STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Brazil in Danger of Severe Drought!
Sao Paulo, Rio De Janeiro and Minas Gerais –All have Major Water Shortage Problems w/ over 30 Million People Affected!

Twenty years ago, I wrote a novel about the impending Second Civil War in the USA over a shortage of water in the Southwest. The book delineated the strife among California, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Arizona over the decreasing amount of water available in the Colorado River. What I thought would happen in the USA in time has actually become a reality in Sao Paolo, the business capital of Brazil.

Now, Brazil is a country about the size of the USA and has the largest water basin in the world around the Amazon River. So how did this country of natural bounties and a massive supply of water end up in a state of near drought? Many reasons are given.  Most of the shortage is blamed on a corrupt government which was too busy plundering the country of its natural resources and selling them overseas. I would not disagree with that assessment as only part of the answer.

You see the present President, an ex-terrorist and a clone of her inept socialist boss, has no executive abilities that would in any way suggest that she understood how to run a large resource-rich country. Then there is the usual explanation that petrochemical and other industries have used so much water that there was very little left for the citizenry.

That is also partly true.

What no one, including the Brazilian Government,  has discussed at all is that animal husbandry in the AMAZON has deforested that water rich area.  I am not a hydrologist, but I do know a little bit about water resources. The single most devastating cause of drought anywhere around the world is animal husbandry. Yes, think for a minute that every time you eat a Hamburger you in effect consume about 660 gallons of water.

Am I delusional?

I had the good fortune to see an independent movie entitled “COWSPIRACY” by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn

It was not a simple propaganda film.  Trust me, I don’t watch that stuff.  The film showed how we Americans and others citizens around the world will be eventually depleted of water in the next decade because of the massive requirements for water when a farmer raises the necessary nutrients [grains, feed] as well the cows, pigs, chickens etc. to be consumed per day to maintain our current diet.

▪ Animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of Greenhouse Emissions; more than all transportation combined.

▪ Methane has produced global warming 86 Times that of CO2.

▪ Fracking water use ranges from 70-140 billion gallon annually. In comparison Livestock is responsible for 65%  of all emissions of Nitrous oxide- A Greenhouse gas 296X more destructive than CO2 and stays in the atmosphere for 150 years.

▪ Growing feed crops for livestock consumes 56% of water in the USA. 

▪ 2,500 Gallons of water are needed to produce 1 POUND OF BEEF!!

▪ An average American consumes 209 pounds of meat per year.

 

You get the idea, the fork should dominates the knife. Vegetarian diets minimize the aforementioned disasters. However, I am not going to proselytize you.

I am here to answer one simple question:
Why did Sao Paulo become water starved when the leaders of Brazil have known for many years that they would inevitably have major water shortages if they continue on their current path? For decades, the beef and farming industry in Brazil has been so powerful that they have literally killed anyone that might interfere with their continuous destruction of the rich Amazon Rain Forest for the purpose of animal husbandry. An American Nun who had tried warn the world about the impending doom of the Amazon Rain forest was killed by the Brazilian meat industry.
If we continue to eat meat at our current rate; and we continue to destroy our oceans for fishing and our lands for animal husbandry---we too can become like BRAZIL! 

without water. Just to make the point a little bit more poignant. Several years ago, a group of people who had no water migrated to a city and overloaded the capacity of that city until each person was fighting the other for space and resources.

What am I talking about?
The Civil War in Syria was about water.  The Sunnis from Homs and Hama verses the Alawites [Bashar Assad] who had controlled Damascus and the Syrian coastline where water and food resources were plentiful. The water war turned into a religious war!

Climate Wars will constitute the next major outbreaks in our continuous, addictive, worldwide self-destructive behaviors towards one another. I hope that I am wrong but the recent water crisis in Brazil might be an indication that I am right.