Why do you think that the USA & Canada & England abstained from voting for the human right to have safe & clean water to drink?

I think partly because it was lacking specifics. It’s like a resolution declaring, “rape and murder are bad”.

Maybe because they would end up footing the bill for the whole world.

@anartist That was my first thought.

@jaytkay I don’t think that would force them to abstain. I think a lot of UN resolutions are a bit silly that way…

I think its hard to say without reading the bill. Anyone have a link?

A second thought… defining something as a human right might carry other implications based on other laws. Specifically, I would think it imposes some duties that maybe some countries don’t want.

Personally, I have wondered about the strength of the petro-chemical industry as being the reason. The big oil companies are doing tremendous damage to fresh water supplies in various locations around the globe & maybe if we had voted to declare this right to safe & clean water – it would mean that the US would have to force these big companies to clean up their polluting ways. Politicians are hesitant to restrain the hands that contribute to their campaigns.

The whole concept of “rights” has been very badly abused for most of the past century.

When the founders of the USA declared “inalienable rights” they had in mind things that a person has unto himself: his own thoughts and conscience, relationship with god/s, his own home and whatever other property he could acquire legally, and the right to live his own life. No one has to “give” anyone these things, you own these rights as you are born, and the US Constitution was written in a way that would respect and guarantee these rights.

But lately we have been talking more and more about other “rights” that do have to be planned for, funded and supplied by others:
– education as a right
– medical care as a right
– affordable housing as a right
– food as a right
– a right to a job (as opposed to a “right to work”, which is a very different animal)
– even “rights” to Internet access

These are very different “rights” than what the US Founders proposed. Someone has to provide education, food, medical care, housing, Internet access and all the rest of these goodies. They don’t automatically exist in nature for us to share equally.

One might argue that air and water DO exist in nature for us to share, and that we should each have an equal share of these resources, at least. Even that is problematic. The groundwater in Bangladesh, for example, is heavily contaminated with arsenic, not because of some evil multinational corporation dumping wastes there, but because arsenic permeates the soil there. Removing the arsenic is possible, but it’s an expensive process. Water doesn’t exist, at least in quantities sufficient to support human communities, in many parts of the world, and has to be provided in those places at great expense.

Even air is unequally distributed. People at higher altitudes simply do not have the density of air (so they have “less” of it) than people closer to sea level.

It’s a good goal for water and air users to return the water and air back to the environment in as good as or better condition than they were when they were entered into our various agricultural, industrial, commercial and residential uses, and we work much better at achieving that goal—at least in the places that have strong enough economies and desire to demand and then do that. For example, some municipalities have sewage treatment plants that return treated water back to the downstream side that is often better than the water at their intakes. (The only reason they can’t actually re-use the treated water as domestic supply is the perception problem that users would have if they knew that they were drinking “treated sewer water”.) But most people in New Orleans, for example, realize that the water coming out of their taps, as “clean” as it is, has been used many times upstream to flush toilets, feed livestock, irrigate crops, float barge traffic, etc.

So, as with all of the other “material rights” as I call them, the devil really is in the details: who “supplies” these “rights” to the people who supposedly have the rights? And who pays for that?

They don’t care really, here in the US, in England and in Canada we already have clean safe water so we get no benefit from it.

@cyanoticwasp
Well said on your explanation of rights. i couldnt agree more. I think one of the major problems in this country is the lack of knowledge of the constitution and the lack of understanding the difference between rights and priveleges.

You left off marriage. Marriage is a privelege, not a right.

A friend told me a few years ago, that we would soon be fighting wars of water. I believe the over-population of the globe is a huge threat to society and that the resources of the world are being controlled by a few, so why not water? Im not at all surprised that the US declined to sign this bill, just like we wont sign the cluster bomb ban. its all for the same reasons…. the US has become a fascist govt, ran by the corporations of the world, which have no allegiance to any country or people, only to making a profit.

42 countries in all abstained from the vote, apparently “This”:, at least, is somebody’s take on it. From the article.

Abstaining countries used the pretext that the resolution might undermine a U.N. Human Rights Council attempt in Geneva to build a consensus on water rights. — But the real reason the neoliberal enthusiasts and their flunkies oppose the right is that they wish to commodify water and turn it over to large corporations. — Maud Barlow told Amy Goodman that the countries voting against the historic resolution were “the usual gang. It was the United States and Canada, the European—not the European Union—the United Kingdom—some of the European countries voted to abstain; some were wonderful—Australia, New Zealand. So it was all of the Anglophone, neoliberal, you know, bought into this whole agenda that everything is to be commodified, countries who are able to continue to supply clean water to their citizens, which makes it doubly appalling that they would deny the right to water to the billions of people who are suffering right now. They used procedural language about this and that. There’s another process in Geneva with the Human Rights Council, which we support, and they used the excuse that we have to wait for that. But that’s a long-term process, and it could or could not end in something very specific. So they just cut through it. A bunch of brave countries from the Global South said, ‘We can’t wait. We need this now.’ And it’s not a surprise that it came from Bolivia, because, remember, Bolivia is suffering double whammy with a, you know, dearth of water, dearth of clean water, but also melting glaciers from climate change.”

Not saying it is or isn’t so, just posting somebody’s opinion on what may have been the reasons.

@lillycoyote -the real reason the neoliberal enthusiasts and their flunkies oppose the right is that they wish to commodify water and turn it over to large corporations.

Privatization of water supplies is a real threat to civilization. “Libertarians” are pushing us towards the Somali model of society.

Cocacola and Nestle are currently trying to corner the market in drinking water. That may have something to do with it. If not that, something to do with money, these greedy bastards always put money first.

Did you know, there are places in Africa where it is easier to get cocacola than it is to get clean water?

Cocacola, Nestle and a couple of others go in to places and buy up large water reserves, then they prevent people in that area from drinking it. A law that gives them the right to drink it would hurt their evil plans.

Where and to whom do Cocacola and Nestle pay most of their taxes again?

@jaytkay

I just realized I forgot to post a link to the article that was the source of my lengthy quote.

Here it is source of the quote. All that is in italics above is a direct quote from that article, not necessarily my personal opinion.

I said ”Not saying it is or isn’t so, just posting somebody’s opinion on what may have been the reasons.”

What I meant by that was that I wasn’t agreeing or disagreeing with the quotation, just saying that it was “somebody“s” take on it not mine. That may have been unclear.

I don’t know enough about it, about the problems the economics of it to argue with you about it and I don’t intend to.

@lillycoyote Understood, you were giving info without arguing for or against.

@jaytkay O.K. I just wanted to make sure that was clear. I needed to post the source anyway, since I forgot.

wow… typical responses from some of our brethern.

What I would say is, because we CAN we should.

This is a fundamental flaw in the human species, we have the ability to disconnect ourselves from the suffering of others. To question giving basic rights of food, water, education, medical care is pure tribal thinking. Because people are enjoying all the above rights without sacrifice they are unable to connect to such horrors. Because their world is about five miles in diameter from their house, they never have to be faced with that world.

That world where children drink from the same water that their parents piss and shit in. That world where there is water below but no-one will bring in the technology to end the suffering.
That world where an Aluminum factory can destroy an entire village and part of the Danube river with a deluge of toxic waste.
That world where people are starving right here in the United States and we subsidize farmers to grow food to put in OUR CARS!
That world where families lose their entire life savings because a woman found a lump and the Insurance wouldn’t pay for it.
That world where the uneducated strap bombs on their chest to kill innocent people because that is what they where taught.
That world where you work all your life and right before you retire your company puts it’s pension into bankruptcy so you lose it.

It’s time we found a different way. We sit and watch the decandence of life all around us, while people, human beings, are suffering, and for what? Is it really necessary?

We have the capacity, we have the know how, ready set GO!
Oh no wait…. My super sweet sixteen is coming on! I start right after that or right after the real housewives show.