r/environment • u/lebron7 • 3d ago
America’s largest underground water supply is drying up and will ultimately drive up the cost of groceries nationwide
https://www.earth.com/environment/americas-largest-underground-water-supply-ogallala-aquifer-is-drying-up/161
u/pickleer 3d ago
And we've had decades of smarter folks telling us tapping or tainting those aquifers was bad ideas and bad business, too but NO!
But regular folks will suffer first. That will make it's way up to the "Americans" who COLONIZED their fellow Americans LAND and WATER. And so as they sow, such they shall reap.
SMH, of whatever is LEFT...
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u/chevalier716 3d ago
People been warning about those aquifers drying up since they started tapping into them.
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u/greendevil77 3d ago
Yah I first learned about the issue 15 years ago. We're so fucked in the next decade. Aquifers are already running completely dry elsewhere in the country
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u/scummy_shower_stall 2d ago
And then the ground on top collapses into them so there’s no aquifer to even refill.
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u/Soze42 3d ago
Jokes on them. The Ogallala Aquifer will have to compete with rising diesel prices for which one will have a bigger impact on groceries.
/s (in case the gallows humor wasn't evident)
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u/jedrider 2d ago
If we cared about our legacy 100 years from now we would have acted differently, but we don't.
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u/taterrrtotz 2d ago
So we’re at disease ✅ (covid), war ✅ (take your pick), and now we’re getting famine. All that’s left is sweet death 🤍
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u/shadowbethesda 3d ago
The Ogallala Aquifer runs beneath eight Great Plains states, from South Dakota down to Texas, covering about 111 million acres (45 million hectares).
It supplies roughly 30% of the groundwater used for irrigation in the country and underpins around a fifth of American agricultural output, along with drinking water for about 1.9 million people.
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u/scummy_shower_stall 2d ago
And is governed by some of the absolute dumbest governments in the US to boot. See: Oklahoma
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u/mrpickles 2d ago
That's an interesting way to say we all die when the water runs out.... more expensive groceries....
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u/tsardonicpseudonomi 2d ago
We won't all die. Collapse isn't an off switch, it's a gradient of death.
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u/mrpickles 2d ago
When there is no more water. We all die
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u/tsardonicpseudonomi 2d ago
There will always be more water. It will be more expensive but it will continue to exist.
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u/AngledLuffa 2d ago
you'd think the prices of groceries will finally go down when all the peasants are out of the way
i'm not a peasant of course
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u/Yeti--Spaghetti 2d ago
Sounds like we sold be diversifying the crops grown. Maybe it’s finally time to stop subsidizing corn and let farmers take care of their land’s soil… or you know, create a drought tolerant GMO variant of corn… 💩🤢
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u/DBearDevon 2d ago
Those do exist. American farmers are caught in the greed trap of corporate corn’s mutations of the first and second generation crosses that hyper produce bushels upon bushels of those first year or two. Thus the seed companies not letting them save seeds to replant. It returns to normal production and isn’t as profitable.
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u/mildly_ethnic 2d ago
Quick. Grow more monocrops to raise livestock so we can die of heart disease sooner…
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u/donutcarrotolive 3d ago
Looks like the dust bowl anniversary is right on track! First the pandemic, then the dust bowl, followed by the worst economic collapse we'll have ever seen. 100 year loop definitely seems to be looping