July 2024: water gaps
Each month, we break down our topic into four weekly modules. Catch up on previous editions here.
This week's module: READ
- 🎯 READ | Whats going on with water? (TODAY)
- WATCH | An animated video on threats to the sacredness of water (7/10/24)
- ACT | Water you gonna do?? Actions you can take about the water crisis (7/17/24)
- REFLECT | Share your commitment to being a water protector (7/24/24)
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes for the action plan
Here's what we'll learn today Reader
Hey hey hey Reader❣️
We’re in the second half of 2024, and the world is on fire! Or hurricane-ing! Or continuing to meet peaceful protest with imperial violence! 😿😱
Your friendly Changeletter is here to remind you that we can reality check ourselves while ALSO committing to our roles as solution-bearers.
It’s been time, for quite a while, to get ready for a new world—to imagine it, create it, and revel in it, but first, we must acknowledge that transitions are HARD.
The rest of this decade is probably going to be a rough one (spoiler alert) but we can be connected with the right people, prepared with the right resources, and committed to the actions that matter.
No matter where you are in the world, one reality remains consistent:
We are running out of water.
And just like all the other things we talk about in our Changeletters, we can and must do something about it.
Our READ modules are always a bit of a rough start, but remember, once we confront the truth this week with some facts and figures, we’ll spend our WATCH module reading a beautiful story together and our ACT module deciding how we can be water protectors.
Ready to learn about water scarcity and pollution? 😜💦
Before we get to our READ module, thank you Haritha, Rob, Sara, Maya, Viraj, Siri, and everyone else who donated to keep Soapbox going + joined as a member last week!
Also just for funsies, here's my fave pics of me and water, i LOVE HER SO MUCH <333
Your bite-sized action plan Reader
✅ take a deep breath and READ about the world's water shortages through this interactive map
Today, we're going to focus primarily on National Geographic's World Water Map. Good news: it's so cool! Bad news: it's kind of depressing!
But that's what it is to be human, right? Cool but depressing?! Haha, anyways...
Here's the bottom line: "Human water consumption has soared. In some parts of the planet, the demand is greater than rivers or groundwater can sustain."
Here are some facts:
- Agriculture is a water-greedy industry.
10% of the world's ENTIRE LAND is irrigated with non-renewable groundwater. Non-renewable, as you know, means we can never get it back. (This is related to the grossness of factory farming, by the way.)
- Almost 40% of the world lives in water scarcity.
NatGeo reflects that 2.68 BILLION people, as of 2019, live in places where the demand for water exceeds the supply for more than one month of the year. Meanwhile, many of us flush 20+ gallons of water away in our toilets. #ToiletPrivilege is a real thing.
- Our unnecessary consumption has created water gaps.
"A water gap arises when human demand exceeds the renewable supply—from rivers, lakes, and shallow aquifers refreshed by rain." There are three categories: domestic use (which is growing the most quickly; lawns in the U.S. use 30 FREAKING PERCENT of the domestic total), industry, and irrigation.
- We are borrowing water from the past.
In places with huge water gaps like India, Mexico City, and Tokyo, we've been extracting non-renewable groundwater. It's giving fossil fuel mining but wet!!
- What can we do?
So, we know from economics, we have two choices: reduce demand or increase supply. We'll look at this more in our ACT module, but for now, you can plug in a city that you love and look at its water gap.
We'll end our READ module with a note on AI: it has a HUGE water footprint. Some scientists and technologists are using AI to manage water shortages and pollution, but unfortunately, the harms could outweigh the benefits. Good thing I'm a better writer than Chat GPT because it consumes ~1000x more water than a Google search. Anyway. I can't get into the AI rabbit hole right now with you, but here's bonus READ module article for you.
💦 Stay moist Reader
-Nivi
P.S. speaking of water... our Spawning Szn hats arrived! Venmo @soapboxproject or paypal.me/soapboxproject if you want one; $27 for non-members & $22 for members! Join our membership to support our work & make friends!!
