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Water Management, Not Carbon Tax: Earth’s Silent Cry for Balance
By Marivel Guzman | Akashma News
Originally published on June 27, 2017
Updated on May 03, 2025
In the global effort to combat climate change, carbon taxes have emerged as a popular policy tool. Proponents argue that putting a price on carbon emissions incentivizes industries and individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. However, this approach often overlooks a more immediate and tangible crisis: water mismanagement.
I’m not a scientist. But my common sense, my emotional intelligence, and my deep symbiotic bond with Mother Earth compel me to question the climate change narrative being pushed by policymakers, financiers, and lobbyist-backed scientists. The climate is indeed changing—but it’s not just because of carbon emissions. It’s because Earth is thirsty.
I coined the term “dry surface syndrome” to describe this condition—one caused not by abstract greenhouse gases, but by the damming of rivers, the clear-cutting of forests, the overuse of groundwater, and the destruction of Earth’s natural hydrological systems. When Earth is parched, it does what every living organism does: it adapts. It melts its glaciers. It shifts its winds. It tries to rebalance itself.
Let me be clear: I believe lobbying companies have manipulated have the scientific discourse around climate. Some of the data pushed over the last 25 years, especially by the proponents behind “An Inconvenient Truth,” was crafted not to empower the planet—but to sell the carbon tax agenda. We’ve been sold a smokescreen, while the real damage continues in our rivers, forests, and oceans.
This infographic reveals the stark contrast between the U.S.’s massive daily freshwater use (322 billion gallons) and its CO₂ emissions (6.3 billion metric tons). As Marivel Guzman writes, “Earth is not just warming—she is thirsty.”
Water, the Forgotten Crisis
According to American Rivers, the U.S. alone diverts and manages its water through more than 241 dams in California—part of a global network of over 57,000 dams disrupting natural ecosystems. Dams fragment rivers, kill fisheries, and stop sediment from replenishing coasts. The Guardian reported extensively on this issue, which remains largely ignored in global climate talks.
Even worse, freshwater from melting glaciers is described by some scientists as “wasted water” because it mixes with the oceans. But water doesn’t die—it transforms. As sunlight causes evaporation, that moisture joins the rain cycle, replenishing rivers, aquifers, and life. To call glacier melt “waste” is to deny the sacred role water plays in Earth’s renewal.
Lungs of the Planet: Forests and Oceans
BBC once called the Amazon the “lungs of the planet,” covering over 5.5 million square kilometers. But it isn’t just forests. According to the Earth Journalism Network, oceans also act as Earth’s lungs—producing between 50% to 80% of the world’s oxygen and absorbing over 25% of its CO₂. WWF’s Yolanda Kakabadse put it best: “We should call it Planet Ocean.”
And yet, we are suffocating these lungs. If you trap the water responsible for ocean currents and cut down all the trees, what do you expect will happen to the climate?
Pollution vs. Responsibility
Pollution is real and deadly—particularly in the developing world. The World Health Organization states that over 3 billion people, mostly women and children, still inhale toxic smoke daily from polluting stoves. But not all pollution comes from oil or cars. We ignore the role of fast fashion, agriculture, and consumer habits in water waste and environmental degradation.
Take cotton: India, the world’s largest producer, uses 22,500 liters of water to produce just one kilogram of cotton.According to The Guardian, in 2013 alone, India’s cotton exports consumed enough water to supply 85% of its 1.24 billion people with 100 liters per day for a year. Yet 100 million people in India lack safe water access.
Since 1991, the World Bank has been deeply involved in multiple phases of India’s water infrastructure development—channeling billions in loans toward rural water supply, dam rehabilitation, and urban water management. Yet despite these investments, India now has significantly less water per person than it did in 1951.
According to India Today, per capita water availability dropped from 5,177 cubic meters in 1951 to just 1,545 cubic meters by 2011, with current estimates nearing 1,000 cubic meters in several regions
Toward a Real Climate Agenda
If climate change is a fact—and it is—then the preservation, distribution, and restoration of water systems must be central to every climate summit and sustainability agenda. Instead of investing billions in carbon markets and surveillance, we must dismantle destructive dams, reforest ecosystems, and return rivers to their natural paths.
We must acknowledge Earth as a sentient, self-regulating being—not just a resource to be taxed, but a life force to be nurtured. Earth is not just warming. She is bleeding through her glacier tears. And she is asking us to listen.
Further reading:
When Earth Thirsts: Glacial Tears and the Wisdom of a Living Planet
When Earth Thirsts: Glacial Tears and the Wisdom of a Living Planet
By Marivel Guzman | Akashma News
The Cry Beneath The Ice
What if the Earth isn’t just reacting to us — what if it’s speaking, guiding, healing itself?
For too long, the conversation around melting glaciers has centered on panic: rising seas, lost habitats, climate refugees. But what if there’s a deeper message encoded in this release of ancient water? What if Earth, in her infinite wisdom, is not dying — but thirsty?
The Natural Rivers Are a Picture of the Past
Once, rivers followed sacred paths. Fed by rainfall, glaciers, and underground aquifers, they meandered through the land like arteries in a living body.
Today, most rivers have been dammed, diverted, buried, or poisoned. Corporate agriculture and industrial water privatization have turned sacred waterways into profit pipelines. Giants like Nestlé extract billions of gallons from aquifers, bottling the blood of the Earth for sale.
As I wrote in 2017:
💧A Critique of Carbon Tax Policies
“Carbon taxes are a distraction from the real issue: the mismanagement and commodification of water resources.”
Our focus must shift from carbon credit theatrics to the true crisis—Earth’s dehydration.
🌱 Call for Holistic Environmental Stewardship
“We must shift our focus from taxing carbon to nurturing our natural water systems, ensuring they remain free and unpolluted.”
The Earth, recognizing the trauma, is responding not in wrath — but in wisdom.
The Great Thirst: Earth’s Response to Human Extraction
In this theory — not yet studied by formal science, but sensed by many — the Earth is intentionally melting glaciers to restore its fractured hydrological balance.
🌊 Earth’s Hydrological Wisdom
“The Earth is thirsty, and she is releasing water from the glaciers to revitalize her fractured bones dried by man-made water catastrophes.”
As rivers run dry or are redirected, Earth turns to her frozen reservoirs, unlocking thousands of years of stored purity, not to drown humanity, but to quench her parched crust.
This view positions Earth as a sentient organism, a being not of chaos, but of adaptation. Just as a body increases blood flow to a wound, the planet may be reactivating ancient flows to rehydrate landscapes desiccated by extraction, agriculture, and pollution.
As I once wrote: “The Earth is thirsty, and she is releasing water from the glaciers to revitalize her fractured bones dried by man-made water catastrophes.”
This metaphor is no longer a poetic gesture — it is a warning wrapped in wisdom.
Where the Waters Go: Rivers of the Present and Future
Conventional science warns that glacial melt flows into oceans, disrupting salinity, marine ecosystems, and thermohaline currents. This is valid and well-documented. But it misses another possibility: that not all meltwater is lost to the sea.
In landscapes still connected to ancient hydrological systems — such as the Sierra Nevada, the Canadian Rockies, and the Himalayas — glacial melt can find its way into natural rivers, revitalizing ecosystems still intact.
Moreover, Earth’s crust contains subterranean rivers and aquifers that act like veins. Meltwater may be refilling these channels, much like an IV rehydrating a dying patient.
Whispers from the Waters
Poetic Interlude
I remembered you before you were born,
when your bones were still sand,
and your breath hadn’t yet touched my sky.
I held your reflection in glacial silence,
you sold my tears
in plastic bottles.
But I did not curse you.
I simply melted.
You think I weep from injury.
They are rivers reborn.
You think I weep from injury.
I am not drowning you.
I do not demand your fear.
Only your listening.
Let the stone be soft again.
Let the river write its language into your skin.
Let the mist enter your lungs
and remind you of where you came from.
Creation by ChatGPT + DALL·E under user instruction.
Copyright © 2025 Marivel R. Guzman | Akashma News. All rights reserved.
Earth as Teacher: The Philosophical Turn
If we accept Earth as an intelligent being, the implications are radical.
The melting glaciers are not merely indicators of doom — they are teachings. They show us how life adapts, how wisdom survives even the harshest disruption.
Earth is not asking us to save her. She is showing us how she saves herself.
Our role, then, is not to dominate or “fix” nature, but to listen — and stop draining her lifeblood for profit.
“We must shift our focus from taxing carbon to nurturing our natural water systems, ensuring they remain free and unpolluted.” These words echo louder than ever.
Conclusion: Rivers Remember
The glaciers are weeping — not in sorrow, but in sacrifice. Their tears are nourishment, directed by an ancient knowing.
If humanity dares to listen, we may realize that the greatest climate solution isn’t control, but reverence.
We must let the rivers run wild again. We must protect the last of the natural flows. And above all, we must recognize that the Earth is not a resource — she is a relative, a mother, a healer.
Let us follow the water.
Let us remember the rivers.
Let us return to the source.
A Note from Akashma
This piece is more than an article — it is a conversation with the Earth, born from years of observation, meditation, and heartbreak.
I have watched rivers disappear and return only in memory. I have felt the thirst of a planet bled dry by greed, and I’ve listened to the silent wisdom buried in the glaciers. What I’ve written here may challenge conventional science, but it is rooted in something deeper: instinct, reverence, and the belief that Earth is alive, aware, and endlessly resilient.
This is not a warning.
This is an offering.
A prayer.
A reminder that we are not separate from the river —
We are the river.
—
Marivel Guzman
Akashma News
If this article spoke to something deeper in you — share it.
Let the rivers speak through us.
#AkashmaNews #WhispersFromTheWaters
Marivel Guzman
Investigative Journalist | Documentary Photographer | Truth Seeker
Marivel Guzman is passionate about investigative reporting and photography. She loves to dig for information and get to the bottom of what is really going on. Her work often focuses on following the money and exposing how public funds are allocated—or misused.
Her bylines include Lariat News, Orange Coast Report, and The State Hornet. She has also worked remotely as Proof Editor for the Baluchistan Red Crescent quarterly magazine and volunteers as a photographer for UNRWA at their local community events.
She has been the voice behind Akashma News for almost two decades, sharing uncensored stories that challenge dominant narratives and amplify the voices of the oppressed.
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