Clearly, we need to rethink our attitudes about water and move away from thinking of it as nearly a free good and a God-given right.
Interpretation
We need to change our perspective on water, viewing it as a valuable resource rather than an unlimited gift.
This quote by Norman Borlaug emphasizes the importance of reevaluating our relationship with water. It suggests that we should recognize water as a precious resource that requires careful management, rather than assuming it is an inexhaustible free good that is naturally provided to us by nature.
In practice
In a presentation on environmental awareness, one might quote Borlaug to stress the necessity of sustainable water management.
During the past three years spectacular progress has been made in increasing wheat, rice, and maize production in several of the most populous developing countries of southern Asia, where widespread famine appeared inevitable only five years ago
We must recognize the fact that adequate food is only the first requisite for life. For a decent and humane life, we must also provide an opportunity for good education, remunerative employment, comfortable housing, good clothing, and effective and compassionate medical care.
We are 6.6 billion people now. We can only feed 4 billion. I don't see 2 billion volunteers to disappear.
Nevertheless, the number of farmers, small as well as large, who are adopting the new seeds and new technology is increasing very rapidly, and the increase in numbers during the past three years has been phenomenal.
Africa needs roads. Roads bring know-how and fertilizer to farmers and ideas and business for commerce.
This is a basic problem, to feed 6.6 billion people. Without fertilizer, forget it. The game is over.
When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.
Twenty-five years ago people could be excused for not knowing much, or doing much, about climate change. Today we have no excuse. No more can it be dismissed as science fiction; we are already feeling the effects.
One of the most attractive things about the flowers is their beautiful reserve.
What other species now require of us is our attention. Otherwise, we are entering a narrative of disappearing intelligences.
What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?
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