Rachel Carlson

He grew up in Tehran with two parents who worked in the water industry.

Yeah, and he says he's been sounding the alarm about water in Tehran for years.

And the longer this goes on, the closer Tehran could get to something called Day Zero, when a city or a place runs out of water.

Yeah, Cape Town's a really big one.

And I want to go back even a little further to 2017.

Cape Town was experiencing a huge drought.

Some water restrictions were in place and people were starting to think about how to conserve water a little bit more.

We don't have to shower every day.

We shower every other day, every three days, make the shower shorter.

That's Erin Baker.

She's a freelance journalist who lived in Cape Town from 2014 to 2021.

Yeah, and she remembers it all super vividly.

Erin says in the midst of the drought, a lot of people were holding out hope, kind of like, well, the rains are going to come, the reservoirs will fill up.

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.