aquifers already supply: USGS Water Science School, “Groundwater Use in the United States,” U.S. Geological Survey, June 26, 2018, https://water.usgs.gov/edu/wugw.html.
wells that used to draw water: Brian Clark Howard, “California Drought Spurs Groundwater Drilling Boom in Central Valley,” National Geographic, August 16, 2014.
lost twelve cubic miles: Kevin Wilcox, “Aquifers Depleted in Colorado River Basin,” Civil Engineering, August 5, 2014, www.asce.org/magazine/20140805-aquifers-depleted-in-colorado-river-basin.
Ogallala Aquifer: Sandra Postel, “Drought Hastens Groundwater Depletion in the Texas Panhandle,” National Geographic, July 24, 2014.
expected to drain by 70 percent: Kansas State University, “Study Forecasts Future Water Levels of Crucial Agricultural Aquifer,” K-State News, August 26, 2013, www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/aug13/groundwater82613.html. See also David R. Steward et al., “Tapping Unsustainable Groundwater Stores for Agricultural Production in the High Plains Aquifer of Kansas, Projections to 2110,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110. no. 37 (September 2013), pp. E3477–86, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1220351110.
twenty-one cities: NITI Aayog, Composite Water Management Index, p. 22, www.niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/document_publication/2018-05-18-Water-index-Report_vS6B.pdf.
The first Day Zero: City of Cape Town, “Day Zero: When Is It, What Is It, and How Can We Avoid It?” November 15, 2017.
In a memorable first-person account: Adam Welz, “Letter from a Bed in Cape Town,” Sierra, February 12, 2018, www.sierraclub.org/sierra/letter-bed-cape-town-drought-day-zero.
in arid Utah: Mark Milligan, “Glad You Asked: Does Utah Really Use More Water than Any Other State?” Utah Geological Survey, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/does-utah-use-more-water.
South Africa had nine million people: UNESCO, Water: A Shared Responsibility—The United Nations World Water Development Report 2 (Paris, 2006), p. 502, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0014/001454/145405e.pdf#page=519.
to produce the nation’s wine crop: Stephen Leahy, “From Not Enough to Too Much, the World’s Water Crisis Explained,” National Geographic, March 22, 2018.
total urban consumption: Public Policy Institute for California, “Water Use in California,” July 2016, www.ppic.org/publication/water-use-in-california.
limiting water use to twelve hours: Jon Gerberg, “A Megacity Without Water: São Paulo’s Drought,” Time, October 13, 2015.
aggressive rationing system: Simon Romero, “Taps Start to Run Dry in Brazil’s Largest City,” The New York Times, February 16, 2015.
barge in drinking water from France: Graham Keeley, “Barcelona Forced to Import Emergency Water,” The Guardian, May 14, 2008.
“millennium drought”: “Recent Rainfall, Drought and Southern Australia’s Long-Term Rainfall Decline,” Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology, April 2015, www.bom.gov.au/climate/updates/articles/a010-southern-rainfall-decline.shtml.
99 and 84 percent, respectively: Albert I. J. M. van Dijk et al., “The Millennium Drought in Southeast Australia (2001–2009): Natural and Human Causes and Implications for Water Resources, Ecosystems, Economy, and Society,” Water Resources Research 49 (February 2013): pp. 1040–57, http://doi.org/10.1002/wrcr.20123.
wetlands turned acidic: “Managing Water for the Environment During Drought: Lessons from Victoria, Australia, Technical Appendices,” Public Policy Institute of California (San Francisco, June 2016), p. 8, www.ppic.org/content/pubs/other/0616JMR_appendix.pdf.
for weeks in May and June: Michael Safi, “Washing Is a Privilege: Life on the Frontline of India’s Water Crisis,” The Guardian, June 21, 2018. See also Maria Abi-Habib and Hari Kumar, “Deadly Tensions Rise as India’s Water Supply Runs Dangerously Low,” The New York Times, June 17, 2018.
United States west of Texas: Mesfin M. Mekonnen and Arjen Y. Hoekstra, “Four Billion People Facing Severe Water Scarcity,” Science Advances 2, no. 2 (February 2016), https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1500323.
water demand from the global food system: World Bank, “High and Dry,” p. 5.
“the impacts of climate change”: Ibid., p. vi.
regional GDP could decline: Ibid., p. 13.
list of all armed conflicts: “Water Conflict,” Pacific Institute: The World’s Water, May 2018. www.worldwater.org/water-conflict.
the number of cholera cases: International Committee of the Red Cross, “Health Crisis in Yemen,” www.icrc.org/en/where-we-work/middle-east/yemen/health-crisis-yemen.
Dying Oceans
“Undersea”: Carson was just thirty when she published her essay in The Atlantic, still working as a biologist for the Fisheries Bureau of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In the oceans, she wrote, “we see parts of the plan fall into place: the water receiving from earth and air the simple materials, storing them up until the gathering energy of the spring sun wakens the sleeping plants to a burst of dynamic activity, hungry swarms of planktonic animals growing and multiplying upon the abundant plants, and themselves falling prey to the shoals of fish; all, in the end; to be redissolved into their component substances when the inexorable laws of the sea demand it. Individual elements are lost to view, only to repair again and again in different incarnations in a kind of material immortality. Kindred forces to those which, in some period inconceivably remote, gave birth to that primeval bit of protoplasm tossing on the ancient seas continue their mighty and incomprehensible work. Against this cosmic background the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change.”
70 percent of the earth’s surface: National Ocean Service, “How Much Water Is in the Ocean?” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, June 25, 2018, https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/oceanwater.html.
seafood accounts for nearly a fifth: “Availability and Consumption of Fish,” World Health Organization, www.who.int/nutrition/topics/3_foodconsumption/en/index5.html.
fish populations have migrated: Malin L. Pinsky et al., “Preparing Ocean Governance for Species on the Move,” Science 360, no. 6394 (June 2018): pp. 1189–91, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat2360.
13 percent of the ocean undamaged: Kendall R. Jones et al., “The Location and Protection Status of Earth’s Diminishing Marine Wilderness,” Current Biology 28, no. 15 (August 2018): pp. 2506–12, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2018.06.010.
parts of the Arctic have been so transformed: Sigrid Lind et al., “Arctic Warming Hotspot in the Northern Barents Sea Linked to Declining Sea-Ice Import,” Nature Climate Change 8 (June 2018): pp. 634–39, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0205-y.
more than a fourth of the carbon emitted: Rob Monroe, “How Much CO2 Can the Oceans Take Up?” Scripps Institution of Oceanography, July 13, 2013, https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/07/03/how-much-co2-can-the-oceans-take-up.