236

Earth thought 236 : I wrote yesterday of showers, of taking showers. As I did, I cringed inside, knowing that the picture of the shower-taking world is trivial; there, look -the world of people without clean water, let alone shower water; the world of people in a flood (in Pakistan). And beyond the poverty which is a main enabler of these problems, if not the cause per se, the disturbing thing is how when you get to them, they have already been set in motion long before the problem bursts out. The country's population has exploded beyond what is sustainable, for instance, or poor construction has pre-damned, yes, "pre-damned", people. Environmental problems burst out big, but so often the causes lie far afield, beforehand, disasters waiting to happen.