David Hume III

Day Zero David Hume III

For over 200 years, the Earth's industrial nations consumed the planet's natural resources, above and below its surface, like the proverbial glutton at a Roman bacchanal. "Have another serving, there's more where this came from!" It was an unrestrained, self-indulgent, industrial onslaught that pumped gigatons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere, overheating oceans, poisoning rivers and lakes and destroying fragile ecosystems. Like a falling row of dominoes, increased temperatures caused prolonged droughts, agricultural collapse, famine, disease, sea level rise and finally, Day Zero, when the taps ran dry. Water shortages, water crises, and the lack of access to clean water bedeviled governments. Climate change was ignored by the global community, too busy squabbling among themselves, while groundwater use quadrupled. And as Benjamin Franklin once observed, "When the well is dry, we'll know the worth of water."