America Is Getting Thirsty

Our country hasn’t gotten as fired up as it should be about how precious water is – and how quickly we must act so our kids and grandkids will have enough to live on. Most folks are probably aware, to some degree, that water problems are mounting around the world, but unless they’ve felt the relentless suck of long-term thirst or lived in a place where it’s impossible to ignore, my guess is that they expect someone else – a scientist, politician, billionaire, or fantasy wizard – to solve the problem. Maybe that will happen, but until then, we’re going to go thirsty faster because we’re using way more water than we need, right now.

Florida is not the only U.S. state facing this slow terror. California, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah have faced growing water shortages for years. A quarter of the crops on our planet are drying out, as drought led Kansas’ wheat output to drop by 37 percent. Heatwaves and wildfires across the world threaten infrastructures to produce and maintain the water we need to survive.

It sounds apocalyptic because it is. Trump’s asides – and actions – around eliminating slow-flow shower heads and denying federal emergency services might seem like small sucker punches inside of a multitiered attack on our collective ability to survive the next decade. The red hat folks’ constant, dangerous remarks can be terrifying, overwhelming, and tiresome. Inside of the onslaught, it becomes easy to disconnect from the less alarming assaults on democracy – especially because even the people who voted for Trump often don’t believe his threats of violence and the removal of their healthcare and human rights, even if they have already come to pass.

Perhaps one of the few bipartisan experiences in the U.S. right now is our seemingly persistent need to keep learning, over and over, to actually listen to and believe politicians’ extreme promises. When it comes to water, there’s an opportunity: because water splashes in all the most boring ways. Maybe it’s a fight that can cross the political divide.

Growing up, my family and I rebuilt our house over and over after hurricanes and tropical storms. We filled our bathtubs with water before the storms hit, knowing it might not flow for weeks if the damage was too intense. We conserved water because we had to, because we were poor and afraid of scarcity. On a much larger scale, our country has the opportunity to fill our metaphorical bathtubs with as much water as we can, before it dries up.

It’s almost too late to stop the damage, but the one action that has a real impact is to reduce our individual water usage. Water is not a hot issue right now, unlike the gender, healthcare, and economic issues the Republican party splatters across our newsfeed, among countless others. What would happen if we didn’t wait until social media told us it was important? What would happen if we collectively rallied to rescue ourselves from dehydration before things get worse? What would happen if we started to fix it before it is too late?