlier in the year and much of it is just running off never to be productively used. Then when water is really needed later on, the glaciers are spent for the year. Glaciers are receding because of climate warming so that they are containing less and less fresh water each year in the first place. The cold season in which glaciers add more ice to the glaciers is getting shorter each year so there is less ice to begin with. More than 1.4 billion people depend on water from the rivers of the Himalaya. The main rivers are the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Ganges and the Yellow River. The first 3 drain through India, the last through China.

As earth's population increases there are not only more mouths to feed, there is a greater need for fresh water the supply of which is diminishing. This leads to less crop production, starvation and even worse sanitation and personal hygiene. There is more pressure to trap and eat bush meat which can contain deadly viruses which can spread to the rest of the world as the current pandemic did. Therefore, if we want to live in a safe, habitable world we need to start thinking about sustainable water and food supplies for everyone on the planet and better hygiene and sanitation for all the world's people, not just the few in developed countries. It is more important to spread the knowledge of safe water and sanitation systems as well as sustainable agricultural practices. Population control in one form or other is also necessary because the planet can only support a limited number of people especially if they are all living middle class lifestyles. We need to rethink what a sustainable lifestyle is and not consume a disproportionate percentage of earth's resources.