NASA's Urgent Message | Years of Living Dangerously

I think the future of agriculture in California is really at risk today. Don Cheadle was here, and we were talking about issues of satellite observations of groundwater depletion and how it's happening in California. Over the last few years, California's lost something like four trillion gallons of water per year. I'm sorry, what? Trillion with a “t”?

Can you tie this into climate change? Absolutely. I'm just trying to put myself in the shoes of an audience member who may be watching this and ask the questions that they would be thinking about. The picture that emerges is not a pretty one. We all need to really change our relationship with water. We don't have it in the abundance that we once did, and a lot of that's because of the depletion of non-renewable groundwater.

So, if we want to keep doing all the things that we have been doing, we have to do it with a lot less water, and we have to make that adjustment. I mean, this is insane. I am getting to the point where I'm not sleeping well at night. It stands to change our food security, our energy security, our human security globally. I mean, this is really scary stuff.

Exactly, these problems are not just California's problems, but really happening all over the world. As much as I thought I knew, I'm learning so much more and really just trying to find solutions and triangulate this from all different angles and come up with a plan that's comprehensive and that can be a model for the rest of the country and potentially the rest of the world.

Shows like "Years of Living Dangerously" are a tremendous vehicle for getting the message out. Yet, I have a message—the message of the global groundwater crisis—and we need all the help we can get.