H20: The Molecule That Made Us (2020): Season 1, Episode 3 - Crisis - full transcript
Episode 3: Crisis examines how the planet's changing water cycle is forcing us to change our relationship with water. An increasingly, globalized agricultural industry is turning precious ...
("Koyaanisqatsi"
by Courtney Hartman playing)
♪ Your breath
is burning my skin ♪
♪ Your mouth
♪ Takes in my water
♪ And the clouds roll
like a river ♪
♪ The rain falls sharp as ice
♪ And the oceans tumble over
♪ Like mist in the night
♪ And my heart is a machine
♪ A machine keeping time
♪ And my body is a building
♪ Scraping at the sky
♪ And water looks
like water running ♪
♪
♪ Water looks
like water running ♪
Funding is provided by
The Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations,
Lynn Bay Dayton
and Bruce C. Dayton,
Anne Ray Foundation,
and viewers like you.
Thank you.
♪
(water rushing)
KELLY McEVERS:
Sometimes the best storyis right there in front of you,
but you don't see it.
How did I not see water?
(water rushing)
I'm Kelly McEvers
and I'm a radio journalist.
Every morning, I take a shower,
I drink my coffee,
but it never really
occurred to me.
I now believe
this humble molecule--
the one that's hitting my face
every morning--
could be the most important
untold story of our time.
So, with a team of filmmakers
and scientists,
this is our podcast-style
documentary
on the story of water.
It's easy to follow this story
through a record-breaking
drought.
Or in the increasingly frequent
mega-floods.
But sometimes the connections
to water are less obvious.
Like when dry forests
burst into flames.
Or when water shortages
wreak havoc on stock markets.
(crowd yelling)
Without water,
we struggle to feed ourselves,
and people get desperate.
(crowd shouting)
(firing)
Changes to the supplies of water
on Earth
are shaping a new world order
around us.
So, I have a new saying.
"If you want to understand
why our world is changing,
"If you want to understand
why our world is changing,
follow the water."
♪
♪
So, what does a water crisis
even look like?
Does it look like war?
Does it look like a famine?
Or does a water crisis
hide in plain sight?
♪
Just 25 miles long
and five miles wide,
Gaza is near the epicenter
of Middle Eastern conflicts.
(car horns honking)
But instead of politics,
for a moment,
let's just follow the water.
♪
YEHIA JEDALLAH (in Arabic):
♪
♪
McEVERS:
Yehia Jedallah lives
with his father and brothers
in a neighborhood
called Al-Shati.
For 4,000 years, people here
have gotten their water
from wells,
but because the aquifer
is now overdrawn,
the salt water is intruding
from the sea.
JEDALLAH:
(people calling in background)
♪
(man speaking on loudspeaker
in distance)
(gun fires)
McEVERS:
Today, 97% of Gaza's wells are
unfit for human consumption.
If nothing is done,
the United Nations predicts
that Gaza will soon be
unlivable.
(man continues speaking,
people whistling)
JEDALLAH:
JEDALLAH:
CROWD (chanting):
Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!
♪
JEDALLAH:
♪
McEVERS:Watching this, you might think,
"Whoa, that is really bad--
for them."
But you're also probably
thinking,
"My water problems are
never going to get that bad."
But here is the thing:
Experts are saying
that in ten years,
the worldwide demand for water
will outstrip supply by 40%.
So, statistically at least,
for many of us,
Gaza is the future.
♪
Maybe you think
this couldn't happen
in one of the richest nations
in the world.
Well, take a look at this--
the Salton Sea.
♪
(birds twittering)
A place that once attracted
more visitors
than Yosemite National Park.
REPORTER:
Here is truly a miracle
in the desert.
Today, the Salton Riviera
beside the blue Salton Sea
is the place for you to take
charge of your future.
This unusual city
has a date with destiny.
♪
McEVERS:
That date with destiny
did not end well.
Water scientist
Jay Famiglietti
understands what happened here.
I like to think of him
as the water detective.
Welcome to my office.
♪
McEVERS:
Jay told me that we used
to let fresh water
reach the Salton Sea.
(wind howling)
But now, we have diverted
the water for other uses.
The only water that reaches
the sea is farm run-off...
which is so polluted
that the entire basin
which is so polluted
that the entire basin
is a public health risk.
One of the things that I think
is really clear
from looking
at the satellite picture
is that the need for humanity
to grow food
is really puttingone of the biggest fingerprints
on this global mapof changing water availability.
And so, what that says to me
is that we're having
a huge impact,
and so we really need
to think about it.
McEVERS:
And for Jay, the Salton Sea
is also a glimpse
into the future.
FAMIGLIETTI:
If we think
about worst possible situation,
take a big city like Phoenix...
Runs out of water,this is what it might look like.
(wind howling, metal rattling)
McEVERS:
Jay often gets accused
of being Dr. Doom and Gloom.
CONTROLLER:
Rock, R.C. countdown one.
McEVERS:But get him around his rockets,
and he perks up a bit.
CONTROLLER:
Clarify range for screening,
go for launch.
FAMIGLIETTI:
I'm literally getting
the chills,
and it's not
from the cold weather.
McEVERS:
The total amount of water
on Earth
does not change.
You can't make it
or take it away.
So, the question is:
Where does it go?
♪
To answer that,
Jay and his colleagues at NASA
created the GRACE mission.
MAN:
AFDS is ready for launch.
McEVERS:
And now, after 15 years
of successful measurement,
GRACE is getting
a major upgrade.
CONTROLLER:
F9 is in startup.
MAN:
LD go for launch.
Ten, nine...
WOMAN:
Nine, eight, seven...
FAMIGLIETTI:
Yeah, it's a huge deal for,
obviously for me
personally,
but, and I don't want to sound
too corny,
but it is a huge deal
for humanity.
(rocket rumbling)
ANNOUNCER:And lift-off of GRACE Follow-On,
continuing the legacy
of the GRACE mission
of tracking the movement
of water across our planet.
♪
FAMIGLIETTI:
You know, it reminds me of
sending my son off to college,
when we dropped him off
at the airport.
There he goes,
he's gonna do great things.
♪
CONTROLLER:
Stage separation confirmed.
MAN:
Stage separation
has been confirmed.
McEVERS:
GRACE can help us
finally understand
how water moves
across our planet.
♪
Several of NASA's
satellite missions
have already been gathering
decades of data
that can be pieced together.
And they picture
the ancient pathways
that water has taken
since the last ice age,
a pulse intimately connected
with all life on Earth.
(thunder rumbling,
animals and insects calling)
Scientists in the Amazon
recently discovered
Scientists in the Amazon
recently discovered
that in tropical forests,
the trees themselves pump water
back into the sky.
Above their canopies,
this tree-water gathers
into aerial rivers that can flow
for thousands of miles.
♪
But recently,
even the most ancient patterns
have been changing.
♪
And we know thisbecause, for the past 15 years,
Jay's GRACE satellites
have circled the Earth
every 94-and-a-half minutes,
gathering data.
With remarkable precision,
they measure the weight
of every snowstorm, flood,
and drought.
FAMIGLIETTI:
We've been able
to construct
this pretty incredible map.
And it's a really
unprecedented look
at how water's moving
over the Earth
in a way that we've never been
able to do before.
And we see a very, very
distinctive pattern.
The wet areas,
they're getting wetter,
and the dry areas in between
are getting drier.
The availability of water
is much more fragile and tenuous
than we think,
and so,
even in the developed world,
we shouldn't take it
for granted.
♪
McEVERS:
I live in Los Angeles,
and one of the things
that worries me the most
is drought.
♪
REPORTER:
Cape Town's main reservoir
is a dust bowl.
Cape Town is about to find out
whether a city can survive
when the water runs out.
Day zero has arrived.
McEVERS:
Drought hit South Africa
in 2015,
and for the next three years,
they had almost no rain.
The city of Cape Town was withindays of shutting off their taps.
We sent a team to film
the approach of day zero.
And as they followed the water,
the trail took an unexpected
and dark turn,
out of the city and
into the once wealthy farmland
of the Western Cape,
where farmers were dyingwith the stress of the drought.
BURRE BURGER:
I lost three friends
during this drought
who took their own lives.
Because they... they had no hope
for their farms,
Because they... they had no hope
for their farms,
they had no hope for nothing.
And that's the thing
why we still try to do
what we do.
McEVERS:
Burre Burger's charity
delivers water
and feed for livestock
to farmers who are no longer
able to farm the land.
(people talking in background,
tap squeaking)
WOMAN:
Well, we are on the,
on the point
that we are basically giving up.
Four years since we last
had proper rain.
Most of our animals
we had to get rid of.
It's a battle against...
(chuckling):Nature.
(engine idling)
BURGER:
The thing with drought is,
the farmers know how
to farm for a year,
or maybe a year and a half,
but not for six, seven,
eight years.
On some of the farms,
they had no rain
for almost seven years now.
(flies buzzing)
So, then you struggle.
Then you... you struggle
with life.
McEVERS:The U.N. reports that worldwide,
areas affected by droughts
have more than doubled
in the past 40 years.
And droughts affect more people
than any other natural hazard.
BURGER:
If there is one thing
I'm going to change
in South Africa
through this project of mine,
I'm going to bring back unity
to our country.
(man speaking Afrikaans)
BURGER:
We try to get people together.
And it's because of water.
That one molecule.
(laughs)
Yeah.
ALL:
Amen.
McEVERS:
If you're caught in the middle
of a drought,
it's easy to imagine
that the whole world
is running out of water.
Far from it.
In fact,
as the GRACE data shows us,
the moisture lost
in a drought-stricken area
almost always finds its way
to somewhere else.
FAMIGLIETTI:
One of the consequences
of a warming world
is that the atmosphere
can hold more moisture.
And if the atmosphere
can hold more moisture,
that means it's gonna drop
more moisture.
McEVERS:
When water is on the move
so is Mike Olbinski.
We gotta haul ass!
(engine revving)
McEVERS:As a professional storm chaser,
he is one of the few people
who benefits
from new weather extremes.
Yeah, look at that.
It's really looking goodout there.
♪
♪
Yeah, it's really gorgeous.
(camera clicking)
McEVERS:
Most storm chasers
want to see tornadoes,
but Mike tracks
these rare giant thunderstorms
known as supercells.
(phone camera clicks)
♪
Oh, this is stunning.
(bird squawking)
OLBINSKI:
At this point, it's pretty,
but I want
a mothership supercell,
so we'll see if we get that.
And so hopefully, it's gonna be
a beastly supercell
with some good structure
after a while.
(wind whipping)
All right, I think we should go.
It's getting close,and I wanna get in front of it.
(thunder rumbling)
McEVERS:
Supercells can be
ten miles high,
25 times the volume
of Mt. Everest,
and drop billions of gallons
of water
in just hours.
(thunder rumbling)
They produce
softball-sized hail,
high winds,
severe lightning,
and even tornadoes.
(thunder rumbling)
In the American Midwest,
storms like these
are a third more common
than when Mike was born.
♪
Big storms are dropping
ten percent more rain
than they did 25 years ago.
OLBINSKI:
I felt a drop.
MAN:That's hail!
OLBINSKI:
Oh, was that hail?Ow!
Hey, probably gotta go!Yeah!
That hail just hit me
in the head!
McEVERS:
And it's not just moisture.
Storms feed on heat,
so warmer conditions
also mean more raw power.
Whoo!
(rain falling steadily,
thunder rumbling)
(exhales)
Now the nerves come out,
now the adrenaline's pumping.
(thunder rumbling)
Whoo!
(people laughing)
It's what we freaking live forright here.(man cheers)
This is great--
I hope my exposure is right.
McEVERS:
Mike finally finds
the supercell storm
he's been looking for.
Oh, man, it's so great!
Just, keep, just move slow,
baby.
Just move slow.
♪
(camera clicking)
OLBINSKI:
This is one of the best
supercells I've ever seen.
♪
It's literally all, like,
run by water.
It's literally all, like,
run by water.
They need this for the crops,
and if you didn't have it,
then no one would live here.
That was good, man,
thanks.
(both exclaiming)
(thunder rumbling)
That was good.
McEVERS:
It has been a good day
for the storm chasers.
(thunder rumbling)
But these grand movements ofwater also tell a tragic story--
one we've been tracking
all over America.
REPORTER:
Supercells have been spotted
on the radar.
REPORTER:
Tornado alley has already
been hammered.
REPORTER:
That is a wall of water
right now.
REPORTER:
Flood waters rising
as high as ten feet.
McEVERS:
One storm in particular
caught our attention.
In September 2018,
Hurricane Florence
acted strangely
as it hit the Carolinas.
REPORTER:
Florence will produce
catastrophic flooding
over parts of North and
South Carolina for some time.
McEVERS:
Instead of blowing through,
like most hurricanes,
Florence stalled on the coast.
Like a supersize vacuum,it took moisture from the ocean
and poured it onto land
as rain.
Florence broke
28 flood and rainfall records
for the Carolinas.
LEIGH BELL:
That's the top half
of our garage.
I don't know wherethe rest of it is.
McEVERS:
We headed to the Carolinas
with photographer Gideon Mendel.
Gideon has been documenting
the increase in flooding
around the world.
Can we just pause
for a second
so I can, like, get
the reflection of the church?
That'd be cool.
I guess I have kind offascination with this landscape.
There's something
about a flooded environment
which I actually find
very visually alluring.
MAN:He ain't gonna come in the boat.
That's a big old blue runner!
MAN 2:
He'll chase ya...
MENDEL:
At the heart
of the whole project
is a series that I call
"Submerged Portraits."
(knocking)
And, you know, it's a series
of pictures of people
affected by flooding,
engaging with the camera
directly.
Would you, would you be open
to us talking to you
and photographing you, maybe?Yeah.
(water sloshing)
GEORGE:I've been 34 yearson this beach,
and this is...I've never seen it like this.
And if they say it's cominganother three feet,
you know, it'll just about reachthe roof of my building.
I got a lot of toolsin there.
(clears throat):I thought we wasgonna be all right.
(voice breaking):But I guess not.
I'm so sorry, George.
MENDEL:
That's it, just...
MENDEL:
That's it, just...
Can you come just a little bit
forward here?
That's good, perfect--
all right.
It is quite amazing
how long people will sit there
and stand there in the water
and engage with me.
15, 20 minutes,
half an hour sometimes...
(birds twittering)
(camera clicks)
Portraiture and the direct gaze
at the camera, for me,
is so important.
(thunder rumbling)
McEVERS:
For Gideon, the increase in
flooding is a global story.
(speaking indistinctly)
(camera clicks)
McEVERS:
In the past 12 years,
he has photographed
20 floods in 13 countries.
(camera clicks)
♪
(camera clicks)
MENDEL:
The water connects
all the people I photograph.
(camera clicks)
Despite huge differences
in culture, class, location,
when the water's in your home,
they have a shared vulnerability
to flooding,
to climate change,
to global warming.
(camera clicks)
♪
McEVERS:
Extreme rain and flooding
is now four times more likely
than it was 40 years ago.
♪
Hurricanes are 60% more powerful
than 50 years ago,
and their top wind speeds
have increased 25%.
You're really,really photogenic.
McEVERS:
So, there's more flooding,
and there's more drought,
and, honestly,
it's amazing that farmers
are still able to feed
the world.
But what I didn't realize
is the extent to which farmers
are tapping into
a secret stash of water...
A hidden source that is not
affected by droughts or flood.
Water that lives underground.
Deep under our feet,
there are aquifers
that together hold more water
than all the lakes and rivers
on Earth.
They don't often
look like this--
most groundwater is held
in layers of rock or sand.
Many aquifers contain
what's called "fossil water,"
and what that means is,
it took thousands of years
to get here.
♪
It is not easy to follow
the water
that is hidden underground.
But you might have seen
these circles from a plane.
With a metal straw
and a diesel engine,
we can reach aquifers
3,000 feet down.
Humanity started this kind
of industrial pumping of water
just a hundred years ago.
And it's been so successful,
nearly half the water
used for farm irrigation
comes from underground.
This water grows
almost one-fifth
of the world's food supply.
We have been draining aquifers
with little idea
of how much water is in them....
until now.
(people talking in background)
When Jay and his colleagues
launched GRACE--
which stands
for Gravity Recovery
and Climate Experiment--
they designed the system
to do the impossible:
to see into the Earth's crust
using gravity.
FAMIGLIETTI:
We can see storage changes
in the world's
great aquifer systems
from space.
I like to say GRACE works
like a scale in the sky.
McEVERS:
GRACE is actually
two satellites.
As they approach an area
that has just had a storm,
for example,
the extra weight of that water
pulls the satellites.
FAMIGLIETTI:So, as they approach this region
that has more mass and therefore
a greater gravitational tug,
the first one gets pulled down
and accelerates a little bit.
Second one comes in,
it gets pulled down,
accelerates a little bit.
So, the distance between the two
changes.
That's the measurement
that the GRACE mission makes.
It's the position
of the satellites.
McEVERS:
In this way, GRACE can tell us
the difficult truth
about our aquifers.
FAMIGLIETTI:Sadly, groundwater is, is barely
managed around the world,
and so groundwater
is quietly disappearing.
♪
McEVERS:
In California, the groundwater
took thousands of years
to accumulate,
and we're using
this fossil water much faster
than it can be replaced.
FAMIGLIETTI:
This is the definition
of unsustainable.
The disappearance of groundwater
is really threatening
the water security
of the Western U.S.,
and really, no one's talking
about it.
♪
McEVERS:
Jay's been doing what he can
to get the message out.
BILL MAHER:
He's a professor
at the University of California
at Irvine
and senior water scientist
for NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory,
Jay Famiglietti!
Jay!
(audience cheering
and applauding)
All right, so, finally,
a witness who will tell us
expert testimonyabout this...
FAMIGLIETTI:
You know, here's the thing.
The drought situation
is much worse
than I think
is generally perceived.
And this may be why
we're not getting
the public response
that we want.
Yes, show that chart--look at this.
It's greenand now it's red.
Now, doc,I'm not a scientist...
Red is bad!Red is bad.
That's what I know,red is bad.
That's what I know,red is bad.
(audience laughter fading)
(birds twittering)
McEVERS:
It's pretty safe to say
that Jay is frustrated
more people are not taking
his breakthrough insight
more seriously.
But the truth is, it's hard
to stop pumping the water.
Farmers need water.
All of us need food.
And if anything,
we just keep pumping faster.
STEVE ARTHUR:
So what we're doing here is,
we just got down
to setting casing...
McEVERS:
It wasn't until we metSteve Arthur that we got a sense
of the scale of these wells--
he drills 30 new wells
each year.
(tool buzzing)
FAMIGLIETTI:Can you see the water table fall
over time?
ARTHUR:Well, I remember
when I was a kid, we would
drill in the Madera area.
We would go 240 to 300 feet.
300 feet was considered
a deep well.Yeah.
Now we're replacing those wells
with 500- and 600-foot wells.
Oh, okay!
MAN:How much pressure?
McEVERS:
Steve says it's become
a kind of race to the bottom.
If one farmer drills deep
to get the water,
the next farmer drills
even deeper.
And all this drilling
is not cheap.
FAMIGLIETTI:
If I'm a customer,
I don't have a well,
I want you to dig a new well.
It's 2,000 feet deep.
How much is that
gonna cost me?
It's gonna cost you a littleover half a million.
Whoa!
Half to three quarters...
Whoa!
Depending howit's constructed.
Okay.
McEVERS:
That is an insane amount
of money.
Which tells you that water
is big business.
It also tells you why
so many of America's aquifers
are running dry.
♪
The Ogallala aquifer--
one of the biggest on Earth--
lies beneath
eight Midwestern states,
from Texas to Nebraska.
♪
♪ We got to go
♪ We got to go
♪
This is Ogallala aquifer water.
Comes through the water system
over here
with the big storage tank.
♪
McEVERS:
Like most of the families
in St. Francis,
the Callicrates have farmed here
for generations.
MIKE CALLICRATE:
My grandkids, Wilson
and Charlie,
will be the fifth generation
on this land.
♪
McEVERS:
But Mike does not see
High Plains farming
as a success story.
as a success story.
CALLICRATE:
We have just flat
squandered this resource
over the last 40 years
that I've been associatedwith, with farming and ranching
and cattle production
in this area.
If we would stop pumping today,
it would take 6,000 years to, torecover the, the amount of water
that we've taken out
in just the last 40 or 50 years.
McEVERS:
The aquifer under St. Francis
is already a third empty.
Mike blames the industrial model
of agriculture--
the one he was taught
in college.
CALLICRATE:
I've had a front row seat
in this disaster,
and I hate
industrial agriculture.
McEVERS:
Most of the water
from the Ogallala aquifer
is used to grow grain
for feed lots full of cows.
CALLICRATE:
This is the biggest feed lot
in the world off to your left.
It's 130,000 head of cattle
in one place.
From a business perspective
entirely,
you're thinking
about the Ogallala aquifer
as a gold miner
would see a gold mine--
as an asset, as a resource
to be extracted and utilized.
And when it's gone, it's gone!
McEVERS:
What worries Mike
is what happens
when the water runs out,
and the mining operation
moves on.
In St. Francis, Mike thinks
industrial agriculture
has broken the hope
these communities have
for a sustainable future.
And it has already hurt
the community that lives here.
You know, when we lookat this main street
of St. Francis, Kansas,
what you're really looking at
is the approach
of industrial agricultures.
It doesn't care about people,
it cares about return
on investment,
it, it cares
about a bank account,
and everything else
doesn't matter.
It's no wonder we're losing
rural communities
and losing farmers.
McEVERS:
Down on the southern edge
of the Ogallala,
the aquifer is already
running dry
and putting farmers
out of business.
Without the farmers,
the local economy collapses.
And if the trend continues,
the town of Happy, Texas,
is the sign of things to come.
♪
Four churches,
but not a single store
open for business.
♪
Jay knows
this underground water problem
is not only in America.
GRACE sees into aquifers
all over the world.
FAMIGLIETTI:
There's 37 major aquifers
around the world.
And over half of them are past
sustainability tipping points.
And over half of them are past
sustainability tipping points.
Which means we use more
than is being replenished
on an annual basis,
and we're technically
mining them.
McEVERS:
Given that nearly half of the
water used for farm irrigation
depends on these aquifers,
you can understand Jay's alarm.
FAMIGLIETTI:
So, as that groundwater
disappears,
our ability to produce food for
the world's growing population
will be threatened.
McEVERS:
In fact, there's
growing evidence
this is already happening.
And it is having
serious consequences.
This story begins in Syria
in 2006,
when the country was hit bythe worst drought in 500 years.
Farmers began to overdraw water
from their aquifer.
And with GRACE, Jay could see it
as it was happening.
FAMIGLIETTI:
We saw the Syria hotspot,
and we saw
that groundwater depletion
way ahead of time.
And we did try to communicate
that to the Pentagon,
State Department, um,
and it's, you know, it's tough,
it's tough to get attention.
You know, who are you?
You're some professor that
walks in with a research paper
and a colorful map,
and it's hard to really convey
what's, what's happening.
But, you know, we made
our efforts repeatedly.
McEVERS:
I was actually reporting in
the Middle East at the time.
And when protests,
and later war, broke out,
we knew it was connected
to the drought.
But what we didn't know
was how it was connected to amuch larger global water story.
(chanting)
REPORTER:Now the protesters are battling
for regime change.
♪
(car horns honking)
♪
(wind howling)
(car horn honking)
McEVERS:
The Za'atari refugee camp
in Jordan
is home to about 80,000 refugees
from Syria's civil war.
(whistling)
(truck brakes)
♪
Troy Sternberg is a geographer
from Oxford University
and another detectivewho follows the story of water.
He wrote a paper showing
how global droughts
caused a chain of events thatinfluenced not only Syria's war,
but politics around the world.
♪
His interviews with refugees
like Mahmoud Al-Kadr
add a human dimension
to the data.
add a human dimension
to the data.
Mahmoud,could you please explain
what, what brings youto the refugee camp?
What factors drive you here?
(speaking Arabic)
The lack of rainhave reduced
the amount of cropsgrowing naturally.
So, people had to goand start getting water
from underground.
But they also stoppedthe diesel.
So, there is no dieselto be able to pump water.
So, there was no, no waterto drink.
There is no foodwith the drought.
We start eating the grass.
♪
McEVERS:
85% of Syria's livestock died
and hundreds of thousands offarming families like Mahmoud's
had to abandon their farms.
They ended up settling
outside Syria's big cities.
♪
Troy's research shows
that there were much larger
global forces at work--
more than just a drought
in Syria.
♪
When Troy followed the water,
he documented a series
of droughts
that connected Russia, China,
the Arab Spring,
and politics across Europe.
♪
STERNBERG:
This globalized world
is very interconnected.
Things that happen
in one part of the world
can have a great knock-on effect
in another part of the world.
Sometimes we talk about this
as the butterfly effect,
but I think it's more direct.
And it's really climate,
drought--
anything that happens that we,
we can't control
or can't count on.
One way might be to look at it
as a series of dominoes.
McEVERS:
It was a set of dominoes
that collapsed
over a ten-year period.
And it started when Australia
faced a drought described
as "a 1,000-year event."
♪
REPORTER:
Australia is dying of thirst.
And where there used
to be water,
there is only
dry, cracked earth.
McEVERS:
During the winter, countries
in the Northern Hemisphere
depend on the
Southern Hemisphere for wheat.
And the drought threatened
Australia's ability
to supply this winter wheat
to the rest of the world.
♪
Then, the next domino fell.
In 2010, mainland China
suffered its own drought.
♪
REPORTER:
The drought ravaging China
is being called
the worst in a century.
♪
STERNBERG:
Wheat is a global commodity
traded on the
international market,
so liable to market forces.
So, if China needs more wheat,
my thinking was:
does this have another impact
somewhere else in the world?
♪
McEVERS:
Troy followed the trail
to the Middle East,
where farmers were suffering
from their own drought.
And with the wheat issues
in Australia and China,
it affected food prices
in Syria and Egypt.
♪
STERNBERG:
So, as Egypt needs more wheat
and China needs more wheat,
there is less wheat available.
McEVERS:
Then, in 2010,
another domino fell.
Russia, the largest exporter
of wheat to the Middle East,
was gripped by a devastating
heat wave.
♪
(Vladimir Putin
speaking Russian)
(translated):
Due to abnormally high
temperatures and drought,
I believe it's reasonable
to introduce a temporary ban
on grain and wheat products
export.
McEVERS:
With wheat exports from Russia
reduced by 80%,
world prices skyrocketed.
REPORTER:
It's Christmas
for the speculators
as prices drive upwards,
wheat by a whopping 130%.
STERNBERG:
There's a limited supply,
great demand...
McEVERS:
Speculators on the commodities
market saw an opportunity--
they bought
and held on to the wheat
while prices rose.
Richer countries can stockpile
the grain.
STERNBERG:
They have a great fiscal
and infrastructure power--
ships around the world
that can transport wheat.
Other countries don't have
this possibility.
McEVERS:
By the time
some Arab governments
realized what was going on,
it was too late...
Prices for bread went way up.
STERNBERG:
In Egypt,
the wheat prices skyrocketed
300% and more.
REPORTER:
In recent weeks,
there have been long queues
in front of bakeries.
Rising prices have even caused
riots in the Nile delta.
McEVERS:
Hunger began to fuel
people's anger
toward their governments...
(chanting in Arabic):
STERNBERG:
We see food riots in Cairo...
REPORTER:
After Friday prayers,
hundreds of thousands
of demonstrators
gathered in Tahrir Square.
REPORTER:
The people of Egypt
have toppled their leader.
Egypt will never be the same.
And that's where the Arab Spring
really brings everything
together.
♪
McEVERS:
Which brings us back to Syria.
Inspired by the Arab Spring
uprisings
and suffering
from their own drought,
Syrian protesters
also took to the streets.
REPORTER:
The Syrian government
made it very clear today
that it will tolerate
no dissent.
(guns firing)
McEVERS:
Events escalated...
(explosion echoes)
And Mahmoud's family
was caught in the crossfire.
(speaking Arabic)
INTERPRETER:I lost my son
and I lost my wifein this war.
My wife was on the wayto the market in Damascus.
On the rooftops,there were some snipers
and she have got a shotin the head.
So I'm afraid for the restof the family,
and we came here,
and here they were helping us,
and here they were helping us,
and they,
they were supporting us.
McEVERS:
Water or drought is of course
only one factor
that influenced these events.
But when a million refugees
fled to Europe,
the falling dominoes came down
much closer to home.
REPORTER:
These people calling
for the regime to change
are on the back foot.
They're being forced
from their homes
and pushed towards the border
with Turkey.
As migrants pour into Europe,
in the U.K.--
we see this filmed on TVthroughout the summer of 2015--
it plays very well
to the Brexit Leave debate.
(laughing and applauding)
REPORTER:
The Leave campaign celebrates
as the U.K. votes to cut its
ties with the European Union.
McEVERS:
The fear of mass migration
directly impacted
the Brexit vote in Britain.
And, according to Troy,
even had an impact
here in America.
STERNBERG:
If we go further,this news plays out in the U.S.
Donald Trump gets elected
on this very nativist
"America first" theme.
We will build a wall.
McEVERS:
Troy's concern isthat the water crisis can spark
an even more dramatic chain
of events
in other parts of the world.
STERNBERG:
What will we see next?
What happens if we have
a climate disaster in Indiaor China or Mexico or Pakistan?
Then we're talking
about very serious dynamics
and very serious outcomes.
♪
McEVERS:
In our globalized,
interconnected world,
no country can afford
to ignore water and climate.
For the past four years,
the World Economic Forum
has ranked the impact
of the water crisis
alongside
weapons of mass destruction,
disease outbreaks,
and failure to address
climate change.
♪
Looking for solutions,
we came back to the U.S.,
and we went to New York City.
♪
And we reconnected
with Giulio Boccaletti,
who wrote a seminal report
for the World Economic Forum.
In it, he calculated
that ten years from now,
the world will need 40% morefresh water than it can supply.
♪
But Giulio thinks
that if more people knew
about New York's water story,
they could avoid that grim fate.
New York has a very particular
experience,
but one that I think holds
the key to the solution
to the water crisis
for the whole world.
I suspect most New Yorkers,
you know, assume that water
just comes out of the tap,
and yet behind that tap,
there is one of the most
sophisticated integrations
of nature and water
that has ever been seen
on the planet.
♪
(people talking in background)
McEVERS:
Giulio took us to meet
the C.E.O.
of WaterAid America...
(espresso machine running)
(espresso machine running)
Sarina Prabasi.
While Sarina has worked onwater issues all over the world,
here in New York, she and herhusband also own a coffee shop.
She cares a lot
about New York's water.
Water is the life blood
of our business.
Like, there is no good coffee
without good water.
So you work for WaterAid,
and what do you think
people imagine
when they think
about the water crisis?
People have thoughtabout the water crisis
as something elsewhere.
But now I think there is
more understanding
that the water crisis
is all around us.
So, New York had a...
a proverbial fork in the road,
right?
And had to take one option
rather than the other.
In the '80s, the water
was getting very polluted...
Mm-hmm.
And in the '90s,
I think there was a real
strategic decision to make
of how the future
of New York City water
would be handled.
One way could have been
a bit more business as usual,
invest in infrastructure...
And this was, we're talking
about a treatment works, right?
You know,
a treatment plant.
Treatment, filtration.
Right.
Technology: high cost,
I think $6 billion.
Definitely a more
energy-intensive approach.
BOCCALETTI:And what about the alternative?
PRABASI:
And the other option was
to really look at where
the water is coming from.
♪
McEVERS:
Because where the water
was coming from
was the Catskill Mountains.
♪
So, instead of
a new treatment plant,
New Yorkers chose to invest
in a nature reserve
that doubles
as a giant water farm.
PRABASI:
The water is being filtered
by trees.
This natural environment serves
like a sponge
holding the water.
McEVERS:
A forest replacesheavy industrial infrastructure,
with the added benefits
that the place runs itself,
maintenance-free.
And supplies 90%
of New York's water.
PRABASI:
For New York City, it was
a radical choice for the time,
but it was going back
to something
that has been working
for millennia.
The water cycle belongs
to nature.
BOCCALETTI:
In a way, it's the most simple
of answers.
Back into nature--
find the answer back
at the very beginning,
from the ecosystems
that we came from,
and yet it can support
one of the most modern societies
on the planet.
♪
McEVERS:
Making the most
of our connection to nature
is undoubtedly
the best way forward.
But what works
for a wealthy city
in a moist climate
won't necessarily
work everywhere.
FAMIGLIETTI:
I don't think we're really
gonna find
any silver bullets.
I think as we look
around the world,
region by region,
region by region,
each one is going to need
a different portfolio
of approaches
to manage their way
through water scarcity.
♪
McEVERS:
Maybe it's not surprising,
but we found,
in the places on Earth
where there is less water,
people value it more.
And of all the places
we went to,
it was in the Middle East
where we saw
not only the challenges ahead,
but also glimpses of hope.
Since its inception,
Israel has valued water
much like America values oil.
They even went to war over it.
So here, controlling water
is a matter of survival.
Israel recycles
90% of its water,
compared to just one percent
in the U.S.
And they achieved this not just
through wealth and power,
but through winning
hearts and minds.
(speaking Hebrew):
♪
McEVERS:It's this appreciation of water
that Mike Callicrate
would like to see here,
in the U.S.
I would like to see us
not pump a drop more
than what the recharge rate is.
And we know
what those numbers are.
Water is the public's resource
and it should beused responsibly and preserved.
We can do this.
♪
McEVERS:
So, in the end,
each of our water experts agreed
we can do this.
That, unlike some threats
we face,
the water crisis is solvable.
But we are vulnerable.
And in this finely tuned
globalized world,
if we don't respect water
or the climate,
collapse will follow.
(thunder rumbling)
♪
(thunder rumbling)
♪
When we understand
the connections--
where our water comes from--
then we value it for what it is:
the fuel of life itself;
the molecule that made us.
(thunder rumbling)
To order "H2O: The Molecule
That Made Us" on DVD,
This program is also available
on Amazon Prime Video.
♪
♪
Join the conversation
at #MoleculePBS.
by Courtney Hartman playing)
♪ Your breath
is burning my skin ♪
♪ Your mouth
♪ Takes in my water
♪ And the clouds roll
like a river ♪
♪ The rain falls sharp as ice
♪ And the oceans tumble over
♪ Like mist in the night
♪ And my heart is a machine
♪ A machine keeping time
♪ And my body is a building
♪ Scraping at the sky
♪ And water looks
like water running ♪
♪
♪ Water looks
like water running ♪
Funding is provided by
The Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations,
Lynn Bay Dayton
and Bruce C. Dayton,
Anne Ray Foundation,
and viewers like you.
Thank you.
♪
(water rushing)
KELLY McEVERS:
Sometimes the best storyis right there in front of you,
but you don't see it.
How did I not see water?
(water rushing)
I'm Kelly McEvers
and I'm a radio journalist.
Every morning, I take a shower,
I drink my coffee,
but it never really
occurred to me.
I now believe
this humble molecule--
the one that's hitting my face
every morning--
could be the most important
untold story of our time.
So, with a team of filmmakers
and scientists,
this is our podcast-style
documentary
on the story of water.
It's easy to follow this story
through a record-breaking
drought.
Or in the increasingly frequent
mega-floods.
But sometimes the connections
to water are less obvious.
Like when dry forests
burst into flames.
Or when water shortages
wreak havoc on stock markets.
(crowd yelling)
Without water,
we struggle to feed ourselves,
and people get desperate.
(crowd shouting)
(firing)
Changes to the supplies of water
on Earth
are shaping a new world order
around us.
So, I have a new saying.
"If you want to understand
why our world is changing,
"If you want to understand
why our world is changing,
follow the water."
♪
♪
So, what does a water crisis
even look like?
Does it look like war?
Does it look like a famine?
Or does a water crisis
hide in plain sight?
♪
Just 25 miles long
and five miles wide,
Gaza is near the epicenter
of Middle Eastern conflicts.
(car horns honking)
But instead of politics,
for a moment,
let's just follow the water.
♪
YEHIA JEDALLAH (in Arabic):
♪
♪
McEVERS:
Yehia Jedallah lives
with his father and brothers
in a neighborhood
called Al-Shati.
For 4,000 years, people here
have gotten their water
from wells,
but because the aquifer
is now overdrawn,
the salt water is intruding
from the sea.
JEDALLAH:
(people calling in background)
♪
(man speaking on loudspeaker
in distance)
(gun fires)
McEVERS:
Today, 97% of Gaza's wells are
unfit for human consumption.
If nothing is done,
the United Nations predicts
that Gaza will soon be
unlivable.
(man continues speaking,
people whistling)
JEDALLAH:
JEDALLAH:
CROWD (chanting):
Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!
♪
JEDALLAH:
♪
McEVERS:Watching this, you might think,
"Whoa, that is really bad--
for them."
But you're also probably
thinking,
"My water problems are
never going to get that bad."
But here is the thing:
Experts are saying
that in ten years,
the worldwide demand for water
will outstrip supply by 40%.
So, statistically at least,
for many of us,
Gaza is the future.
♪
Maybe you think
this couldn't happen
in one of the richest nations
in the world.
Well, take a look at this--
the Salton Sea.
♪
(birds twittering)
A place that once attracted
more visitors
than Yosemite National Park.
REPORTER:
Here is truly a miracle
in the desert.
Today, the Salton Riviera
beside the blue Salton Sea
is the place for you to take
charge of your future.
This unusual city
has a date with destiny.
♪
McEVERS:
That date with destiny
did not end well.
Water scientist
Jay Famiglietti
understands what happened here.
I like to think of him
as the water detective.
Welcome to my office.
♪
McEVERS:
Jay told me that we used
to let fresh water
reach the Salton Sea.
(wind howling)
But now, we have diverted
the water for other uses.
The only water that reaches
the sea is farm run-off...
which is so polluted
that the entire basin
which is so polluted
that the entire basin
is a public health risk.
One of the things that I think
is really clear
from looking
at the satellite picture
is that the need for humanity
to grow food
is really puttingone of the biggest fingerprints
on this global mapof changing water availability.
And so, what that says to me
is that we're having
a huge impact,
and so we really need
to think about it.
McEVERS:
And for Jay, the Salton Sea
is also a glimpse
into the future.
FAMIGLIETTI:
If we think
about worst possible situation,
take a big city like Phoenix...
Runs out of water,this is what it might look like.
(wind howling, metal rattling)
McEVERS:
Jay often gets accused
of being Dr. Doom and Gloom.
CONTROLLER:
Rock, R.C. countdown one.
McEVERS:But get him around his rockets,
and he perks up a bit.
CONTROLLER:
Clarify range for screening,
go for launch.
FAMIGLIETTI:
I'm literally getting
the chills,
and it's not
from the cold weather.
McEVERS:
The total amount of water
on Earth
does not change.
You can't make it
or take it away.
So, the question is:
Where does it go?
♪
To answer that,
Jay and his colleagues at NASA
created the GRACE mission.
MAN:
AFDS is ready for launch.
McEVERS:
And now, after 15 years
of successful measurement,
GRACE is getting
a major upgrade.
CONTROLLER:
F9 is in startup.
MAN:
LD go for launch.
Ten, nine...
WOMAN:
Nine, eight, seven...
FAMIGLIETTI:
Yeah, it's a huge deal for,
obviously for me
personally,
but, and I don't want to sound
too corny,
but it is a huge deal
for humanity.
(rocket rumbling)
ANNOUNCER:And lift-off of GRACE Follow-On,
continuing the legacy
of the GRACE mission
of tracking the movement
of water across our planet.
♪
FAMIGLIETTI:
You know, it reminds me of
sending my son off to college,
when we dropped him off
at the airport.
There he goes,
he's gonna do great things.
♪
CONTROLLER:
Stage separation confirmed.
MAN:
Stage separation
has been confirmed.
McEVERS:
GRACE can help us
finally understand
how water moves
across our planet.
♪
Several of NASA's
satellite missions
have already been gathering
decades of data
that can be pieced together.
And they picture
the ancient pathways
that water has taken
since the last ice age,
a pulse intimately connected
with all life on Earth.
(thunder rumbling,
animals and insects calling)
Scientists in the Amazon
recently discovered
Scientists in the Amazon
recently discovered
that in tropical forests,
the trees themselves pump water
back into the sky.
Above their canopies,
this tree-water gathers
into aerial rivers that can flow
for thousands of miles.
♪
But recently,
even the most ancient patterns
have been changing.
♪
And we know thisbecause, for the past 15 years,
Jay's GRACE satellites
have circled the Earth
every 94-and-a-half minutes,
gathering data.
With remarkable precision,
they measure the weight
of every snowstorm, flood,
and drought.
FAMIGLIETTI:
We've been able
to construct
this pretty incredible map.
And it's a really
unprecedented look
at how water's moving
over the Earth
in a way that we've never been
able to do before.
And we see a very, very
distinctive pattern.
The wet areas,
they're getting wetter,
and the dry areas in between
are getting drier.
The availability of water
is much more fragile and tenuous
than we think,
and so,
even in the developed world,
we shouldn't take it
for granted.
♪
McEVERS:
I live in Los Angeles,
and one of the things
that worries me the most
is drought.
♪
REPORTER:
Cape Town's main reservoir
is a dust bowl.
Cape Town is about to find out
whether a city can survive
when the water runs out.
Day zero has arrived.
McEVERS:
Drought hit South Africa
in 2015,
and for the next three years,
they had almost no rain.
The city of Cape Town was withindays of shutting off their taps.
We sent a team to film
the approach of day zero.
And as they followed the water,
the trail took an unexpected
and dark turn,
out of the city and
into the once wealthy farmland
of the Western Cape,
where farmers were dyingwith the stress of the drought.
BURRE BURGER:
I lost three friends
during this drought
who took their own lives.
Because they... they had no hope
for their farms,
Because they... they had no hope
for their farms,
they had no hope for nothing.
And that's the thing
why we still try to do
what we do.
McEVERS:
Burre Burger's charity
delivers water
and feed for livestock
to farmers who are no longer
able to farm the land.
(people talking in background,
tap squeaking)
WOMAN:
Well, we are on the,
on the point
that we are basically giving up.
Four years since we last
had proper rain.
Most of our animals
we had to get rid of.
It's a battle against...
(chuckling):Nature.
(engine idling)
BURGER:
The thing with drought is,
the farmers know how
to farm for a year,
or maybe a year and a half,
but not for six, seven,
eight years.
On some of the farms,
they had no rain
for almost seven years now.
(flies buzzing)
So, then you struggle.
Then you... you struggle
with life.
McEVERS:The U.N. reports that worldwide,
areas affected by droughts
have more than doubled
in the past 40 years.
And droughts affect more people
than any other natural hazard.
BURGER:
If there is one thing
I'm going to change
in South Africa
through this project of mine,
I'm going to bring back unity
to our country.
(man speaking Afrikaans)
BURGER:
We try to get people together.
And it's because of water.
That one molecule.
(laughs)
Yeah.
ALL:
Amen.
McEVERS:
If you're caught in the middle
of a drought,
it's easy to imagine
that the whole world
is running out of water.
Far from it.
In fact,
as the GRACE data shows us,
the moisture lost
in a drought-stricken area
almost always finds its way
to somewhere else.
FAMIGLIETTI:
One of the consequences
of a warming world
is that the atmosphere
can hold more moisture.
And if the atmosphere
can hold more moisture,
that means it's gonna drop
more moisture.
McEVERS:
When water is on the move
so is Mike Olbinski.
We gotta haul ass!
(engine revving)
McEVERS:As a professional storm chaser,
he is one of the few people
who benefits
from new weather extremes.
Yeah, look at that.
It's really looking goodout there.
♪
♪
Yeah, it's really gorgeous.
(camera clicking)
McEVERS:
Most storm chasers
want to see tornadoes,
but Mike tracks
these rare giant thunderstorms
known as supercells.
(phone camera clicks)
♪
Oh, this is stunning.
(bird squawking)
OLBINSKI:
At this point, it's pretty,
but I want
a mothership supercell,
so we'll see if we get that.
And so hopefully, it's gonna be
a beastly supercell
with some good structure
after a while.
(wind whipping)
All right, I think we should go.
It's getting close,and I wanna get in front of it.
(thunder rumbling)
McEVERS:
Supercells can be
ten miles high,
25 times the volume
of Mt. Everest,
and drop billions of gallons
of water
in just hours.
(thunder rumbling)
They produce
softball-sized hail,
high winds,
severe lightning,
and even tornadoes.
(thunder rumbling)
In the American Midwest,
storms like these
are a third more common
than when Mike was born.
♪
Big storms are dropping
ten percent more rain
than they did 25 years ago.
OLBINSKI:
I felt a drop.
MAN:That's hail!
OLBINSKI:
Oh, was that hail?Ow!
Hey, probably gotta go!Yeah!
That hail just hit me
in the head!
McEVERS:
And it's not just moisture.
Storms feed on heat,
so warmer conditions
also mean more raw power.
Whoo!
(rain falling steadily,
thunder rumbling)
(exhales)
Now the nerves come out,
now the adrenaline's pumping.
(thunder rumbling)
Whoo!
(people laughing)
It's what we freaking live forright here.(man cheers)
This is great--
I hope my exposure is right.
McEVERS:
Mike finally finds
the supercell storm
he's been looking for.
Oh, man, it's so great!
Just, keep, just move slow,
baby.
Just move slow.
♪
(camera clicking)
OLBINSKI:
This is one of the best
supercells I've ever seen.
♪
It's literally all, like,
run by water.
It's literally all, like,
run by water.
They need this for the crops,
and if you didn't have it,
then no one would live here.
That was good, man,
thanks.
(both exclaiming)
(thunder rumbling)
That was good.
McEVERS:
It has been a good day
for the storm chasers.
(thunder rumbling)
But these grand movements ofwater also tell a tragic story--
one we've been tracking
all over America.
REPORTER:
Supercells have been spotted
on the radar.
REPORTER:
Tornado alley has already
been hammered.
REPORTER:
That is a wall of water
right now.
REPORTER:
Flood waters rising
as high as ten feet.
McEVERS:
One storm in particular
caught our attention.
In September 2018,
Hurricane Florence
acted strangely
as it hit the Carolinas.
REPORTER:
Florence will produce
catastrophic flooding
over parts of North and
South Carolina for some time.
McEVERS:
Instead of blowing through,
like most hurricanes,
Florence stalled on the coast.
Like a supersize vacuum,it took moisture from the ocean
and poured it onto land
as rain.
Florence broke
28 flood and rainfall records
for the Carolinas.
LEIGH BELL:
That's the top half
of our garage.
I don't know wherethe rest of it is.
McEVERS:
We headed to the Carolinas
with photographer Gideon Mendel.
Gideon has been documenting
the increase in flooding
around the world.
Can we just pause
for a second
so I can, like, get
the reflection of the church?
That'd be cool.
I guess I have kind offascination with this landscape.
There's something
about a flooded environment
which I actually find
very visually alluring.
MAN:He ain't gonna come in the boat.
That's a big old blue runner!
MAN 2:
He'll chase ya...
MENDEL:
At the heart
of the whole project
is a series that I call
"Submerged Portraits."
(knocking)
And, you know, it's a series
of pictures of people
affected by flooding,
engaging with the camera
directly.
Would you, would you be open
to us talking to you
and photographing you, maybe?Yeah.
(water sloshing)
GEORGE:I've been 34 yearson this beach,
and this is...I've never seen it like this.
And if they say it's cominganother three feet,
you know, it'll just about reachthe roof of my building.
I got a lot of toolsin there.
(clears throat):I thought we wasgonna be all right.
(voice breaking):But I guess not.
I'm so sorry, George.
MENDEL:
That's it, just...
MENDEL:
That's it, just...
Can you come just a little bit
forward here?
That's good, perfect--
all right.
It is quite amazing
how long people will sit there
and stand there in the water
and engage with me.
15, 20 minutes,
half an hour sometimes...
(birds twittering)
(camera clicks)
Portraiture and the direct gaze
at the camera, for me,
is so important.
(thunder rumbling)
McEVERS:
For Gideon, the increase in
flooding is a global story.
(speaking indistinctly)
(camera clicks)
McEVERS:
In the past 12 years,
he has photographed
20 floods in 13 countries.
(camera clicks)
♪
(camera clicks)
MENDEL:
The water connects
all the people I photograph.
(camera clicks)
Despite huge differences
in culture, class, location,
when the water's in your home,
they have a shared vulnerability
to flooding,
to climate change,
to global warming.
(camera clicks)
♪
McEVERS:
Extreme rain and flooding
is now four times more likely
than it was 40 years ago.
♪
Hurricanes are 60% more powerful
than 50 years ago,
and their top wind speeds
have increased 25%.
You're really,really photogenic.
McEVERS:
So, there's more flooding,
and there's more drought,
and, honestly,
it's amazing that farmers
are still able to feed
the world.
But what I didn't realize
is the extent to which farmers
are tapping into
a secret stash of water...
A hidden source that is not
affected by droughts or flood.
Water that lives underground.
Deep under our feet,
there are aquifers
that together hold more water
than all the lakes and rivers
on Earth.
They don't often
look like this--
most groundwater is held
in layers of rock or sand.
Many aquifers contain
what's called "fossil water,"
and what that means is,
it took thousands of years
to get here.
♪
It is not easy to follow
the water
that is hidden underground.
But you might have seen
these circles from a plane.
With a metal straw
and a diesel engine,
we can reach aquifers
3,000 feet down.
Humanity started this kind
of industrial pumping of water
just a hundred years ago.
And it's been so successful,
nearly half the water
used for farm irrigation
comes from underground.
This water grows
almost one-fifth
of the world's food supply.
We have been draining aquifers
with little idea
of how much water is in them....
until now.
(people talking in background)
When Jay and his colleagues
launched GRACE--
which stands
for Gravity Recovery
and Climate Experiment--
they designed the system
to do the impossible:
to see into the Earth's crust
using gravity.
FAMIGLIETTI:
We can see storage changes
in the world's
great aquifer systems
from space.
I like to say GRACE works
like a scale in the sky.
McEVERS:
GRACE is actually
two satellites.
As they approach an area
that has just had a storm,
for example,
the extra weight of that water
pulls the satellites.
FAMIGLIETTI:So, as they approach this region
that has more mass and therefore
a greater gravitational tug,
the first one gets pulled down
and accelerates a little bit.
Second one comes in,
it gets pulled down,
accelerates a little bit.
So, the distance between the two
changes.
That's the measurement
that the GRACE mission makes.
It's the position
of the satellites.
McEVERS:
In this way, GRACE can tell us
the difficult truth
about our aquifers.
FAMIGLIETTI:Sadly, groundwater is, is barely
managed around the world,
and so groundwater
is quietly disappearing.
♪
McEVERS:
In California, the groundwater
took thousands of years
to accumulate,
and we're using
this fossil water much faster
than it can be replaced.
FAMIGLIETTI:
This is the definition
of unsustainable.
The disappearance of groundwater
is really threatening
the water security
of the Western U.S.,
and really, no one's talking
about it.
♪
McEVERS:
Jay's been doing what he can
to get the message out.
BILL MAHER:
He's a professor
at the University of California
at Irvine
and senior water scientist
for NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory,
Jay Famiglietti!
Jay!
(audience cheering
and applauding)
All right, so, finally,
a witness who will tell us
expert testimonyabout this...
FAMIGLIETTI:
You know, here's the thing.
The drought situation
is much worse
than I think
is generally perceived.
And this may be why
we're not getting
the public response
that we want.
Yes, show that chart--look at this.
It's greenand now it's red.
Now, doc,I'm not a scientist...
Red is bad!Red is bad.
That's what I know,red is bad.
That's what I know,red is bad.
(audience laughter fading)
(birds twittering)
McEVERS:
It's pretty safe to say
that Jay is frustrated
more people are not taking
his breakthrough insight
more seriously.
But the truth is, it's hard
to stop pumping the water.
Farmers need water.
All of us need food.
And if anything,
we just keep pumping faster.
STEVE ARTHUR:
So what we're doing here is,
we just got down
to setting casing...
McEVERS:
It wasn't until we metSteve Arthur that we got a sense
of the scale of these wells--
he drills 30 new wells
each year.
(tool buzzing)
FAMIGLIETTI:Can you see the water table fall
over time?
ARTHUR:Well, I remember
when I was a kid, we would
drill in the Madera area.
We would go 240 to 300 feet.
300 feet was considered
a deep well.Yeah.
Now we're replacing those wells
with 500- and 600-foot wells.
Oh, okay!
MAN:How much pressure?
McEVERS:
Steve says it's become
a kind of race to the bottom.
If one farmer drills deep
to get the water,
the next farmer drills
even deeper.
And all this drilling
is not cheap.
FAMIGLIETTI:
If I'm a customer,
I don't have a well,
I want you to dig a new well.
It's 2,000 feet deep.
How much is that
gonna cost me?
It's gonna cost you a littleover half a million.
Whoa!
Half to three quarters...
Whoa!
Depending howit's constructed.
Okay.
McEVERS:
That is an insane amount
of money.
Which tells you that water
is big business.
It also tells you why
so many of America's aquifers
are running dry.
♪
The Ogallala aquifer--
one of the biggest on Earth--
lies beneath
eight Midwestern states,
from Texas to Nebraska.
♪
♪ We got to go
♪ We got to go
♪
This is Ogallala aquifer water.
Comes through the water system
over here
with the big storage tank.
♪
McEVERS:
Like most of the families
in St. Francis,
the Callicrates have farmed here
for generations.
MIKE CALLICRATE:
My grandkids, Wilson
and Charlie,
will be the fifth generation
on this land.
♪
McEVERS:
But Mike does not see
High Plains farming
as a success story.
as a success story.
CALLICRATE:
We have just flat
squandered this resource
over the last 40 years
that I've been associatedwith, with farming and ranching
and cattle production
in this area.
If we would stop pumping today,
it would take 6,000 years to, torecover the, the amount of water
that we've taken out
in just the last 40 or 50 years.
McEVERS:
The aquifer under St. Francis
is already a third empty.
Mike blames the industrial model
of agriculture--
the one he was taught
in college.
CALLICRATE:
I've had a front row seat
in this disaster,
and I hate
industrial agriculture.
McEVERS:
Most of the water
from the Ogallala aquifer
is used to grow grain
for feed lots full of cows.
CALLICRATE:
This is the biggest feed lot
in the world off to your left.
It's 130,000 head of cattle
in one place.
From a business perspective
entirely,
you're thinking
about the Ogallala aquifer
as a gold miner
would see a gold mine--
as an asset, as a resource
to be extracted and utilized.
And when it's gone, it's gone!
McEVERS:
What worries Mike
is what happens
when the water runs out,
and the mining operation
moves on.
In St. Francis, Mike thinks
industrial agriculture
has broken the hope
these communities have
for a sustainable future.
And it has already hurt
the community that lives here.
You know, when we lookat this main street
of St. Francis, Kansas,
what you're really looking at
is the approach
of industrial agricultures.
It doesn't care about people,
it cares about return
on investment,
it, it cares
about a bank account,
and everything else
doesn't matter.
It's no wonder we're losing
rural communities
and losing farmers.
McEVERS:
Down on the southern edge
of the Ogallala,
the aquifer is already
running dry
and putting farmers
out of business.
Without the farmers,
the local economy collapses.
And if the trend continues,
the town of Happy, Texas,
is the sign of things to come.
♪
Four churches,
but not a single store
open for business.
♪
Jay knows
this underground water problem
is not only in America.
GRACE sees into aquifers
all over the world.
FAMIGLIETTI:
There's 37 major aquifers
around the world.
And over half of them are past
sustainability tipping points.
And over half of them are past
sustainability tipping points.
Which means we use more
than is being replenished
on an annual basis,
and we're technically
mining them.
McEVERS:
Given that nearly half of the
water used for farm irrigation
depends on these aquifers,
you can understand Jay's alarm.
FAMIGLIETTI:
So, as that groundwater
disappears,
our ability to produce food for
the world's growing population
will be threatened.
McEVERS:
In fact, there's
growing evidence
this is already happening.
And it is having
serious consequences.
This story begins in Syria
in 2006,
when the country was hit bythe worst drought in 500 years.
Farmers began to overdraw water
from their aquifer.
And with GRACE, Jay could see it
as it was happening.
FAMIGLIETTI:
We saw the Syria hotspot,
and we saw
that groundwater depletion
way ahead of time.
And we did try to communicate
that to the Pentagon,
State Department, um,
and it's, you know, it's tough,
it's tough to get attention.
You know, who are you?
You're some professor that
walks in with a research paper
and a colorful map,
and it's hard to really convey
what's, what's happening.
But, you know, we made
our efforts repeatedly.
McEVERS:
I was actually reporting in
the Middle East at the time.
And when protests,
and later war, broke out,
we knew it was connected
to the drought.
But what we didn't know
was how it was connected to amuch larger global water story.
(chanting)
REPORTER:Now the protesters are battling
for regime change.
♪
(car horns honking)
♪
(wind howling)
(car horn honking)
McEVERS:
The Za'atari refugee camp
in Jordan
is home to about 80,000 refugees
from Syria's civil war.
(whistling)
(truck brakes)
♪
Troy Sternberg is a geographer
from Oxford University
and another detectivewho follows the story of water.
He wrote a paper showing
how global droughts
caused a chain of events thatinfluenced not only Syria's war,
but politics around the world.
♪
His interviews with refugees
like Mahmoud Al-Kadr
add a human dimension
to the data.
add a human dimension
to the data.
Mahmoud,could you please explain
what, what brings youto the refugee camp?
What factors drive you here?
(speaking Arabic)
The lack of rainhave reduced
the amount of cropsgrowing naturally.
So, people had to goand start getting water
from underground.
But they also stoppedthe diesel.
So, there is no dieselto be able to pump water.
So, there was no, no waterto drink.
There is no foodwith the drought.
We start eating the grass.
♪
McEVERS:
85% of Syria's livestock died
and hundreds of thousands offarming families like Mahmoud's
had to abandon their farms.
They ended up settling
outside Syria's big cities.
♪
Troy's research shows
that there were much larger
global forces at work--
more than just a drought
in Syria.
♪
When Troy followed the water,
he documented a series
of droughts
that connected Russia, China,
the Arab Spring,
and politics across Europe.
♪
STERNBERG:
This globalized world
is very interconnected.
Things that happen
in one part of the world
can have a great knock-on effect
in another part of the world.
Sometimes we talk about this
as the butterfly effect,
but I think it's more direct.
And it's really climate,
drought--
anything that happens that we,
we can't control
or can't count on.
One way might be to look at it
as a series of dominoes.
McEVERS:
It was a set of dominoes
that collapsed
over a ten-year period.
And it started when Australia
faced a drought described
as "a 1,000-year event."
♪
REPORTER:
Australia is dying of thirst.
And where there used
to be water,
there is only
dry, cracked earth.
McEVERS:
During the winter, countries
in the Northern Hemisphere
depend on the
Southern Hemisphere for wheat.
And the drought threatened
Australia's ability
to supply this winter wheat
to the rest of the world.
♪
Then, the next domino fell.
In 2010, mainland China
suffered its own drought.
♪
REPORTER:
The drought ravaging China
is being called
the worst in a century.
♪
STERNBERG:
Wheat is a global commodity
traded on the
international market,
so liable to market forces.
So, if China needs more wheat,
my thinking was:
does this have another impact
somewhere else in the world?
♪
McEVERS:
Troy followed the trail
to the Middle East,
where farmers were suffering
from their own drought.
And with the wheat issues
in Australia and China,
it affected food prices
in Syria and Egypt.
♪
STERNBERG:
So, as Egypt needs more wheat
and China needs more wheat,
there is less wheat available.
McEVERS:
Then, in 2010,
another domino fell.
Russia, the largest exporter
of wheat to the Middle East,
was gripped by a devastating
heat wave.
♪
(Vladimir Putin
speaking Russian)
(translated):
Due to abnormally high
temperatures and drought,
I believe it's reasonable
to introduce a temporary ban
on grain and wheat products
export.
McEVERS:
With wheat exports from Russia
reduced by 80%,
world prices skyrocketed.
REPORTER:
It's Christmas
for the speculators
as prices drive upwards,
wheat by a whopping 130%.
STERNBERG:
There's a limited supply,
great demand...
McEVERS:
Speculators on the commodities
market saw an opportunity--
they bought
and held on to the wheat
while prices rose.
Richer countries can stockpile
the grain.
STERNBERG:
They have a great fiscal
and infrastructure power--
ships around the world
that can transport wheat.
Other countries don't have
this possibility.
McEVERS:
By the time
some Arab governments
realized what was going on,
it was too late...
Prices for bread went way up.
STERNBERG:
In Egypt,
the wheat prices skyrocketed
300% and more.
REPORTER:
In recent weeks,
there have been long queues
in front of bakeries.
Rising prices have even caused
riots in the Nile delta.
McEVERS:
Hunger began to fuel
people's anger
toward their governments...
(chanting in Arabic):
STERNBERG:
We see food riots in Cairo...
REPORTER:
After Friday prayers,
hundreds of thousands
of demonstrators
gathered in Tahrir Square.
REPORTER:
The people of Egypt
have toppled their leader.
Egypt will never be the same.
And that's where the Arab Spring
really brings everything
together.
♪
McEVERS:
Which brings us back to Syria.
Inspired by the Arab Spring
uprisings
and suffering
from their own drought,
Syrian protesters
also took to the streets.
REPORTER:
The Syrian government
made it very clear today
that it will tolerate
no dissent.
(guns firing)
McEVERS:
Events escalated...
(explosion echoes)
And Mahmoud's family
was caught in the crossfire.
(speaking Arabic)
INTERPRETER:I lost my son
and I lost my wifein this war.
My wife was on the wayto the market in Damascus.
On the rooftops,there were some snipers
and she have got a shotin the head.
So I'm afraid for the restof the family,
and we came here,
and here they were helping us,
and here they were helping us,
and they,
they were supporting us.
McEVERS:
Water or drought is of course
only one factor
that influenced these events.
But when a million refugees
fled to Europe,
the falling dominoes came down
much closer to home.
REPORTER:
These people calling
for the regime to change
are on the back foot.
They're being forced
from their homes
and pushed towards the border
with Turkey.
As migrants pour into Europe,
in the U.K.--
we see this filmed on TVthroughout the summer of 2015--
it plays very well
to the Brexit Leave debate.
(laughing and applauding)
REPORTER:
The Leave campaign celebrates
as the U.K. votes to cut its
ties with the European Union.
McEVERS:
The fear of mass migration
directly impacted
the Brexit vote in Britain.
And, according to Troy,
even had an impact
here in America.
STERNBERG:
If we go further,this news plays out in the U.S.
Donald Trump gets elected
on this very nativist
"America first" theme.
We will build a wall.
McEVERS:
Troy's concern isthat the water crisis can spark
an even more dramatic chain
of events
in other parts of the world.
STERNBERG:
What will we see next?
What happens if we have
a climate disaster in Indiaor China or Mexico or Pakistan?
Then we're talking
about very serious dynamics
and very serious outcomes.
♪
McEVERS:
In our globalized,
interconnected world,
no country can afford
to ignore water and climate.
For the past four years,
the World Economic Forum
has ranked the impact
of the water crisis
alongside
weapons of mass destruction,
disease outbreaks,
and failure to address
climate change.
♪
Looking for solutions,
we came back to the U.S.,
and we went to New York City.
♪
And we reconnected
with Giulio Boccaletti,
who wrote a seminal report
for the World Economic Forum.
In it, he calculated
that ten years from now,
the world will need 40% morefresh water than it can supply.
♪
But Giulio thinks
that if more people knew
about New York's water story,
they could avoid that grim fate.
New York has a very particular
experience,
but one that I think holds
the key to the solution
to the water crisis
for the whole world.
I suspect most New Yorkers,
you know, assume that water
just comes out of the tap,
and yet behind that tap,
there is one of the most
sophisticated integrations
of nature and water
that has ever been seen
on the planet.
♪
(people talking in background)
McEVERS:
Giulio took us to meet
the C.E.O.
of WaterAid America...
(espresso machine running)
(espresso machine running)
Sarina Prabasi.
While Sarina has worked onwater issues all over the world,
here in New York, she and herhusband also own a coffee shop.
She cares a lot
about New York's water.
Water is the life blood
of our business.
Like, there is no good coffee
without good water.
So you work for WaterAid,
and what do you think
people imagine
when they think
about the water crisis?
People have thoughtabout the water crisis
as something elsewhere.
But now I think there is
more understanding
that the water crisis
is all around us.
So, New York had a...
a proverbial fork in the road,
right?
And had to take one option
rather than the other.
In the '80s, the water
was getting very polluted...
Mm-hmm.
And in the '90s,
I think there was a real
strategic decision to make
of how the future
of New York City water
would be handled.
One way could have been
a bit more business as usual,
invest in infrastructure...
And this was, we're talking
about a treatment works, right?
You know,
a treatment plant.
Treatment, filtration.
Right.
Technology: high cost,
I think $6 billion.
Definitely a more
energy-intensive approach.
BOCCALETTI:And what about the alternative?
PRABASI:
And the other option was
to really look at where
the water is coming from.
♪
McEVERS:
Because where the water
was coming from
was the Catskill Mountains.
♪
So, instead of
a new treatment plant,
New Yorkers chose to invest
in a nature reserve
that doubles
as a giant water farm.
PRABASI:
The water is being filtered
by trees.
This natural environment serves
like a sponge
holding the water.
McEVERS:
A forest replacesheavy industrial infrastructure,
with the added benefits
that the place runs itself,
maintenance-free.
And supplies 90%
of New York's water.
PRABASI:
For New York City, it was
a radical choice for the time,
but it was going back
to something
that has been working
for millennia.
The water cycle belongs
to nature.
BOCCALETTI:
In a way, it's the most simple
of answers.
Back into nature--
find the answer back
at the very beginning,
from the ecosystems
that we came from,
and yet it can support
one of the most modern societies
on the planet.
♪
McEVERS:
Making the most
of our connection to nature
is undoubtedly
the best way forward.
But what works
for a wealthy city
in a moist climate
won't necessarily
work everywhere.
FAMIGLIETTI:
I don't think we're really
gonna find
any silver bullets.
I think as we look
around the world,
region by region,
region by region,
each one is going to need
a different portfolio
of approaches
to manage their way
through water scarcity.
♪
McEVERS:
Maybe it's not surprising,
but we found,
in the places on Earth
where there is less water,
people value it more.
And of all the places
we went to,
it was in the Middle East
where we saw
not only the challenges ahead,
but also glimpses of hope.
Since its inception,
Israel has valued water
much like America values oil.
They even went to war over it.
So here, controlling water
is a matter of survival.
Israel recycles
90% of its water,
compared to just one percent
in the U.S.
And they achieved this not just
through wealth and power,
but through winning
hearts and minds.
(speaking Hebrew):
♪
McEVERS:It's this appreciation of water
that Mike Callicrate
would like to see here,
in the U.S.
I would like to see us
not pump a drop more
than what the recharge rate is.
And we know
what those numbers are.
Water is the public's resource
and it should beused responsibly and preserved.
We can do this.
♪
McEVERS:
So, in the end,
each of our water experts agreed
we can do this.
That, unlike some threats
we face,
the water crisis is solvable.
But we are vulnerable.
And in this finely tuned
globalized world,
if we don't respect water
or the climate,
collapse will follow.
(thunder rumbling)
♪
(thunder rumbling)
♪
When we understand
the connections--
where our water comes from--
then we value it for what it is:
the fuel of life itself;
the molecule that made us.
(thunder rumbling)
To order "H2O: The Molecule
That Made Us" on DVD,
This program is also available
on Amazon Prime Video.
♪
♪
Join the conversation
at #MoleculePBS.