Rachel Carlson

But they didn't.

And the rains?

On February 1st, 2018, every resident in Cape Town was limited to a maximum of 50 liters, or about 13 gallons of water per person per day.

How much is that?

Like, what can you do with 13 gallons?

Not a ton.

So the EPA says the average person in the U.S.

uses 82 gallons of water per day.

So 13 gallons?

So Erin is doing the math.

She's making all of these calculations and trying to figure out, like, how many times do I really need to flush the toilet?

Even her daughter, who's seven or eight at the time, is aware of it, too.

Yeah.

I mean, Erin told me that the kids were learning about it in school and just all of these questions were circulating.

When it comes to Day Zero, the exact circumstances of every city are different, but there are a few things that they tend to have in common.

Among them, leaky infrastructure, mismanagement of water, depleting aquifers, and more people living in cities, meaning more demand for water in concentrated regions.

And climate change?

And climate change, yeah.

I talked to Filippo Menga.

He's a professor of geography at the University of Bergamo in Italy.