I'm still trying to figure out how this wiki page should and can be used.  I'm not really clear about what I'm supposed to do.  Or is it the other way around, are people suppose to contact me?  If that's so it's fine with me.


Is this a page to help people with water problems, or web problems, or group problems?


I guess I'm really really confused.


I know in my work on water, over the years, I see connections that might be helpful, but what those connections add up to, I'm still trying to figure out.  I do know that an interesting idea is now being floated around... a new way to leverage climate change that might apply to water, water being a big part of the climate change issue.  Here's an excerpt:


"World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER | Monday, May 19, 2007
Vol. 2, No. 20

Climate Industrial Complex

Few people still dismiss global warming. Some climate deniers still mouth off in Congress, like James Inhofe of Oklahoma who called global warming the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Novelist Michael Crichton, with his <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=JaLp9jA%2FBaVw1KAMJ2JwNe1RF6yNaxfq>2004 novel State of Fear and subsequent press briefings, has seemingly <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=mSurkPDsqsFOjpWchfWSsu1RF6yNaxfq>gotten mixed up about where non-fiction ends and fiction begins. Maverick progressive Alexander Cockburn <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=y%2B2egFTRofarKag42%2BpgR6sJ1nJ88Wn8>lobs grenades from the sidelines on the assumption that anything that becomes conventional wisdom must be wrong. Industry-funded organizations like the Competitive Enterprise Institute still churn out agitprop (though Exxon, for one, <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=P64QhznRmnwUu2K55iyPWO1RF6yNaxfq>severed ties with CEI).

The rest of us, meanwhile, have moved on.

But moved on to where? It's not like the energy crisis of the 1970s when our leaders urged us to turn down the thermostat a few degrees and don a sweater or two. The changes required to turn the clock back on climate change are enormous. We have to fundamentally transform the way the world does business, as FPIF contributor Tom Athanasiou has argued in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=2ZcsikvaPsDfx9vo%2BCLq5%2B1RF6yNaxfq>Toward a Defensible Climate Realism, the first piece in our new climate briefing.

Americans have a can-do attitude, even in the face of long odds. Environmentalist Bill McKibben, who has done as much as anyone to focus attention on the crisis, describes the required response to climate change as a "Hail Mary pass" in a recent <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=HkEJztiT%2FaI97RnDiU8Nxe1RF6yNaxfq>TomDispatch piece. To better the chances that such a pass is caught, some have <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=owrpVi%2BqciM0Zkmya6wgU%2B1RF6yNaxfq>called for a new Manhattan Project. Others have <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=QULIYpaw1X6RrOQmbVFOPu1RF6yNaxfq>urged a new Marshall Plan.

But both the Manhattan Project and Marshall Plan analogies miss the mark. Yes, of course, we need a massive, coordinated effort from the scientific community. Yes, of course, we need a massive, coordinated transfer of resources, particularly to poorer, energy-hungry countries.

Throwing scientists and money at this problem, however, is not enough. The better analogy is the military industrial complex. In response to the Red Scare of the Soviet Union, the United States fundamentally reoriented the United States toward a permanent war economy - to the detriment of America and the world. Now, to deal with the Green Scare, the United States must similarly change the production process and the government's relationship to it. We need to create a permanent climate change economy. And that requires a climate industrial complex.

After all, the threat of climate change is too important to leave to the private sector to figure out how to make a profit from catastrophe. As FPIF contributor Hope Shand points out in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=sLAciNQ%2BWIJmXHMvqw9pZO1RF6yNaxfq>Corporations Grab Climate Genes, agribusiness is already using the threat of global warming to corner the market on new, genetically modified "climate-ready" crops.

Rather, the government must get involved - with regulations, subsidies, targeted investments, R & D funds - in short, everything that made military contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin what they are today. FPIF's peace and security editor Miriam Pemberton spells out what this new economy should look like in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=EjFPdAWOkIvAb5blkHQLqe1RF6yNaxfq>A Climate Change Industrial Policy. Among other things, she calls for a climate change czar in the White House who "would link public investment to job retraining to technical assistance to new sources of finance for enterprise development, and pull together the various state initiatives into a coherent framework." In short, such a czar would oversee the disabling of the old complex and the creation of the new.

With a recession looming, politicians need something they can sell. And this is where "green jobs" enter the picture. These are, as FPIF contributors Jason Walsh and Sarah White point out in <http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=zi1PBp616sJe%2Fzaxq3nFPu1RF6yNaxfq>Global Green Jobs, "family-supporting, middle-skill jobs, most of them in the primary sectors of a clean energy economy - efficiency, renewables, and alternative transportation and fuels. There are many ways to count them, none perfect. One respected source, using a broad set of parameters, estimates that the renewable and efficiency sectors may account for as many as one in four jobs by 2030."

To avert disaster, of course, we can't leave it to professional recyclers, efficiency experts, and electric car manufacturers. In the new climate industrial complex, saving the world must become everyone's job."

... again I don't know if this  is the right place to bring ideas like this to this wiki page, but maybe it's what the page might become?