Every Drop for Sale

Description

An investigative journalist explores our world on the brink of running out of usable water.

Less than .0008 percent of the total water on Earth is fit for human consumption, but global consumption of fresh water is doubling every twenty years. Water has become perhaps our most precious commodity-a life-sustaining but increasingly rare and privatized resource. A dramatic gap exists between those who have adequate water for survival and those who don’t, and tensions over water in some areas of the world hover just below open war.

From Europe to Asia to Africa to America, Jeffrey Rothfeder has visited the world’s hot spots, those with the least amount of water, as well as places where there is so much of it that plans are in the works to sell the excess to the highest bidder. In this compelling narrative account of our world in turmoil over water, Rothfeder describes the issues and struggles of the people on all sides of the water crisis: from the scarred survivors of bizarre water-management practices, to those who are willing to die for water to sustain their families and crops, to the scientists and leaders who are trying to set things straight.

Important, provocative, and immensely readable, Every Drop for Sale explores a fascinating critical dilemma: As we run out of it, is water a fundamental right of everybody on Earth or just a product humans need that can be bought and sold like any other commodity?Every Drop For SalePreface to the 2004 Edition
Beginning: Scenes of a Crisis

1. Controlled Fury

2. Invisible Desert

3. Right or Need?

4. Private Ties

5. To the Highest Bidder

6. The Scramble to Restore

7. There Are No Winners

8. Planet Water

Ending: Salvation
Notes
Index

Jeffrey Rothfeder is a former Business Week editor and national news editor at Bloomberg News. The author of The People vs. Big Tobacco and Privacy for Sale, he has reported on water issues for national newspapers and has appeared on national television shows, including The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, and 20/20. Rothfeder lives in Plainsboro, New Jersey.US