(NASA photo of irrigation patches in the Arabian peninsula, verdant and dry)
Earth’s
water crisis: A vision from space
By: Langdon Winner
About fifteen years ago I took part in a conference on the
future of space exploration held at the Rice University campus in Huston. There were a number of talks by philosophers
of technology along with a colorful presentation by Story Musgrave, American
astronaut who had traveled into space on six NASA missions. My own contribution stressed the need for
nations of the world, including the U.S., to go beyond the breast thumping
nationalism and militarism that had characterized the early decades of “the
space race.” “Why not make space a truly
universal human concern, rather than a demonstration of a particular country’s
power and prestige?” I asked.
Musgrave, a brilliant engineer, MD, philosopher, poet, and
scholar with wide-ranging interests, is renown as the person who flew on the
Space Shuttle Endeavor in 1993, going outside the ship to repair equipment
problems in Hubble Telescope, glitches that had rendered the satellite basically
useless. His main contribution at the
conference was to show and comment upon photographs he had taken during several
of his flights in orbit. Among the
scenes were panoramas of whole continents, oceans and islands, cities lighted
at night, lakes, clouds, and an array of human-made systems of dwelling,
energy and transportation. One
especially astonishing sequence of slides showed a lightning storm spreading
across a vast landscape. “From space one
can clearly see,” he noted, “that
lightning bursts are not singular events, but systematic patterns fanning out
from a center along a chain of electrical points.” (1)
Musgrave explained that his use of photography in space
over the years stemmed from an insight that dawned on him during his first
flights into the stratosphere. As he
worked with his fellow astronauts, he noticed how few seemed genuinely
interested in the marvels that surrounded them as they circled Earth. Some of them scarcely bothered to look up
from the instruments and displays they were monitoring. Just outside the windows of their satellites
were the most extraordinary vistas ever witnessed by a human being. “But many of my colleagues were so thoroughly
involved with their assigned routines that they didn’t take time to gaze into universe
that beckoned.”
Appalled by this odd, unnecessary convention, Musgrave
quietly rebelled. As he told our
gathering, “I cultivated a particular habit.
Wherever I was in orbit inside the capsule or outside in a space suit,
whatever it was I had to accomplish, I would remind myself every 90 seconds or
so: Story, look around!” In that spirit,
he made it his practice to pause, turn his eyes from the equipment for a
moment, and gaze out at the stars and down toward the Earth. He persisted in doing this even during the
intensive, delicate work floating weightlessly to install new electronics packages
for the Hubble. “Why should I avoid taking a moment to gaze into the universe?”
he exclaimed. “After all, I was one of
the few persons in all of human history to have had this wonderful opportunity.”
During our panel discussion of the future of space travel,
Musgrave expressed some sympathy with the general argument I’d made about the
need to reject the Cold War patriotism and military ideology of the first
generation American space programs. Perhaps
he was just being polite, but he offered no objection to my provocation that
the earliest steps in U.S. space initiatives were an afterthought, attempts to glamorize the production of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
My subsequent reading about Story’s life and work made it clear
that, in fact, his experience of space travel had always been intensely spiritual,
informed by his readings in philosophy poetry, and natural history including
the classics of European romanticism, the works of American transcendentalists -- Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, and
others -- sensibilities expressed in some 300 poems about space he’s written
over the years.
In a 1997 interview for the Academy of Achievement,
Musgrave took care to emphasize the literary and philosophical roots of his vision. “Whitman expressed the whole
universe in his poetry and in his catalogues. That attitude almost defines what
we call American romanticism, or American transcendentalism. I feel
particularly close to them, because I am now out in the universe. I'm in a
position to see nature from another point of view, to be outside the earth and
see the big picture. To have an absolutely clear shot at the skies and to see
stars that you can't see from down here, Magellanic clouds, auroras, a new
perspective of nature.... It's clear to see why I like the English romantics
and the American transcendentalists. I like their poetry as literature but
also, from a philosophical point of view, I have very close ties to them.” (2)
One of the slides he showed at the conference left strong,
lasting impression on me, enough so that I’ve used it -- along with his “Story,
look around!” maxim -- in my classroom teaching over the years. From a vantage point high above the Earth, the
photo showed the Arabian Peninsula in bright daylight, revealing massive arrays
of little green circles in precise geometrical patterns within the yellow
desert terrain. “What you see here,” he
explained, “are systems of irrigation using gigantic water sprinklers that move
slowly in circular swaths, watering fields of wheat and other agricultural
products.” Clearly, the dozens of green circles were expressions of one of
the signature projects in the “conquest of nature” celebrated during the
mid-twentieth century: “making the deserts bloom.” He paused for a moment and
then quietly mused, “It took tens of
thousands of years for water to gather in the deep aquifers that these farms
now pump to the surface. It will take
only twenty years to exhaust them.” And
with that he clicked on to the next slide.
Musgrave’s comments are echoed in a series recent
scientific studies and news reports about one the excesses of contemporary
civilization -- the increasingly frantic quest to extract water from the world’s
remaining aquifers. Many of the green
circles from satellite photos of the Arabian Peninsula have already turned
brown as the underground wells that quenched them have dried up, never to be
replenished. According to recent
estimates, four fifths of the water in Saudi Arabia’s wells have been tapped
out. Although the country has built
desalinization plants to provide water from the sea, the cost of $1 per cubic
meter is prohibitive for agricultural applications. A desperate alternative has been to secure
lands and water for Saudi agriculture at distant locations including the
headwaters of the Nile River in Ethiopia. Projects of this kind have repeatedly
brought the Saudis in conflict with local populations unhappy with the coming
of billionaire oil sheiks. (3)
A similar predicament now faces my home state of
California. Four years of persistent
drought have eliminating much of the water that once flowed in abundance from
rains and snowmelt in the Sierra Nevada mountains, forcing farms, towns and
cities to draw upon deposits of water from underground wells and deep aquifers. According to the March 2015 estimate of NASA
hydrologist Jay Famiglietti, “Right now the state has only about one year of
water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater,
is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent
drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except,
apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain. In short, we have no paddle to navigate this
crisis.” (4) An additional unhappy
surprise is that as water is pumped from the ground to supplant customary
surface supplies, some communities have experienced the sinking of large patches
of land as subsurface caverns give way.
The larger picture of events in Arabia and California is
offered in a comprehensive scientific study published earlier this year,
warning that many of the world’s largest and most crucial sources of
underground fresh water are now in steep decline. From 2003 to 2013 NASA’s GRACE satellites measured
changes in the Earth’s gravitational pull, ones caused by reduction in the mass
of water from the world’s aquifers. (5) As reported by the Washington Post, “Twenty-one of the world’s 37 largest aquifers –
in locations from India and China to the United States and France – have passed
their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than
replaced during the decade-long study-period....” (6) Roughly 35% of all water used by people around
the globe comes from underground sources of this kind.
Among the troubles that afflict our planet today are the
alluring power fantasies left behind by the era of reckless modernity of the twentieth
century. Some of the more prominent lingering delusions assume a limitless
supply of resources crucial for economic growth, consumerist materialism and
“the good life,” including what were long assumed to be the “free” and
“inexhaustible” resources of fresh water from the skies and in our lakes,
streams and rivers. To some extent the worlds’ growing awareness of
resource depletion, global climate disruption and other features of
civilization's assault upon Earth’s biosphere arose from observations and
measurements gathered by space satellites and those skillfully employ them. Today,
as the world's people seek new policies and creative alliances to address these calamities,
the availability of good scientific evidence from satellites and elsewhere is,
of course, absolutely crucial. But for a generation
inclined to stare passively, even obsessively into video displays and smart
phone screens, the wisdom of Story Musgrave’s astronaut invocation seems more
relevant than ever: “Humanity, look around!"
# # # # # # # # # # #
(1) The quotes from Dr. Musgrave I
offer here are from my memory and should be understood only as, I hope, faithful reconstructions
of his remarks at the Rice conference.
(2) “Interview: Story Musgrave, Dean
of American Astronauts,” May 22, 1997, Baltimore, Maryland. http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/mus0int-1
(3) Fred Pearce, “Saudi Arabia stakes a claim on
the Nile,” National Geographic, Wed.,
Dec. 19, 2012. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/12/121217-saudi-arabia-water-grabs-ethiopia/
(4) Jay Famiglietti, “California has about one
year of water stored. Will you ration now?” Los
Angeles Times, March 12, 2015. http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-famiglietti-drought-california-20150313-story.html
(5) Alexandra S. Richey, et al, “Uncertainty in
global groundwater storage estimates in Total Groundwater Stress framework,” Water Resources Research, July 14, 2015.
(6) Todd C. Frankel, “New NASA data show how the
world is running out of water,” The
Washington Post, June 16, 2015. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/06/16/new-nasa-studies-show-how-the-world-is-running-out-of-water/
