Saturday, January 4, 2020

LaToya Ruby Frazier presents a creative solution to the Flint Water Crisis in her TED talk


It's been three months since I last blogged about the Flint Water Crisis on October 23, when I posted both Mona Hanna-Attisha recounts the Flint Water Crisis for CBS Sunday Morning and John Oliver on lead for National TV Talk Show Host Day, so it's time for me to update the story.  Fortunately, TED uploaded a video last month this is perfect for this purpose, A creative solution for the water crisis in Flint, Michigan | LaToya Ruby Frazier.

Artist LaToya Ruby Frazier spent five months living in Flint, Michigan, documenting the lives of those affected by the city's water crisis for her photo essay "Flint is Family." As the crisis dragged on, she realized it was going to take more than a series of photos to bring relief. In this inspiring, surprising talk, she shares the creative lengths she went to in order to bring free, clean water to the people of Flint.
I'm glad to see that Frazier's creative solution involves a technology that could be used elsewhere to solve water crises, including Cape Town, which I wrote about for World Water Day 2018.*  As someone who teaches teaches environmental economics, I believe in using appropriate and efficient technology to mitigate environmental impact.  The machine that filters water out of air is at least a creative technological solution that is appropriate to the task.  I hope it can be made efficient as well.

*Speaking of World Water Day, that would be a good opportunity to make good on my promise to "write about [the PBS 'Nova' episode] 'Poisoned Water'...in a future post" I repeated in CNN's 'Dirty Water: Danger from the Tap' on World Water Day.  Stay tuned.

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