Who’s Taking America’s Water? | Climate Town

Hey, I'm here in Los Angeles, California.

It's a city full of people who are way hotter than me, but they're

almost all dead inside.

It's in the eyes.

There's just nothing in there.

Not unlike the LA River.

It's a bonafide movie star, but it's polluted to the core from decades

of chemical spills, pesticide

infused runoff, and the burned out rubber from 95

takes of this scene from Grease.

But if you're not from Los Angeles,

you might find yourself thinking,

"That doesn't look like a river at all."

This is a river, this is a river, river, dog, river.

But out here in the American West,

a historic drought has made it very hard for these lifeless hotties to remember

that this is almost

no water at all.

And it's not just Californians.

The more than 40 million

people in the American West served by the famously

overused Colorado River are being asked to conserve

this water by any means necessary.

Historic water cuts to multiple states.

Cutting off the water while you're brushing your teeth, taking shorter

Cut back on their water use.

Peeing in the shower?

That's going to save you a couple of flushes and save you a couple of gallons.

Get a weapon and fire it into your lawn.

But no matter how much water they conserve,

there's not enough to go around.

So, where is all the water going?

Well, if you look at the 1.9

trillion gallons of Colorado

River water consumed by people every year,

a very unfortunate trend occurs.

According to a study from 2020,

all the water people use for drinking,

swimming pools, watering their lawns,

slip and slides, and any other private consumption

accounts for just 12%

of the water use.

Golf courses, office parks, and all other businesses

are just 4% of water use.

And weighing in at 79%

of all the water we use

is agriculture, which is crops.

And that might make sense

if it was crops for people.

But the vast majority

of water we use in the American

West goes to grow food

that people do not eat.

56% of all the water in this river goes to animal agriculture

and one animal above all others.

So, who's taking all of America's water? The cow.

Not this cow in particular,

but the United States is home to 87.2

million cows and the food those cows eat requires

so much water it's creating a real

shitstorm for people who want that water for drinking,

running cities, making energy,

basically just stuff we need to do to live.

And it would be one thing if we were blasting

through our water supply

because the citizens of our great nation decided

that's how they wanted to use it.

But the rules for who goes thirsty

and who gets to flood a literal

desert were written over 100 years ago and are based entirely

on the unbreakable ironclad law of dibs.

They consider dibs so sacred

that a single family in California

whose grandfather happened to start a dairy

farm near Palm Springs in the 1920s

gets more water than the entire

city of Las Vegas.

The people in this part of California

get more Colorado River water than all of Arizona and Nevada combined.

And if that sounds like a stupid

way to manage a critical resource,

just wait until you hear about the foreign governments

who currently have the right to use an unlimited

amount of ground water from America's

deserts and are exercising

that right to send cow food back to their own deserts.

So, as our supply

of water is being decreased

by climate change, which it very much is,

and our demand for water is being increased

by a growing population

of both people and livestock,

we should probably find a way to be a little more efficient

with our water use.

And regardless of your feeling on cheeseburgers,

I think we can all agree that it's generally a good practice

to just pop the hood on how we're using one of our most critical

resources to see if there's anything that can be learned from it.

Hi, I'm Raleigh Williams,

a guy with a climate science and policy degree,

a little sparkle in my eye, and what I can only imagine is foot conjunctivitis.

And this is a video about who's taking all of America's water.

Welcome to Climate To understand

why we're so hell-bent

on growing animal food in America's

deserts, we got to go back to the thrilling

conclusion of the Civil War.

The US had just been hot glued back together,

and people were free to enjoy their beloved pastimes

of making horses run fast,

honky baseball, and uprooting the entire family and building a new life somewhere else.

But where to go?

Well, what about this part?

I mean, why the hell does nobody live there?

Besides the people who already live there, but I'm sure they'll move.

So, the US hired a guy named John Wesley Powell

to do a geological

survey, and they crossed their fingers hoping Powell would come back saying

there's a ton of water everywhere,

and everything's ready to pump and grow.

Powell spent two decades

studying the Colorado River

and the West overall,

and then came back to Congress in 1890

with this ripper of a map.

Truly, I look at this map.

Beautiful colors, incredible detail

in the breakdown of the watersheds.

Imagine trying to make this map

without computers or satellites or colored pencils.

It would be pert near impossible.

Unfortunately, Powell found that there was just not enough water to settle the West.

And if you wanted to get even a few people out there, it would

make more sense to create federal dams to stabilize

water access, and to define your political boundaries

by water flow regions

instead of by arbitrary state lines.

You know, cuz water is such a critical

foundation for life and all.

The indigenous people who already lived there knew that and had extremely

effective water conservation techniques

dating back to 10,000

BC, including sometimes being nomadic

because water comes and goes in the West

and you need to be able to follow it.

Unfortunately, that wasn't really going to fly with the settlers

who preferred to get hundreds of acres of their own private

land that no one else can touch, and you can't tell me there's not

unlimited water for my free land.

And as you can probably imagine,

the US government didn't listen to a single one of Powell's warnings and just

waved settlers West like a third-base

coach in an exciting

game of honky baseball.

Too soon for a callback?

I just said honky baseball.

You know what, cut this part.

And if you're watching this and you're thinking,

"Well, obviously this John Wesley Powell guy didn't know what the he was talking

about because I've got a cousin in Arizona

and they have a swimming pool in their backyard."

That's a reasonable thing to think.

But first, consider the phrase credit card debt

and let's keep going.

Among the places settlers flocked to was just the straight-up

desert, including the bone-dry

Imperial Valley, California, which gets just

3 in of rain on average per year

and has more sun in the winter

than any other place in the US.

It's also in the movies.

That's what you get. Welcome to Earth.

Up until 1901, the Imperial

Valley was a barren,

uninhabited place because of course it was.

It was the desert.

But nowadays, it looks like

That's because the US dug a canal

to divert water from the Colorado

River into the south side of the valley,

and the Imperial Valley was not alone.

The US government dammed and canaled

and borrowed whatever they wanted from the mighty Colorado

to suit the needs of the settlers

who wanted that water.

And since water was the single

most important resource for these thirsty

western settlers, they made it their absolute

beeswax to dibs as much water as humanly possible.

After all, this is

free water you get the rights to forever.

You would have to be

an idiot not to try to get as much as you possibly could.

And so a dibsing spree for the Colorado River commenced.

Farmers got a couple million gallons a year here, a couple million gallons a

year there, but I mean there's 2 trillion

gallons of usable water in that son of a

How could we possibly

run out of water?

He asked less than halfway

into a 30-minute meeting.

Our favorite publications, Grist, did some excellent reporting on this, link in the bio,

and found this quote from a 1960

US Supreme Court case.

I am morally certain that neither in my lifetime

nor in your lifetime

nor the lifetime of your children

and great-grandchildren will there be an inadequate

supply of Sat down with Secretary

of Commerce Herbert Hoover

and hammered out a deal that would split the river in half hamburger style

giving upper basin states 7.5

million acre feet per year

and lower basin states 7.5

million acre feet per year.

Now, I know you know obviously,

but an acre-foot is the amount of water it takes to submerge

one acre or about 3/4

of a football field

in one foot of water.

So, you know, kind of a lot of water.

An acre-foot is about gallons of water.

And the Colorado River Compact

dealt out 15 million of these little guys

to the seven states. Sounds great. One problem.

The Colorado River does not have that much water.

They drew up the Colorado

River Compact during some extremely

wet years and despite

knowing there were only 14

million acre feet or less for consumption,

they figured it would just be a problem for future

Americans to deal with. Haha, thanks, guys.

They also completely cut Mexico

out of the initial compact

only to attack them on later by inventing

a bunch of water that didn't really exist.

And also also, they didn't even pretend

to equitably include indigenous

people, but you probably already guessed that, didn't you?

Oh, and another problem.

Water rights are hierarchical,

which means senior rights holders get their entire

allotment before junior rights holders even get a drop.

And even if senior rights holders wanted to conserve water

and send the rest down the line,

they kind of can't.

Because water rights are subject

to a use it or lose it rule.

See, in an attempt to prevent people from dibsing a bunch of water

only to turn around and sell it to the highest bidder,

you'd only get to keep the rights to water that you actually use.

And if you think about this for an extra 10

seconds, you'll realize it's an excellent way to discourage water conservation.

If a farmer decides to use less water

or develop a less wasteful irrigation

technique, that farmer is rewarded

with having all of his extra water taken away forever.

Ah, you thought I wasted that water. Uh-uh, bucket.

Try to keep up.

Anyway, farmers were also banned from selling their unused

water allotment as part of the government's attempt to avoid water speculators.

So, if your dad's

dad moved to the desert and called dibs at the exact

right time, your family might now find itself with 84

billion gallons of water every

year and a strong incentive

to use every last drop.

And it is this little quirk in America's water law

that got so many desert dwelling farmers

into the cattle feed business. That's right.

It's time to talk about alfalfa.

Alfalfa is prized for having a lot of easily digestible protein.

And if you're trying to support a dairy cow blasting

out hot high protein

milk, it's a damn

fine option for feed.

Beef cows tend to eat a lot of other stuff, but they'll also suck

down alfalfa with the best of them when they get a crack at that good green.

Before researching for this video,

all my alfalfa knowledge was about this little

but I pushed all that information

out to make room for this alfalfa.

Now it's your problem.

As a crop, alfalfa

loves the sun and can grow for five to seven years with way deeper

roots than normal row crops.

Also, if you can keep the sun shining on it year-round,

you can get 10 to 12 harvests

per year out of the same plant.

But unfortunately, alfalfa also needs a lot of water.

So, you're probably thinking this is one of those classic tradeoffs.

Ratatouille loves to cook,

but he's got to be sneaky about it or else his little rat ass will get shot.

Alfalfa loves the blasting

sun, but it's got to be sopping

wet basically all the time.

So, you got to compromise, Wrong.

Yes, alfalfa is also grown in other less arid parts of the US,

but those places are nothing

compared to the yields you can get if you have two ingredients:

a full-on blasting desert sun year-round,

and a ridiculous amount of water that you would have to use.

They have so much water in that part of the desert

that a lot of alfalfa

fields have traditionally been flood

irrigated, which conveniently for us is exactly

what it sounds like.

You hook up a hose and make a fun little flood for your crop

friends until they're soaking in an inch or two of water.

Some of that water goes into the soil,

some floats up into the air, and some runs off into another farm.

Maybe all the way to the Salton

Sea, a body of water filled almost entirely

with excess irrigation water from the Colorado River.

And by the way, we're currently out on a farm in Long Island.

This is not the kind of farming

we're talking about in the video.

We mostly just wanted like

a farmy kind of background

so that it wouldn't bump too much with the other parts of the video.

This is a place called Young's Farm.

They do excellent work here.

Thank you so much for the location.

Now, pretend you're back in the American West.

Another benefit of alfalfa

is it can be grown year-round

alongside potentially higher-value seasonal crops.

Got a couple extra acres

and a bunch of water to use? Blast 'em, Jackson.

Alfalfa can also withstand short periods of no irrigation,

then pop right back.

So, you could drop the water demand in the summer,

then bring back the same stand of alfalfa into production when there's more water available.

It's honestly a pretty good crop.

It just requires a ton of water.

And uh not to ride his coattails

too hard or anything,

but my main man John Oliver did a whole Last Week Tonight about water

a couple of years ago

and found this excellent

clip from an Arizona alfalfa farmer interview.

Roll the clip of them rolling the clip.

Just listen to this farmer in Arizona

explaining why he chose to grow

a particularly water-intensive crop.

Well, I've just been farming it.

This alfalfa, you got to keep farming it to keep the water.

And that's why I was mainly doing it.

It was to hang on to the water.

In the Imperial Valley alone,

alfalfa fever has led to the projected

use of 2.6 million

acre-feet of water from the Colorado River this year.

And according to reporting from ProPublica

and the Desert Sun,

most of that water apparently goes to just 20

families in the valley who have such senior water rights

that they aren't subject to the same constraints as nearby cities.

ProPublica and the Desert Sun even made some excellent

graphics about it, and here they are right now.

That's just one section of the Colorado River.

If you look at the upper part of the river that includes Colorado,

New Mexico, Utah, and the one with the Horseshoe

everybody's parents are obsessed with.

That land is mine.

You see that fence? That's mine. That fence mine. This field's mine.

That fence down there, that's mine, too.

Spinning son of a

And in that region,

90% of agricultural water

is turned into cattle feed.

I'm sweating into my own eyeballs.

Yes, we do feed some cows for fun,

sure, but the vast

majority are fed so they can either blast

out milk or be mysteriously

killed and turned into beef.

And I know it seems like treating

an important resource like it's worth nothing and will never run out seems like

a strategy that wouldn't have a downside,

but folks, it has a downside.

As the population and farming operations

grow and they're removing more and more water for showering,

drinking, and growing crops

in the desert, we started writing checks that our asses couldn't cash,

and we simply do not have the water for the activities

we want to use it for.

The Colorado River and its reservoirs

have dwindled to alarmingly low levels. St.

George, Utah is running out of

Dry riverbeds, depleted reservoirs,

canals, and fallow fields.

And also, climate change has snuck into the party

and is making everything

worse in the back near the bathroom.

The worst mega drought in at least 1,200

Yeah, they say climate change has fueled wildfires

and threatened the economic security of farmers.

It's endangering the security

of energy and water resources

for nearly 6 million homes and businesses across seven states.

One study from UCLA

found that rising temperatures

between 2000 and 2021

have led to a loss of 30

million acre-feet of water

from the Colorado River Basin,

which has combined with a drought,

which is also probably tied to climate change,

to leave the massive

reservoirs along the Colorado dangerously, historically low.

The reservoirs are so low that even a massive

smash of snowpack over a winter or two doesn't come close to refilling the

reserves, which means this may not be an example of a classic

drought, this might be aridification.

While a drought is temporary

and we'd expect a full rebound,

aridification means the area

will be permanently drier

with less water available.

And while the American

West is particularly susceptible

to a drought, we certainly

don't have a monopoly on it.

And I don't want to hit you over the head with it, but that

means that the climate

might be Which means climate change. I'll say it. I'm crazy.

I'll say climate change right to your dang face.

I'll say it at dinner,

right to my uncle,

and we won't talk for 6 years.

But if the Colorado

River water rights are too complicated,

the federal rules around how much groundwater

you can pump out of private wells

are a whole lot simpler. There aren't any.

Groundwater is water that collects in giant

underground aquifers over the course of hundreds of thousands

or maybe even millions of years.

Regulation of groundwater is usually left up to the states,

but they tend to be pretty loose with the laws.

And that's not me editorializing.

States like Missouri literally

brag about having, quote,

the loosest water laws in the country,

where water users have the right to under most circumstances

use as much water as they would like and for whatever purpose they see fit.

Back in the Civil War days when honky baseball

was already starting to get boring, great callback.

Yes, the government didn't really understand

how or why groundwater flowed.

In modern days, we now understand that aquifers

take thousands of years to recharge.

But back then, we thought it was maybe unlimited infinity water?

I mean, it didn't even matter

time because groundwater was dozens

to thousands of feet below the surface.

Why make a law about water

that we didn't even have the technology to get to?

By the 1930s, our craftiest

engineers had figured out how to drill down and pump it out.

But instead of making laws to regulate

it, we had already established

the sort of no shirt, no shoes, no problem policy.

And to this day,

groundwater is free and unlimited in most places.

One of those places

is most of Arizona,

where you are free to pump as much water as you like

out of their underground

aquifers, which are doing just fine.

I'm sorry, I'm hearing that should be declining

at an alarming rate.

And it's here that we get a sense of just

how little of a

America gives about its water.

Because what do you think happens

when you pump too much water

out of an aquifer?

Uh-oh, did you just Google it? Cuz that's cheating.

And cheaters never win.

But also, if you went online to find a news article about groundwater,

you may have found more than you bargained for.

That's right, I'm talking about bias.

Lucky for you, there's Ground News.

Yes, sir, Ground News is an independent

website and app that gives you an easier and more data-driven

way to read your news.

Every story comes with a visual breakdown of the publication's

political leaning, reporting reliability,

and ownership, allowing you to see potential journalistic

conflicts before you're telling a room full of people that Rudy Giuliani

can do a kickflip.

You want an example?

Yeah, I bet you do.

Did you know that the Oklahoma State Superintendent

just mandated that the Bible

must be incorporated into public schools for kids from fifth grade

all the way through graduation?

Let's check it out.

Right away you can see that over 150

news outlets reported on the story.

Of these, 35% lean left while only 19% lean right. Huh.

You can also compare headlines

to see how bias can affect framing.

The Western Journal frames this as Oklahoma

righteously putting the Bible back in schools,

while National Zero focuses

on the Oklahoma education

secretary threatening to revoke teaching licenses

for not incorporating the Bible. Different.

Ground News also has my personal favorite feature,

the blind spot feed, where you can see stories that the publications

you usually read might not cover.

Did you hear about the Pope's new swimming pool?

Uh not that, but you know, stuff like that.

You got to check it out for yourself.

Ground News helps you think more critically

about how news is spreading

and who's probably reading it, which helps you better understand

our increasingly divisive world.

And that sounds pretty damn good to me.

And if you're thinking what I'm thinking,

I encourage you to check out Ground News.

And yeah, baby, we got a discount code for you. I'm talking ground.

dot news slash I think backslash,

but I've never really been able to tell the difference. climatetown.

That's the important part.

ground.news/climatetown or just click that link in the description

and get 40% off the Vantage level subscription,

which gives you access to every

single goddamn feature on the app.

That's a month, which has a well-known

$5 a month bias. Thank you.

And now, back to Climate

Town and the thrilling

answer to the question,

what do you think happens if you pump too much groundwater

out of an aquifer?

You run out of water.

And it doesn't come back.

The more water you pump out of the ground,

the lower and lower the water table gets.

This leads to a phenomenon

called subsidence, where land slowly caves in Hellmouth style.

The more you pump,

the deeper you have to drill your well,

until eventually you run out of water.

It's a lot like putting all your bills on a credit card.

It feels incredible for a while,

but sooner or later,

it's going to catch up with you.

And the way I know this

is because it's happening

right now in Arizona.

People in La Paz County, Arizona,

who used to have functioning

groundwater wells, are waking up to find that they now have a very deep,

very dry pipe in their yard.

Because let me tell you about the Almarai

Dairy from Saudi Arabia.

As of 2018, it has been illegal

to grow alfalfa in Saudi Arabia.

Without getting too far into it, Saudi Arabia pumped the

out of their groundwater

from the late 1940s

until a couple of years ago.

And in that time,

they used up approximately

80% of their fossil groundwater.

They needed to look elsewhere

for the most precious of resources,

and due to the United States' loose groundwater

laws, that meant buying land in Arizona

and just taking America's groundwater.

So, they bought 15

square miles of prime Arizona

desert, drilled deeper in the aquifer

than the retirees and farmers in the county,

and dangerously lowered the groundwater

level by pumping up as much water as they wanted for $0.

Freedom, it would seem, is free.

And if you're wondering how much water Saudi Arabia pulled out of the ground, you're not alone.

The Arizona State Land Department sent a memo to at least ask them to

measure how much water was getting pumped out, because they were worried about groundwater

depletion as a result of agricultural

leases in the Butler Valley,

but unfortunately, the Arizona

state government at the time wanted to be cautious

of tangling with a powerful company

and the metering request was denied.

But, I mean, come on.

How much water could Saudi Arabia possibly have taken?

And I don't presume to know how the people of La Paz County, Arizona feel about this.

But luckily, I don't have to because there's a recording of them explicitly

saying how they feel about this thanks to the top-tier

journalism by a publication called Reveal.

You're saying it's perfectly legal

for these people to come in here, drain

the aquifer, and the local people have to re-drill

their wells that they've lived there for years.

We got to move on.

But yes, it is it they're not breaking the law.

Now, Saudi Arabia shipping alfalfa back home sounds pretty bad

until you remember that the number

one exporter of alfalfa,

with more exports than all

other countries in the world combined,

yes, it's the United States.

It's not always the United States in sentences like that, but like

nine times out of 10 it is.

And yes, a ton of those exports come from the most water-constrained

parts of the Colorado River Basin.

You want to hear something really wild?

In the Imperial Valley, after they harvest that flood-irrigated

alfalfa for the 12th

time that year, 12th,

l f t h,

that's a obstacle course of a

Whatever, it's more expensive to send that alfalfa

to cows in another part of California

than it is to cram it onto a cargo ship and send it off

to two of the biggest alfalfa

importers in the world, China and Japan.

And if you're wondering how that could possibly

be cheaper, here's a fun little factoid

you can tell your friends.

The US imports more stuff from China than we export.

So, there's a constant

stream of shipping containers coming to America

full and going back empty.

China and Japan are eating an increasing

amount of beef and dairy,

but rather than use their own precious water resources,

they can buy and ship American

livestock feed like alfalfa

across the Pacific for next to nothing,

cramming those otherwise empty cargo ships

full to the brim with compressed alfalfa hay.

And I don't want to be overly dramatic,

but this basically amounts to exporting water.

Water that we apparently

really need in the arid West.

And I'm not being overly dramatic

because this is exactly

what a bunch of much smarter and more informed people than me have already said.

I'm just saying it way louder than them!

Also, big shout out to Arizona

water expert Professor Robert Glennon for all the help he gave us on this episode.

He wrote this incredible book Unquenchable,

you should totally read it, link in the bio,

as well as a bunch of other articles and another book.

How many books have you written?

Is it zero books?

Would zero be an accurate count?

I'm sorry, I don't know where that came from.

I think this sun is permanently cooking my brain.

Let's wrap this up.

The United States is currently in the middle of a serious

water crisis that we are treating very unseriously.

We haven't updated our Western water laws that we cobbled

together to help 1900s

era farmers settle water disputes without shooting each other, and now those laws have metastasized.

Our available river water is decreasing

due to climate change,

but rather than reward conservation,

we're incentivizing farmers to use all the water they possibly can.

Our ground water is being pumped out faster than it can be replenished,

but rather than regulate

it or even measure it, we're giving it away for free with a purchase

of a little bit of land.

Our credit card debt is coming due,

and our reaction is to continue spending.

So, what are we going to do about it?

Well, step one is to stop incentivizing

the misuse of water.

And in some ways, this is already starting to happen.

Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has canceled

one of the leases Saudi Arabia was using to pump unlimited

groundwater and is set to terminate three more in the coming year.

Which seems like a win

until you remember that American companies

are doing the exact same thing.

I mean, even Arizona's

state pension fund has invested $175

million in a Wall Street company

that's buying up land in Arizona for groundwater access.

And the pension fund only stopped when some people found out and pushed them to divest.

So, yeah, state governments

need to rethink how they regulate groundwater.

And you can get involved by joining some of the local and state groups

that are pushing for stronger or any legislation.

Even pushing the government

to measure, not stop,

not cap, measure how much groundwater

is being removed would be a good start.

But a much more powerful

fix would be to readdress

the system of double stampy's

no or races water rights that got us into this situation

in the first place.

Unfortunately, this is not a simple thing to do because for the most part,

water rights holders are just farmers trying to make a living.

Sure, there are a few monster

mash sized farms, but there are thousands

of struggling farmers out there.

And if we charged them an extra million dollars for their water

or just took it away,

that would be a real dick move.

It would also be an excellent

way to starve America

because that's where the food comes from

and a lot of food is mostly water.

If you're tempted to think about this like a farmers

versus city problem and that farmers are taking too much water,

just remember they're not using that water for slip and slides, brother.

They're using it to grow crops and livestock

that people in cities eat.

Most farmers aren't wasting their water,

they're deciding what to grow based on what they can make from the market

and what the current water laws are.

But still, water conservation's

got to come from somewhere.

And if you're looking at the same charts that I am,

a pretty obvious place is cattle feed.

When it comes to the Colorado

River, if every single person and business in every major city shut off all

their water valves, you would only cut 17%

of the water demand.

But again, it's not that simple.

Unwinding the law of the river would constitute

a seismic shift in American agriculture,

and honestly, I have no idea how that would look.

But there are some actionable

steps we can take to address water shortages.

Most regulations require rights holders to allocate

all the water or none of it.

And loosening some of these archaic

policies could allow farmers to conserve their water use through more efficient practices

like drip irrigation, then sell their extra water.

The money from the extra water

could even go to help fund some of those expensive drip irrigation installations.

So, you know, that's pretty nice.

The Inflation Reduction Act has also earmarked a few billion dollars

to help with the Western water crisis,

and it seems like about a billion of that might go to pay farmers

to follow their fields to save water.

Is that the perfect solution?

I don't know, but it is something.

And while cities and industries

are just a small percentage

of water use in the West,

we're still talking about trillions of gallons.

That means conservation efforts like not demanding

every house in America

comes standard with a Kentucky

bluegrass lawn, aka one of the largest

irrigated crops in America.

Now, you may be saying,

"Well, grass isn't a crop.

We don't eat it." exactly.

Another way to conserve

is to install low-flow appliances

and fixtures in buildings and houses.

As insane as it sounds, the city of Las Vegas has actually been making

a huge effort to conserve their water, as are a lot of other cities in the West.

One study found that as population

grew by 24% in the 28 urban areas they looked at, overall

water usage dropped by 18%,

which is pretty cool.

And if you're looking to get involved in an organization

that works on these problems,

you are in luck, my friend.

Our buddies over at Climate Change Makers have put together a playbook that you

can use to contact your local representatives

to urge them to take action on water conservation

through the upcoming farm bill.

So, if you're looking for a policy

solution to push forward, check it out.

Link in the bio.

It's technically a description,

but I say bio, so

whenever I say either one just know that that's in the text below this video.

But the big mac father of all of them

is probably to stop demanding

and consuming so much meat and cheese.

And I know times are tough right now, and those two items account for

a lot of people's favorite food.

I'm not in charge of you.

You're the boss of your own body.

I will say that if the principles

of supply and demand are to be believed,

farmers wouldn't use as much water to grow cattle feed

if we didn't consume so much beef and dairy.

It takes literal hundreds

of gallons of water to produce a single

pound of either beef or cheese,

so a collective effort to reduce our consumption

would actually have a big effect.

And I don't know what that means for you.

Maybe it means going meat and dairy free for a few days a week,

or trying a plant-based

meat alternative, or any number of replacements

for the current status quo

of flooding a desert for cow food.

And in case you're thinking Americans

are just hardwired to eat beef,

and there's simply no way to change that,

I guess I would point you to the fact

that industry groups are constantly

spending money trying to convince America's

children to eat more meat.

And this should really be its own episode,

but if we all naturally

eat beef, then why are industry groups so hell-bent

on getting pro-meat propaganda into schools?

If everybody was just naturally

drinking a bunch of milk all the time,

why would the dairy industry

need to hire actual

director Michael Bay to make this insanely

high quality milk And that was the Vienna wood dancing D.

And now let's make that random call with today's $10,000 question.

Who shot Alexander Hamilton

in that famous duel?

All right, let's go to the phones and see who's out there.

Hello, for $10,000, who shot Aaron Burr. Excuse me? Aaron Burr.

Hello, hello, Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr.

I'm sorry, maybe next time. Got milk?

Good lord, that is an awesome commercial.

Imagine being so good at making commercials

that they give you the Transformers franchise.

You get way more into the characters of the robots this time. They're so good.

They're always doing the right thing.

They're always doing good.

And I think people like that.

And also for the kids out there,

there was a time when not everybody knew about the life of Alexander Hamilton.

Before Lin-Manuel Miranda, nobody

even knew that Alexander

Hamilton was a rapper.

And this is just my personal

opinion, man, but if everybody really liked milk,

you wouldn't have to make an ad about it. Milk is famous.

Everybody knows what milk is.

Just let the people decide if they want to drink milk.

Leave me alone, milk. Kramer!

What am I drinking? Milk? Oh, Conclusion music.

We're home free, baby.

Okay, if you take away just one thing from this episode,

it should be to think a little bit more about how the world uses its water.

Now, if you're concerned about your personal

water usage, it's a good idea to consider

all the ways you use water

and not just when you turn on the faucet

or blast your lawn.

Water used on your behalf is also a big factor,

and that's influenced by a lot of things, including what you eat

and some archaic ass laws from the 1900s

that you probably don't have a lot of control over.

Okay, that's the end of the episode.

I probably could have gone on for another hour about this, but every episode

has to end somewhere

and I guess this is that somewhere.

There are a ton of other climate issues with animal agriculture

and I swear to Christ we're going to get to them.

But we figured we'd start with water on account of how water

is the thing that makes all life work.

And speaking of water,

big thanks to Teal Lato

aka Western Water Girl for all of her help with the research on this episode.

If you're looking to learn more about the Western US water shortage,

you simply must check out her videos.

Seriously, no notes, 10 out of 10, go check them out.

Also, thanks so much to Youngs

Farm on Long Island for letting us get a bunch of farmy looking shots.

They're doing great work out there.

We also bought some pies on our way out and let me tell you

those pies kicked ass.

Ooh, and all this pie talk is probably got you thinking,

do we still have a Patreon page?

You better believe we do, but something has changed. Something has shifted.

That's right, we got an official Climate Town phone line.

And now, hot crackers,

if you're a patron,

you can call me.

Not all the time.

Not just any old time.

That would ruin my life, okay?

There's going to be specific

times you can call me and if you don't hit one of those times,

you can leave a message, okay?

It's supposed to be for fun. Don't with me.

All right, there's also a bunch of other fun perks on the Patreon page.

We've also got a ton of fun perks on the Patreon

page like behind the scenes footage, town halls, a Patreon

only Discord channel, discount

tickets to the live shows, and a bunch of other stuff.

The Patreon page is the backbone of Climate Town.

So if you like what we're doing and you want to support us, Patreon

is a great place to do it.

We've also got t-shirts.

They're made by a company called TS Designs in North Carolina

and sent to you by the good folks at Ethics Merch.

We made a whole episode about merch that you can check out, but to

sum it up, these are nice shirts that are made entirely

in the Carolinas with a fully transparent

supply chain that actually pays workers a living wage.

If you want one of our very nice t-shirts,

you can buy one using the link down below.

We've also got a podcast

called the Climate Town Area's Playbook hosted by me and my childhood

friend and Daily Show writer Nicole Conlan

and executive produced by Ben Bolt.

And we have a newsletter

that me and Climate Town writer director Matt Nelson write.

There's links to all that in the description below.

That's the end of the video

and I've been waiting quite a while to do this.

I have not tried marijuana.

Uh I have never used it at any time.

Did you hear that pop?