["Koyaaanisqatsi"
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.
KELLY McEVERS:
It's amazing, isn't it?
Our blue planet.
The only planet
in the solar system
that's surface is covered
in liquid water.
♪
But less than one percent
of that is fresh water.
♪
Drain the salt water away,
paint a picture of
our freshwater world,
and these are the veins that
carry the precious lifeblood
we all depend on,
a liquid with an almost mystical
importance to humankind.
♪
And when you look at our humanstory through this water lens--
as we have been doing
for the past year--
you start to see the extent
to which the water molecule
has shaped our destiny.
And while our water history
is an epic success story,
it's also a story
of a dangerous dependence
with an uncertain ending.
♪
Because now we face
a difficult question:
Are we about to become victims
of our own success?
♪
I'm Kelly McEvers,
and I'm a radio journalist.
For this story,
I've been working
with a team of filmmakers
and scientists,
with a team of filmmakers
and scientists,
making a podcast-style
documentary,
digging deep into
how water has shaped
and is still shaping
our civilization today.
[insects, birds chirping]
But one of our crews
started the story
about as far away from
civilization as you can get--
deep inside Africa's
Congo River basin,
on the trail of a new theory
that might explain a critical
moment in human evolution.
And that theory is
all about water.
♪
[insects and birds chirping]
♪
This is a bonobo.
It's a close cousin
of the chimpanzee.
You can only find them
here in the Congo,
and they have this unlikely
relationship to water,
this rare behavior
that gives us a glimpse
at how we humans might have
taken our very first steps.
♪
♪
So, if we're going to film this,
we have to keep up
with the bonobos.
And I have to say,
this is not easy.
Our crew spent three weeks
trying to follow these guys.
[insects and birds chirping]
And following
Professor Richard Wrangham.
He's our guide
to this new theory
of how we evolved
to walk on two legs.
♪
Here we are.
Hi, mama.
How are you doing?
She's just sitting
looking at us.
She's just fascinated.
"What's this guy doing
wading in my pond?"
♪
You know, it's almost 50 years
of walking in the tropical
forests of Africa.
Frankly, the thrill never died.
Frankly, the thrill never died.
McEVERS:
Richard told us that
the story of our first steps
has always been
a hotly debated subject.
Because, up until now,
no one can agree
how we came to make this move
on to two legs,
or, in Richard's words,
bipedalism.
Bipedalism,
which is very frustrating,
because this is, in many ways,
the defining characteristic
of the hominin line,
the line that led
from the rainforest ape
to where we are today.
McEVERS:The generally accepted thinking
is that we left the trees
and slowly started to walk
out onto the savannah.
But it's never been
exactly clear
how that would have worked.
WRANGHAM:
In the initial phases
of bipedalism,
it would have been
hopelessly inefficient.
McEVERS:
That is why we're here.
To see an energy efficient way
that our tree-dwelling ancestors
walked out onto land
some six million years ago.
[bonobos and other
animals chittering]
♪
[bonobos and other
animals chittering]
♪
♪
So here what we're
seeing is the bent-hip,
bent-knee locomotion,
like Groucho Marx.
You can see her whole body
swiveling as she walks.
♪
McEVERS:
Walking like this can be
very tiring on land,
but it's easy for
getting food in water.
WRANGHAM:
And that's what's so wonderful
about the wading hypothesis.
In the water
you're buoyed up,
so that the physical stresses
are much less.
This is a wonderfully
ecological argument
for how we became bipedal.
That's what we come from:
a water-walking,
wading ape.
McEVERS:
A water-walking ape might bethe missing piece in the puzzle.
And some people go even further,
linking water origins
to other human attributes
like why we sweat
to other human attributes
like why we sweat
or why we lost the hair
that covered our bodies,
even the size of our brains.
Clearly, for Richard,
water was instrumental
in the evolution of ouruniquely human style of walking.
♪
And it's this kind of thinking
that kept coming up
with all the experts we met--
a rethinking of the role
of the water molecule
in our human story.
♪
We might take it for granted,
but all civilizations
are dependent
on their supply of fresh water.
Always have been,
always will be.
♪
Of all those experts, for me,
water economist Giulio
Boccaletti really spelled out
how this dependence on waterhas shaped the world around us.
It's Giulio's first time here.
It is, first time in Cairo.
It's exciting.
It's just an enormous place,
with a lot of people, all of
them living off one river.
McEVERS:Giulio has spent his adult life
trying to convince governments
that water scarcity is
humanity's biggest threat.
He famously calculated
that ten years from now,
we will need 40% more
fresh water
than we will be able to supply.
Not just here in Cairo--
everywhere.
BOCCALETTI:
Egypt, in many ways,
is a model for the world.
And its management of
this one stream of water
is essential to the survival
of this civilization,
and it's true now as
it was true 5,000 years ago.
♪
McEVERS:
It is hard to overstate
the importance of rivers
to the story of our
civilization.
It's not just the fresh water
that's so important.
Ancient rivers, like the Nile,
had a kind of heartbeat--
the pulse of the yearly flood
that brought new soil
to feed the crops.
Today, the Nile is dammed, but
at one time it flooded so far
it reached to the
pyramids and beyond.
♪
The waters engulfed areas
by up to 40 times
the size of the river.
When it receded, it left behind
a carpet of fertile soil
that fed the world's
first great civilization.
♪
[birds chirping]
BOCCALETTI:
Ancient Egypt was
to the ancient world
what the United States has been
for the 20th century.
One of the reasons
it was so powerful is
that, just like
the United States today,
it was able to provide
much, much more food
it was able to provide
much, much more food
than its population required.
It seemingly didn't
have a ceiling
of how much it could
actually produce.
♪
McEVERS:And all this food production was
the beginning
of our addiction
to the molecule.
The beginning of
a dangerous dependence
that made us vulnerable.
Giulio is adamant,when it comes to a water crisis,
we have been here before.
♪
Giulio confessed to me that
he only really came to Egypt
to walk down this old staircase.
Yeah, I've been waiting
to see this for a long time.
This is a nilometer,
it's the oldest river gauge
in the world, to measure
the height of the river.
It's been here for 2,500 years.
McEVERS:
The nilometer was used byancient Egypt's water experts--
the temple priests,
the Giulios of the day.
BOCCALETTI:
It's sort of strange to thinkthat there was somebody like me
worrying about water
some four millennia ago,
but that's what this indicates.
McEVERS:
Each year, the flood would
rise up inside the staircase.
The priests would carefully
monitor its height
using the markings carved
into the walls.
BOCCALETTI:
A good flood was, at
this point, 11 or 12 meters,
and yet they were measuring
the finger difference
or the-the palm difference,
or even the-the length of your
forearm, the cubit difference.
And so it's an instrument
of extraordinary precision,
given what they
were trying to do.
McEVERS:
What they were trying to do
was build a predictive model.
This is from ancient Egypt's
oldest surviving text,
and it is all about
water and harvests.
You can see here,
you have three cubits,
or three forearms--
one, two, three,
four, five, six--
six palms,
and-and then two fingers.
So here they were recording the
height of one year's floods.
McEVERS:
By looking into the past,
the priests could see
into the future.
BOCCALETTI:
And that was key, because the
success of this instrument
as an instrument of predictiondepended on having long records.
♪
McEVERS:
Those records could
predict a bad harvest,
which gave the pharaoh enough
warning to distribute food
before the famine hit.
It might be a
simple stone staircase,
but the nilometer's
predictive technology
was instrumental
in Egypt's rise to power.
[birds chirping]
[birds chirping]
BOCCALETTI:
This civilization lasted
for three millennia;
far longer than
our western civilization.
And I'm sure that there were
times when they were convinced
that they would last forever,
and they didn't.
McEVERS:
Something went wrong.
A water crisis caught up
with the pharaohs,
and they lost control.
This is the last hieroglyph
ever inscribed anywhere
in the Egyptian world,
and it's defaced.
McEVERS:
A last gasp of a civilization
that crashed and burned.
An entire civilization
ends here.
You know, this is the last sign
that the Egyptians left us.
♪
McEVERS:The reasons for the fall of theempire are, of course, complex.
But Giulio told me about
some surprising new research
that compares ice-core data
from the Arctic
with the ancient Egyptian
nilometer records.
And there's a direct match
between global weather events
at the time,
the failure of flood waters
in the Nile,
and the successive collapse
of dynasties in ancient Egypt.
It happened time and again,
culminating with
the fall of Cleopatra.
BOCCALETTI:
There were at least
two very severe droughts
at the end of the
Egyptian kingdom
during the last reign
of Cleopatra.
The droughts persisted
for much longer than expected.
And then there would be strife,
there would be problems,
and the power of the state
would be severely weakened.
And that's what happened
over and over again
during the course
of Egyptian history,
and in a way, that's
what we face today as well.
[vendors shouting in background]
McEVERS:
We too are vulnerable
to changes in the climate.
This is what Giulio's
day job is all about,
and he wants to warn us, that
water scarcity can still lead
to famine, social unrest,
even w*r.
♪
The origins of
the world's civilizations...
started alongside the fertile
banks of four major rivers.
And, like Egypt,
none lasted forever.
Their reigns came and went
in cycles associated
with great droughts
or catastrophic floods.
But of the four,
only one was defined
by its relationship to water.
China is the water kingdom.
♪
Controlling the molecule is
at the heart of
this entire civilization.
♪
Even the word for politics
uses the symbol for water.
Even the word for politics
uses the symbol for water.
And at the center
of China's mythology
is a 4,000-year-old story
of a great flood
that swamped the land
for two decades.
♪
As legend has it, the people
were saved from the flood
by a heroic figure
known as Yu the Great.
And his ability to tame
the Yellow River
made him emperor of China's
first dynasty, the Xia.
Our water journey took us tothe ancient Yellow River valley
to meet a man who thinks he's
proved this legend to be true.
Wu Qinglong is
a geoarchaeologist
who has been unraveling
this water mystery
for the last ten years.
[speaking Mandarin]:
McEVERS:
It's this perilous gorge
that hides Wu's evidence
of the mythical flood.
♪
The story begins
at an archaeological site
called Lajia.
♪
This is China's Pompeii.
mainly children,
perfectly preserved by thick
layers of mud and sediment.
WU:
McEVERS:
This is the first time any
western cameras
have filmed this amazing find.
And it's hard not to be struck
by the scene of devastation.
How these people died is part
of Professor Wu's mystery.
WU:
McEVERS:The state of the bodies suggests
a flood has preserved them.
But the excavation also shows
signs of another disaster
that might have
trapped them first.
WU:
♪
McEVERS:
Inside Jishi Gorge,
Wu began to piece together
the gruesome chain of events.
Wu began to piece together
the gruesome chain of events.
His first clue: the signature
of a massive earthquake.
WU:
McEVERS:
An earthquake would explain
why many of the skeletons'
bones were broken.
But it did not explain how it
could have caused the flood
that entombed the people.
♪
McEVERS:The evidence he was looking for
was there all along.
It had just been too big to see.
♪
The remains of an
ancient landslide,
so big, it once filled
the entire gorge
and dammed the river behind it.
Wu worked out how,
over nine months,
the river rose up
behind the dam,
building up, until
the pressure got too much.
It burst.
[water crashing]
The great flood was real.
♪
WU:
McEVERS:
A cataclysmic water event
that changed the course
of China's history
and seeped into the psyche
of an entire culture.
And for Professor Wu,
it was the culmination
of ten years of work.
WU:
INTERPRETER:
McEVERS:
Turns out,
China's water obsession
was born of real events.
[water rushing loudly]
And their struggle to controlrivers continued for millennia.
♪
Many of China's rulers
were actually trained
as water engineers--
masterminding more
and more ambitious projects
to bring the molecule
under control.
♪
This 1931 flood,
the greatest in living memory,
inundated an area the size
inundated an area the size
of New York, New Jersey,
and Connecticut combined,
leaving four million people dead
and 40 million homeless.
♪
And it was out of this enduring
struggle to control the flood
that China became
masters of the molecule.
Today, the Three Gorges Dam
is the monument
to that water history.
It is the world's largest
hydroelectric project,
generating enough power
to supply Beijing
with all its electricity needs
and stopping
the floods downstream.
It even has its own boatlift.
♪
But controlling all this water
comes at a cost.
The 400 square miles
of reservoir
displaced 1.2 million people and
caused huge ecological damage.
The loss of habitat
caused a dramatic reduction
in local rainfall.
And the weight of water...
[ship horn blares]
has even caused a 30-fold
increase in earthquakes here.
Concerned about the
environmental impact,
scientists use satellite imagery
to count the dams
across the world
and calculate how much water
is held behind them.
The water in the Three Gorges,
for instance,
can be represented by
a column 1,000 feet wide...
rising over 300 miles high.
And that is just one dam;
China has 87,000 of them.
♪
And it's not only China.
The United States has
almost just as many--
Today, two thirds of
the world's major rivers
no longer have
a connection to the sea,
endangering fish populations,
wetlands, and estuaries.
Within ten years,
will be choked by a dam.
There is now so much water
stored behind dams
in the Northern Hemisphere,
the weight of the water has
tilted the axis of the planet,
affecting the speed of its spin.
The way we control water
is changing the planet.
♪
For most of our history,
anywhere without fresh water
remained off-limits
to all but the smallest
of settlements.
But there was always
another source of water,
But there was always
another source of water,
underground,
tantalizingly close,
which, if tapped,
had the power to change
the face of the planet
like never before.
[birds chirping]
In ancient Mexico,
that power of groundwater
was connected to the gods.
And today,
portals to their underground
water world still exist.
[birds chirping]
Here, where there is not a lake,
river, or stream
for hundreds of miles,
there are small openings
in the jungle called
cenotes.
♪
Sources of water that could
support whole cities.
No wonder the Maya attributed
a spiritual power
to their mysterious underground
water source.
[birds chirping]
[howler monkey call echoing]
CAMILA JABER:
Can you hear that?
It's a howler monkey.
McEVERS:
Camila Jaber has her own
special relationship
with the Maya's
underwater world.
She's a free diver.
She's actually Mexico's
national record holder.
She went down deep...
McEVERS: On a single breath...
Yeah.
McEVERS:
For a long time.
It means it's a diveof around two meters...
two minutesand 30 seconds,
more or less.
Up and down...down and up.
I grew up
diving in the
cenotes,
so I go back very often.
For the Mayan culture,
it was a portal
to another world where
their souls went.
And they were used
for sacrifices
asking for rain from the gods,
and it was a sacred place.
McEVERS:
If you want to access
this world,
you have to dive 200 feet down
in a single breath,
which is incredible,but that's what free divers do.
And if that wasn't enough,
today Camila plans to dive
into this eerie toxic cloud
at the bottom of the
cenote.
Frankly speaking,this is the most worrying thing
we can encounter cave diving.
McEVERS:
Vincent is accompanying Camila
as a safety diver.
McEVERS:
Vincent is accompanying Camila
as a safety diver.
ROUQUETTE-CATHALA:
This is visually beautiful,
but it's pretty toxic,
it has exactly the same effect
as carbon monoxide.
So it's not really a good thing
to be swimming in for ages.
McEVERS:
Someone tell that to Camila.
[inhales deeply]
♪
♪
ROUQUETTE-CATHALA:
Looks more like dancing
in the water than swimming.
I'm not really worried for her,
as long as she is not
staying very long
in the hydrogen sulfide.
♪
♪
JABER:
Going through the layer,
oh my God,
this is so weird
because it all goes dark.
You don't know where you are.
It's a very weird feeling
because it's just kind of...
a cloud.
♪
And on the way up, you're
swimming in this light beam,
and it looks like there's
something magical happening.
♪
[birds chirping]
McEVERS:
It is not surprising the Maya
worshiped these natural wells.
McEVERS:
It is not surprising the Maya
worshiped these natural wells.
For other civilizations
it was rare
to get such easy access
to groundwater like this.
Here in India,
this step well has 3,500 steps
to access the fresh water
below... a long climb
to get drink of water.
In this way,
for most of our history,
underground water was always
just out of reach.
That changed in the early 1700s.
Once again,
water is at the center
of a massive leap in theprogress of human civilization.
This time it is all about
an invention
made on the small, wet island
of Britain--
a new machine called
the Newcomen engine.
And it harnessed
one of the special properties
of the molecule,
and used steam to drive
the first mechanized pump.
Originally designed to get rid
of unwanted water
from flooded coal mines,
soon these pumps would be
sucking much desired groundwater
all over the world.
♪
Steam engines powered the
Industrial Revolution.
[machines clacking]
Steam transported us
further and faster.
And that simple,
original design for a pump
gave us access to groundwater
that had been off limits
for so long.
[airplane engine drones]
There is no better place to see
how that has affected thelandscape than here in Arizona.
We headed 60 miles east
of Phoenix into the desert
to see 21st century pumps
at work on an
unimaginable scale.
M. SANJAYAN:If you just saw this from space
and you had no idea
about what we do,
you'd have a hard time
figuring out what this was.
McEVERS:
Each one of these circles
is watered
by a center-pivot irrigator,
taps into underground reservoirs
that seeped into the earth over
tens of thousands of years.
Until we reached them
with our really long straws.
M. SANJAYAN:
They're just perfect circles,
in the middle of nowhere,
in the desert...
all because we have learnt how
to tap water deep underground.
McEVERS:
Sanjayan is convinced
we have been building
a debt here that we will
soon have to repay.
And he took us to investigate
the extent
of our thirst for
underground water.
♪
[plane engine drones]
Although it wasn't
as easy as we'd hoped.
You would think filming
a farming operation
wouldn't be that hard.
We called over 50 farmsand asked to film on their land.
Not one of them said yes,
especially if we were going
to mention groundwater.
You couldn't get near
this stuff.
It actually says
private property right here,
no trespassing.
McEVERS:
So, we resorted to filming
from the side of the road.
SANJAYAN:You had to film it with a drone
I had to stand on the edge,
and I had to look
across a fence.
Don't lose this thing.[chuckles]
M. SANJAYAN:And you think, my God, you know,
we've gone around the world
and we've filmed
all sorts of things that are
really sensitive
like giant oil rigs
or nuclear facilities,
and it wasn't this hard.
I mean, it's a piece
of farm equipment.
It's not national security,
for God's sake.
It's a piece of farm equipment
and no one wants to talk
to you about it?
That tells you
there's something going on.
McEVERS:
There is nothing ill*gal
going on here.
But there is an issue...
with each of these pumps pulling
water out of the ground
at up to 3,000 gallons
per hour,
that is much faster than
rainfall replenishes it.
The aquifer can only last
so long.
It's kind of amazing.
Look at this waterjust gushing out.
And it's cold.
Because its coming from deep,deep under the earth.
The last time that water
was on the surface,
there were mammoths walking
around here.
That's crazy!
It's certainly not the mostsustainable way of using water.
It might not even be the most
efficient way of using water,
but it's the fastest way
of using water.
And it's hidden water.
It's secret water,
it's water that, frankly,
not a lot of people want
to even talk about it.
McEVERS:
Not to us, anyway.
And the reason
for all the secrecy?
It's a sensitivity about
whose water it is
and how long it'll last.
Growing alfalfa is worthhalf a billion dollars per year
in Arizona alone.
That's just been mowed,
so that's the alfalfa,
what's left of it,
that they've now baled.
McEVERS:
As long as you own the land,
you don't pay
for the water underground.
And, while that lasts,
no one wants to limit
the amount of water
they can pump
because it means
they'll make less money.
Thousands of farms in America
are pumping water in this way.
But this farm introduced me
to one of the most surprising
parts of our water story.
Sanjayan took us here to show us
how far some will go
to get as close as possible
to a water source.
Look at, look at this.
It's incredible
infrastructure.
I mean,
it's spectacularly built.
Clearly much more money
than any of the other farms
we've driven by.
we've driven by.
I've never seen
that kind of infrastructure
just to get into a farm,
with a big, big gate.
And it looks like a
high-secure facility.
Why don't we see if we can get
to the very edge
of this farm and...
and we can just stop there
and take a look.
Because they're sure not
going to let us in there.
McEVERS:
Places like this show us
a new way that countries
are tapping
into each other's water.
M. SANJAYAN:
And it's actually owned by
a Saudi Arabian company,
and you think,
"Why is Saudi Arabia
in the middle of Arizona?"
McEVERS:
So, what's going on?
When you think of
the Arabian Peninsula,
you think of oil.
But when the Saudis started
drilling for oil
back in the 1970s,
they also found huge reserves
of groundwater,
enough to fill Lake Erie.
It led to an expl*si*n
of center-pivot farms,
so big you could see them
from space.
♪
And they got very good
at going deep down
and sucking that water up
at a very fast rate.
In the 1990s,
the Saudis were
one of the leading exporters
of wheat.
McEVERS:
They were actually the world's
sixth largest exporter.
But that didn't last long.
By 2012, in just 20 years,
had been pumped dry.
Almost overnight,
they were importing
as much wheat
as they used to export.
They looked around the world
and said,
"Where can we grow crops where
there is a steady supply
of water, where peoplehaven't really caught onto it?"
And guess what, they found it
right here in Arizona.
And I think that's this sort of
this astonishing story.
McEVERS:
What's really astonishing
is the extent
to which we are all doing this.
The Saudis aren't the only ones
tapping into the water
of other countries.
In fact, it's going on so much
that we're creating a new flow
of water around the planet.
One that is not in the form
you might expect.
♪
If you had to name the world's
second largest exporter
of fruit and vegetables,
after the United States,
the tiny country of Holland
might not be
at the top of your list.
But last year alone, theirexports were worth $100 billion.
Since medieval times, the Dutch
have been the water experts.
And they're still leading
by example today.
They recently committed to
sustainable agriculture.
And since the year 2000,
many farmers have reduced
their dependence on water
by 90%.
their dependence on water
by 90%.
Much of their success
lies inside
vast arrays ofclimate-controlled greenhouses.
We ventured inside with water
scientist Arjen Hoekstra,
and we were blown away
by what we saw.
HOEKSTRA:
Wow...
♪
That's impressive.
See all the seedlings?
Young tomato plants.
Hundreds of thousands of those
seedlings are growing here.
Outside it is nearly freezing
and here inside,
it's quite hot here, actually,
I must say,
but it's everything climate
controlled
to create perfect conditions
for growth.
McEVERS:
When you talk to someone
like Arjen,
you realize he is fascinated by,
actually obsessed with,
our use of waterand its impact around the world.
He even came up with the concept
of the water footprint,
that measures the amount
of water needed
to supply our daily needs.
Most people,
if they think about water use,
they think about their shower,
washing their hands or so,
or cooking,
but in fact,92% of all the water consumption
in the world is related tocrop production in agriculture.
McEVERS:
Just to grow the food
that we need to eat.
When you calculate how much
water it takes
to grow a tomato,
it starts to add up.
The interesting thing about
a greenhouse like this
is that it is kind of
a laboratory.
We know the temperature,
we know the light,
we know exactly how much water
the plant needs.
McEVERS:
And, if you count every drop,
as Arjen has,
you discover something
quite revealing.
HOEKSTRA:
Of all the water that a plant
sucks up from the earth,
Only one percent is used
to build the plant.
But I put it back.
Otherwise you never know
what happens.
McEVERS:
Inside this greenhouse,
the evaporation is contained,
and the drip irrigation reduces
the water footprint.
Outside,
with traditional farming,
is 20 times that footprint.
♪
Worldwide, the average
is 200 liters of water
for one kilogram of tomatoes.
McEVERS:
It takes 26 gallons of water
to grow a pound of tomatoes.
So, a tomato's water footprint
includes
this invisible trail of all thewater that was used to make it.
This trail of water
Arjen calls virtual water.
This trail of water
Arjen calls virtual water.
♪
And virtual water is as powerful
and important
as any flowing river.
You just need someone like Arjen
to understand the scale of it.
[ship horn blaring]
HOEKSTRA:When I see all those containers,
I see water-- a lot of water.
♪
McEVERS:If a single container ship were
filled with tomatoes,
and it takes 26 gallons of water
to grow a pound of tomatoes,
a whole ship like this,
has a water footprint
of over two billion gallons
of virtual water.
That means a container shipfilled with green coffee beans,
for example, has a trail of over
of virtual water.
Each boat has
a satellite tracker,
and mapped from space,
you really get to see
the scale of this new flow ofvirtual water around the planet.
Their paths form giant
virtual rivers.
Going through the Suez Canal,
there is three times more
virtual water
than real water is flowing over
Niagara Falls.
♪
HOEKSTRA:
Water is global resource;
if you don't have the water
in a country,you can rely on water elsewhere.
McEVERS:
This is how Saudi Arabia taps
aquifers in America,
and causes a virtual water flow
from Arizona to Jeddah.
HOEKSTRA:
Saudi Arabia,
is outside the country.
McEVERS:
With Europe, it's 44%
and the United States, it's 20%.
In other words,
this is a global dependency.
This flow of virtual water
is humanity's latest innovation
to harness fresh water.
Our addiction to the molecule
appears to have no limit.
But there is a dark side
to virtual water.
Because it pushes the
consequences of our thirst
for water out of sight
and out of mind.
Like our desire for cheap jeans
and t-shirts,
which sucks a virtual water flow
from countries far away.
Take the Aral Sea as an example.
McEVERS:
In Uzbekistan, once the fourth
largest lake in the world.
But the rivers that flowed into
the Aral Sea
were diverted
to irrigate cotton fields.
HOEKSTRA:
The cotton is for export
to other parts of the world.
And the rivers don't end up
in the sea anymore,
the Aral Sea is disappearing.
McEVERS:
In just 30 years,
the Aral Sea was drained
to a desert
by the suck of virtual water
used to grow cotton.
used to grow cotton.
HOEKSTRA:
It's a huge environmental
disaster,
and that is directly related
to that export of cotton.
♪
McEVERS:Sanjayan witnessed this man-made
tragedy for himself.
SANJAYAN:
It takes your breath away
because it's a gigantic lake,
unimaginably big, with ships
on it that disappeared
in my lifetime--
in my lifetime.
It is too big to almost imagine,
that it is humans
that have done that.
McEVERS:
For Sanjayan, the Aral Sea
is just one of many signs.
♪
The cracks in the system
are everywhere,
and you don't have to leave
America to see them.
Like the Colorado River.
So many dams hold water
in their reservoirs,
and so many canals
siphon it away, that now...
You end up with
this river petering out,
you know, 50 miles before
it reaches the sea.
I could stop it
with my foot,
it had become
such a trickle.
McEVERS:
Maybe more importantly,
our groundwater reserves
are at a breaking point.
Sanjayan took us to see theextent of our aquifer depletion.
Here in Arizona,
so much water has been
pumped from underground,
that the ground has
dropped and ripped apart.
Holy cow!
Oh, this
is unbelievable.
I mean this is
like a canyon
opening up
at my feet.
Now that's...
that's a crack.
[laughs]
I mean, that's a proper crack
in the earth.
Even further cracks down there,
be careful!
This is all ready to go.
Whoa, barn owl!
Oh, I'm so sorry!
That's kind of amazing, right?
Because, like, like, nature's
found a way to use
this little, little bit
of geology.
There's barn owls nesting here.
That's the white
that I'm seeing here.
This is ridiculous.
It definitely feels like that
crack in the wall
of your foundations.
McEVERS:
And it's not just Arizona.
The ground is sinking in
California, New Orleans,
Mexico City, Saudi Arabia,
Bangkok.
It's a sign.
McEVERS: Shanghai...
It's an absolute sign...
McEVERS: Tokyo....
...that you're running out.
McEVERS:
Cracks in the desert,
sinking cities,
McEVERS:
Cracks in the desert,
sinking cities,
just a few more of the signs
that today
our demands on fresh water
are outstripping supplies.
It's a global problem,
one that none of us
should feel immune to.
SANJAYAN:
And believe me,
I'm not above any of this.
If we don't take care
of water in
a sustainable fashion,
it'll be the first environmental
tipping point that will
bite humans the hardest.
I'm sure of it.
You know, you go around the
world looking at places
in which people have found ways
to reverse ecological trends
and come up with things,
and I think that...
I mean, I still believe
in human ingenuity.
McEVERS:
And that does seem to be
the question.
Can our ingenuity
design a new water future
like we've done over and over
throughout history?
As we saw in Holland, we can
engineer ways of saving water.
♪
But high tech-solutions
can only get so big.
HOEKSTRA:
You cannot start growing
wheat or rice
in those kinds of greenhouses
because the amount we consume
is so huge,
that it would
become much too expensive.
McEVERS:
For Arjen, it is about
a new appreciation
of the preciousness of water.
And for Giulio
it's just that simple.
All these problems are
manageable ultimately,
but they certainly
won't be managed
if we pretend everything
can be solved
through technology.
McEVERS:
It looks like we no longer
take our water management
seriously enough.
We just don't value it
like we used to.
BOCCALETTI:
And that's the
real risk here,
if we believe that we don't
actually have to worry
because somebody will take care
of it,
well, that's when the
biggest problems arise.
McEVERS:
Just like in ancient Egypt,
today's temple priests,
the scientists, like Giulio,
are warning us of
a looming crisis.
BOCCALETTI:
And I am afraid
nobody's listening.
McEVERS:
If we don't listen,
our dependence on water,
this molecule that made us,
will be the reason
for our undoing.
♪
For me,
this is a wake-up call
to start thinking
beyond the tap.
And find that deep connection
to the molecule
that is inside of us all.
Because if the next chapter
in our water story
is going to be one we survive,
our next step needs to be
our greatest.
♪
Next time on
"The Molecule that Made Us."
I'm so sorry...
McEVERS:
Episode three, "Crisis."
ANNOUNCER:
Lift off of GRACE-Follow On!
MAN:
We have just flat squandered
this resource.
To order "H2O: The Molecule
That Made Us" on DVD,
♪
♪
Join the conversation
at #MoleculePBS.
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