Filmed over three years, Day Zero journeys across the planet investigating the growing water crisis. Industrial agriculture has allowed the human population to grow to 8 billion. But, with underground aquifers rapidly depleting, the industrial model is about to fail.
When the Earth was photographed from the far side of the moon by Apollo 10, there were 3.5 billion people on Earth. Now, there are twice that many. In the 1960s, New York and Tokyo were the only two megacities with populations of over ten million. Now, there are more than thirty. Most of them with populations much bigger than New York. Water made these cities possible, but what happens if the water starts running out?
At Nasa, Jay Famiglietti pioneered a space mission to try to discover what was happening to water supplies over the entire planet. The Grace project was a scientific success, but the news from space wasn’t good. Two billion people depend on vast underground aquifers for drinking water and growing food. The Grace satellites proved that these aquifers are losing water much faster than anyone predicted. Grace was a wake-up call. The satellites had looked into the future and, for vast swathes of the US and the world, the future is dry.
The High Plains Aquifer provides water for irrigation across the Mid-West region of the United States. It will run out of groundwater in the next 30 years. The High Plains died once before.
For a time, the waves of migrants who settled in the High Plains in the late 19th and early 20th century enjoyed success. But deep ploughing and over-exploitation had loosened the topsoil. And when the drought came during the 1930s, followed by high winds, the High Plains became a Dust Bowl covering 100 million acres of land.
In the 1940s, geologists discovered a vast underground aquifer stretching from the Texas Panhandle to South Dakota. After World War II, the farmers of the Midwest adopted better drilling technology and high-tech irrigation systems. Soon, new industrial-scale agriculture was turning the Dust Bowl into America’s Bread Basket. But it all depended on the extraction of water from underground. Almost a third of the water has already gone. Most of what’s left will disappear in the space of a lifetime. The farmers of the High Plains are looking down the barrel of a New Dust Bowl. A process mirrored across much of the planet.
Most of the water extracted by industrial agriculture is for raising cattle. There has been a 500 per cent increase in meat production since 1961. And with the world population expected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, further massive production increases will be needed to meet demand. But by then, many of the planet’s aquifers will have run dry and industrial agriculture will collapse. The day the water runs out has been termed Day Zero.
Day Zero USA | Climate Change Water Crisis Documentary
Day Zero: https://amzn.to/3x80uKr
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