The West
Coast of America continues to experience a crippling drought.
This megadrought out West has been going on now for 22 years.
You go back before
the drought and where I'm
standing right now, I'd be about 40 feet underwater.
The norm like grass, for example, that we take for granted, right?
Well, very soon this could be a thing of the past.
Trillions of gallons of water have fallen across the Golden State
in the last month alone.
Millions of people remain under flood watches.
Yet much of that water has just returned to the ocean.
It took us you know, years
to get in a, kind of a drought stricken state.
It will take years for us to get out of.
This drought has been so extreme that Californians
now publicly shame each other for using too much water.
They’re drought shaming the rich and famous for their green lawns
and even almond shaming some farmers which, as someone allergic to almonds,
I'm totally on board with.
We usually think of drought as a problem of not enough rain,
which is often the case.
But California's biggest problem isn't rain.
It's snow.
Half of the state's precipitation falls between December and February
and forms a huge snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
This acts as a natural reservoir for the whole state.
When the snow
melts in the spring and summer, it flows down to tens of millions of people
who rely on it for everything from their farming irrigation
to their showers to their almond-free margarita Mondays.
But over the past several decades, the West's mountain snowpack has been
shrinking.
23% has disappeared since 1955,
and by the end of the century, it could lose as much as 79%.
But climate change isn't just drying up natural reservoirs.
It's drying up artificial ones, too.
And in the country's two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell,
levels have gotten so low, they're about to reach Deadpool status,
which isn't nearly as funny and action packed as it sounds.
Deadpool status occurs when water drops so low
that it stops flowing downstream, and that sets off a cascade of problems.
Hydroelectric power stations shut down, which increases demand
on fossil fuel power stations, which increases greenhouse gas emissions,
which considering the title of the show - like, not ideal.
Low water levels also cause big problems for agriculture.
California alone accounts for a third of all vegetables grown
in the US and two thirds of its fruit and nuts.
Without California, we’d basically have what, the diet of like a Texan, right?
Now, if I've done my job correctly, you're probably a little bummed out, right?
But stay with me,
because even though drought is one of the hardest climate problems to solve,
we do have options.
First, we could build more reservoirs to capture more water.
That wouldn't be easy, but it's a possibility.
Another option is to tap more deeply into groundwater.
Unfortunately, it's
been so overtapped that California's Central Valley is literally sinking.
But there's one kind of water
the West Coast has always had a lot of: ocean water.
California already has some desalinization plants and recently
approved a new plant that could convert up to 5 million
gallons of seawater each day into drinking water.
But building more has been a challenge.
Last year, an even larger plant was blocked
in the face of local opposition from NIMBOs.
Not In My Back Ocean.
They're like NIMBYs, but saltier.
Instead of finding new water sources.
Californians could have more success
using the water they already have more efficiently.
The state's urban water use has been falling for years, thanks to innovations
like water efficient appliances, artificial lawns and water recycling.
But no matter what approach the state takes, it's going to be an uphill battle.
The West Coast's entire system to capture, store and distribute water
was built on a different planet, a planet
with predictable rainfall and snowpacks.
That's not the planet we live on anymore.
This drought isn't a temporary emergency.
It's a new normal,
that a big part of this country is going to have to deal with.
Now, one city that's dealing with this new normal fairly effectively is Las Vegas.
Vegas depends on the Colorado River basin for most of its water.
And dancing water fountains aside,
it's actually one of the most
successful cities in America when it comes to water conservation.