Posted on 05/10/2018 5:03:10 AM PDT by beaversmom
The Yamuna, India's Most Polluted River
But let's make our lives miserable!
No surprise, China is a big polluter, alongside India. The two non-Asian rivers in the top 10 are the Nile and Niger.
Of all the things in my life I take for granted, there are two that I do NOT:
1.) Running water
2.) Clean water
I marvel at, and am thankful that I can go to nearly any water faucet, in or on nearly any building in the United States, and with a degree of safety, put my mouth right under the tap and drink without worrying too much about getting something bad.
That is pretty impressive. And I don’t take it for granted.
We should feel so grateful.
The river sweats / Oil and tar.
And plastic.
I sure do. I never, never take that for granted, even when I turn on my own water faucet.
It would SUCK having to carry containers a mile or two to some river, take whatever water you could get out of it, and trudge back to your house with it...eh! (all those years of camping may have contributed to that thankfulness, too!)
And hot water from a tap on demand? When civilization goes down the tubes, if I am still around, I will likely shed tears each and every morning when a hot shower is not an option. Man, I love a hot shower.
When I was in the USN, they limited us on the ship to a “One Minute Shower”, and the Shower Police would walk by and bang on the shower if you were in there too long.
I resolved that, when I got out, I would take hot showers as long and luxuriously as I wanted to!
Of course, on the good side, fish is easier to get because it just floats...dead, to the top.
On the bad side, you have a lot of competition for those few fish who survived long enough to be killed and float to the top.
And, eating the fish might actually kill you. But hey.
And the other 2 are in Africa, so tell me again how horrible Western Civilization, based on Judeo-Christian principles, really is?
I’d say you have an awareness that most lack.
I thank God every day that I have my own well.
How can say such insulting and culturally insensitive things about these noble people that live in harmony with their environment?
Can't you see the balance that comes from brushing your teeth in a river as a cadaver's rib cage floats by?
We should be so lucky. In fact, I'm buying plane, no tramp steamer, tickets today, for my whole family.
Heck...you know how it is. It is hard to be grateful/aware of things like a flushing toilet or running water until you have gone through a phase where they are denied to you.
Interesting story: I used to be in a training squadron for a few months back in the mid-Seventies that was commanded by John McCain (yes, that John McCain). I went into the administrative office section of the squadron hanger up on the second deck, and the access to the offices was off a long, dark hall that ran the entire length of the huge hangar. The only light during the day was provided by the two large windows, one at each end of the hall where the stairs came up.
Anyway, I came into the hallway, and as I began the walk to the offices, in the dim light, I could make out the shape of a person standing at the scuttlebutt (water bubbler) in the dead center of the hallway.
I didn’t give it much thought, but it was a long hallway, and as I got closer, the person wasn’t moving, just standing there with the button depressed, the water running as he stared at it without moving.
When I got up close enough, I saw it was Commander McCain. He had been standing there, motionless, finger on the button, staring at the running water. That was a long hallway, so he had been standing there fixated on that water stream for a while. He was still there when I turned into an office.
I thought about that for a long time. (I knew who he was, having grown up in a Navy family and closely followed the POW situation for years, wearing the bracelets, and we even drove over to Andrews AFB to greet some who came directly to the East Coast when they were released)
My first thought was...maybe he was just waiting for the water to get cold. But that wasn’t it. This was only about two and a half years after his release, and it was evident to me he was somewhere else at that point in time, standing in that dim passageway in that hangar staring at that water stream. And I did have a keen awareness at that time, that...being deprived of water on demand must have been a real trial.
It was one of the reasons it took me so long to come around to his level of perfidy as a Senator. I had this built in mechanism that made me disinclined to criticize him as a former naval officer and POW, even with his behavior since then. Thank goodness for some gentle people at FR who likely saw that in me and helped me get around it.
I wish I did.
Arghh. That is some disgusting mental imagery there!
Imagine requiring (and verifying) that the countries doing our off-continent, outsourced work have the same health, safety and workplace standards as in America?
They’d become uncompetitive within a year.
Ding ding ding ding!
And that is how we KNOW the Global Warming Crap is just redistribution of wealth, by the fact that third world countries won’t be held to the same standards in the provisions.
I think we all, as decent people, have this mechanism.
And yeah, it required a lot of retraining.
And great story, BTW.
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