Now For Something Completely Different...No, Really

When I am not listening to music for fun or review purposes (it's usually fun), there is usually a book or 2 by my bedside.  Walking through our local public library the other week, I came across "Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis."  Published in September of 2011 by Beacon Press, it's the culmination of several years of study, many thousands of miles of travel and immeasurable hours of rumination on water usage, the wasting of this precious resource and what communities and countries are doing to make sure  that we and future generations will be have enough water to live.

Not surprisingly, the author Cynthia Barnett is a veteran journalist and historian (with a specialization in environmental history.)  A resident of Florida, her previous book, 2007's "Mirage", used the ongoing water issues in that state as a springboard to discuss developers, city planners and others moved communities away from water (damming rivers, cutting off access to rivers and lakes, siphoning water from rivers and watersheds to supply new communities).  The new book goes even farther (for instance, Australia and Singapore) and finds that, though problems are many, solutions are in place and in development.

Ms. Barnett writes well, passionately (without bitter polemics) and does not take political sides.  She realizes, as do many people around the world, we are all in this together and must work together to right the decades of wrongs.  And, she's optimistic that people will make sacrifices for the general good.

I had the opportunity to interview Cynthia Barnett as a segment of Suzanne Thompson's "CT Outdoors", heard weekly from 12:30 - 1 p.m. on WLIS-AM and WMRD-AM (in Old Saybrook and Middletown, CT).  You can listen to the 2-part interview by clicking on the links below.  To find out more about Ms. Barnett and her books, go to www.cynthiabarnett.net/.


archive.org/details/CynthiaBarnett-CtOutdoorspart1
archive.org/details/CynthiaBarnett-CtOutdoorspart2