just it's course it's the it's about. just show. on this week's show as student loan debt haunts many americans into middle age college is getting even more expensive is that 4 year degree from the name school still worth what the experts have to say may surprise you but 1st what if the faucet runs dry water scarcity is already a fact of life not just in 3rd world countries but right here in parts of the usa and greed could make things worse i'm home and cook and washington this is the big

picture on our team america. in the james bond thriller quantum of solace double 07 takes on international bad guys using a coup d'etat to tie up water rights and a very thirsty part of the world. this is the world's richest piece to the fullest much of it that's because. if you think that seems like an ugly future you're late 11 years ago dow chemical c.e.o. told the economist that water is the oil of the 21st century and global research dot org reports that familiar mega banks and investment powerhouse of such as goldman sachs j.p. morgan chase. citigroup u.b.s.

deutsche bank credit suisse and others are consolidating their control over water and wealthy tycoons such as the late t. boone pickens and george h.w. bush and his family were among those buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers lakes water rights water utilities and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world how close are we to nothing coming out of a faucet let's ask the author of chasing water a guide to moving from scarcity to sustainability brian richter is president of sustainable waters a global education service sharing information about water scarcity water shortages and information and tools for solving water problems brian welcome thank you very much happy to be with you a citi group economist predicts that the water market will eclipse the oil market there are water hedge funds now and u.b.s.

investment research calls water scarcity the defining crisis of the 21st century where here in the us a is water already most scarce and why basically any place that ends up using most or all of the available water is going to be on the brink of disaster when we get into drier times but it's certainly a much more serious issue out in the western united states and specifically the southwest so the colorado river basin the central valley of california and those are some of the places where course much of our food in this country is produced well if that's where the red light is flashing where is the yellow light flashing about water scarcity in the usa most of our water that gets consumed is going to irrigating crops irrigated agriculture and so to understand water scarcity you really want to understand where water is being used supplemental water is being used to produce crops or food. another crops use for clothing and that sort of

thing what we're seeing is that because of water shortages and a warming climate and therefore greater and greater risk with water scarcity or the possibility of water shortages we're starting to see a lot of crops move from the western united states toward the east and specifically the southeast and we're also seeing more and more farmers using water supplemental water irrigation water to grow those crops because they're trying to hedge against the climate so we're actually irrigating more than we're drinking we are by far so just a couple of quick stats 3 quarters of all the water that gets consumed in the united states is used to grow crops in our food. and so it's a very small portion that we actually use in the cities but the way that we use water in the cities is also critically important and it's it's incumbent upon all of us to do the best we can and conserve and be as efficient as we can now you mentioned climate change talk about how that is impacting water availability and

just as the atmosphere heats up that causes a lot more evaporation from our rivers and lakes it also causes us to have you to after use a lot more water on crops on your gated crops and so it's putting a real strain on a lot of places where where a lot of irrigated agriculture is is practiced. just to give you some example of what we're looking at some of the recent scientific projections have suggested that in the colorado river basin by the year 2050 we should expect about 20 percent less available water because of climate change and by the turn of the century it's going to be 30 percent or more how much does fracking impact the aquifer. well in a very localized way it can have a big impact and because it does use a awful lot of water. one of the things that that industry is trying to do is to use alternate sources of water so to use water that's too brackish too salty to use for human drinking water supplies or use for agriculture and i think as they move

more and more off of the potable water supply the fresh cream clean water that could be used for other purposes it will become that aspect of fracking you know may diminish somewhat but in a localized in localized areas southern texas parts of pennsylvania for example on that can be a very big deal we talked about billionaires and banks and hedge funds buying up water rights how imminent a threat is greed. well it's a great question and i think it's very easy to demonize or vilify big investors investment banks large corporations and that sort of thing but the part of that story that isn't getting told well enough in that not enough people understand is the role of governments in all of this so in the united states water is a public resource and it's held in the public trust by our governance by our governments and then it's allocated in administered by our governments here in the

united states that's primarily the state governments but also the local municipal governments play a role as well and so it's really alternately they have a very important responsibility to make sure that they're not over allocating or letting too much water get used for any. less valuable or wasteful purposes a great example is here are my hometown i'm sitting in charlottesville virginia right now and a couple of years ago a large brewery wanted to come in establishing themselves here in charlottesville and the local officials after taking a look at how much water we had available said you know we just don't think we can accommodate you and i think that's responsible sustainable water management is being able to make decisions about how you can use water where you can use water how much water you can use and so that role of government is really really important now on the flip side there is of course huge responsibility on the parts of the investors in the corporations. to use the waters efficiently as they can not

to waste the water and and also to knott's to not settle to not develop businesses or establish new farms or grow crops that are inappropriate in water stressed areas that's quite a supply and demand example you've given us in a big college town certainly there's demand for bruno but there just wasn't enough water to supply yeah like a lot of my friends are quite disappointed this is a company that makes some pretty good crap. to be here so this is not a this is not of the situation that was taken lightly well you've given us a very local example and i wonder if there is a generic message to write to your congressman what would it be well i think there's a couple of ideas there one is that congress because of what i said about how important what a big user irrigated agriculture is the governments of the state the federal level can provide a lot of financial incentives to encourage farmers to become more and more

efficient with their water use and that can go a long way so if we can bring that big chunk of water use back down to lower levels that would alleviate a lot of the stress a lot of the risk the other thing though is the e.p.a. sponsors a really important program called water sense and you may have seen if you go to the store and you're buying a washing machine or a dishwasher or a toilet there are some of them that are available in the stores that have the tag of the water sense tag on them and if you select for those you have you have the confidence that they're going to be the more water efficient appliances and plumbing fixtures and again that comes out of the e.p.a. that program needs full support from the federal government as well when i visited bermuda they told us and showed us how all the water we drink there is rainwater that they've collected in a cistern is that to the point yet is it worth doing where the folks who are watching us tonight and gather rain water should be getting snow runoff is there

something we should buy at home depot to do this you know i'm really happy you bring up that issue because i think it's so critically important in many cities across the united states and not just in the west but also in the eastern u.s. half of the half the water that gets used is go is getting used outside and so it's irrigate your lorenzo your flower beds your vegetable gardens and if we can do that without having to use the public water supply system. if we can instead install rainwater cisterns rain barrels and that sort of thing and capture the rain coming off of our roofs and apply that water to those outside landscaping areas that's going to be a really really important way to lower how much water each of us is using and of course you can also select not to not to grow a green lawn that requires a lot of water you can make choices about the type of landscaping that you're going to have around your home and that can have a very big effect as well brian richter sustainable water is dot org thank you not

only for your time on this week's show but thank you for the work you do all thanks very much and thanks for giving attention this critically important issue that the journal of the american medical association reports that life expectancy in the usa is down for the 3rd year in a row one big reason why is drug overdoses up nearly 400 percent between 19992017 among americans aged 25 to 64 and the centers for disease control tells us that prescription opioid overdose deaths have quadrupled since 1999 and now kill more people each year than car crashes or gun violence how did we get here board certified pain medication specialist dr john dombrowski spelled it out. what we're looking in the early ninety's was the pain price that we had we had jack kevorkian people were going to die we had the right to die movement

so the government of the federal government were wanted us to write more pain medications purdue pharma says we have this medication we can educate physicians that were kind of off to the races and actually physicians were actually graded on how many pain medicines they gave a patient satisfaction scores with doc in the box under so much pressure to see more and more and more patients how much is managed care to blame the prescriptions are very easy to write here's the minute prescription you gave me money i give you a prescription is a fair deal that's not the way medicine should be run maybe we need to talk to patients look at other options that do take time and i'm sorry that may not be very efficient but that's the right way to move forward. health and human services secretary alex as our admits we have effective tools such as medication assisted treatment but we still need better ways to treat opioid addiction and manage pain in an effective personalized way and he's putting our money where his mouth is

nearly a beanie $1000000000.00 this fiscal year to fund the helping to end addiction long term initiative he'll h a l it's the biggest single year investment the national institutes of health has ever made to tackle a single problem they're studying all sorts of alternatives things like acupuncture for chronic lower back pain even music therapy for cancer patients meantime if you are prescribed painkillers dr dombrowski says talk with your doc and keep your meds where your kids won't get them. coming up don't know much about history don't know much biology but if you're a plumber you'll learn more than people who do is a 4 year college education still worth it this is the big picture on our t. america.

the above. the be . led.

but if she warned you i did the dishes at the balls more than those jeans nudist beach and you see me read to you true she. doesn't know about that and when you guys e.t.s. . in the news i mean guys without infringing balls. a lot of you will see sawing during fuzzy parts about to cut out the most ardent most schools. but as in the adams to me as if archer. the. ear in chief of people gathered at 5 days doing this is. an english lady a few people who simply knew she would include in it will. join

me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you. if you're the parent of a teenager you have seen this or you know will it's fafsa the free application for federal student aid online form and they will have you jumping through hoops especially if you're divorced but you're there because for most the cost of 4 years of college is untenable without aid even with that many students are saddled with college debt into mid-life if they hold advanced degrees $45000000.00 borrowers in

the us a no more than one and a half trillion dollars in student loan debt which is now the 2nd highest consumer debt category behind only mortgage debt and higher than both credit cards and auto loans you've probably heard the joke if you want to get rich learn welding if you want to be a starbucks barista major in philosophy and a chair consultant david lewis of operations and says it's no joke. now we're back to what clearly has been the hottest job market we've had in at least the last 12 years maybe in the last 25 we don't have enough people to fill the kinds of jobs that we have open right now so as a result you've got a problem where the talent that we're churning out is either not going into the fields that we need them to because we've got openings there or the kinds of positions we're creating as a country is not a match for the types of talent that we have in the in the country as a whole are we choke ing on debt because we presume that 4 years of college is the

price of admission to a secure career let's ask hilary ford was president of straw mark consultants and university of massachusetts professor emeritus richard wolffe well come i by self to the amazement of several high school teachers am a college graduate but i've may never learn what my plumber do. richard will vocational trades always be a safe career ben. no i mean the harsh but necessary truth is. they never were they often were ways of getting a decent job for some but we have been automating at a higher and higher rate for a long time now the artificial intelligence people that i talked to indicate that an awful lot of jobs we now take for granted will as has happened so often in the past be gone soon it's a kind of tsunami we're worried about but don't know what quite to do about it in

our capitalist system where we rely on private investment to deal with these overwhelming social problems so the short answer is no it's not a guarantees not a reason not to do it but it's not a guarantee of a good job absolutely not well we already spend our day interacting with robots one of my sisters is a now retired to a dental hygienist and she was still in big demand 30 plus years after her 2 years at a technical community college which is what i call return on investment hillary for parents looking down the road at their kids higher education one of the most opportune to 4 year majors well along for that but it may i say i think a sister sounds like the slot to me very good way to go richard i think that and i think it was richard i recreate richard hall i think it's the slot but a couple of things in terms of for your education the social security

administration says that it's 900000 dollars better to have a bachelor's degree versus the high school degree and to answer your question directly yes k. through 14 versus k. through 12 over a lifetime according to georgetown university there's a $200000.00 difference i do think with regard to. trade's what richard just said is absolutely true and i is coming ai is going to eliminate a lot of manufacturing jobs however it's not here yet and i will note one of things actually the eric spiegel the former c.e.o. of siemens said this was back in 2011 of course there's been a lot of automation since then but he was lamenting the dearth of american qualified employees to fill their open jobs and went then treasury secretary tim geithner was going to ohio want to visit they were noting that you simply despite the unemployment rate couldn't hire the talent that the that we don't have the trade schools in america those 'd still today in 2019 to train those employees that

are needed for these kind of trade jobs that still exist now they will go out eventual ewood today i bet they haven't left yet richard you taught at a state university and i'm myself i'm a product of that same commonwealth of massachusetts state college system does an ivy league degree entitle those grads to opportunities that your students and i are denied. well in order to be honest i have to tell you that it is more true even than your question implies the whole notion that we have a meritocracy i find painfully absurd we don't what we have is a system that doesn't generate anywhere near as many good stable jobs as we have people more than qualified to fill them and that's a real problem and we solve that problem not by questioning the system's inability to provide the work but either by blaming the students you're not well prepared

enough which begs the question why dogs or even worse we say it's your fault you didn't go to the right school you didn't get the right major etc etc blaming the victim is never the right way. goal meritocracy means when you don't get the job instead of being critical of the systems failure to give you the education you deserve and the job that you good get with that instead makes you feel bad about yourself and let me add a pet personal word i went to harvard stanford and yale and like the poster boy for elite education i know that without naming any names most of my classmates in these schools were there because their parents had found a way to get them in there and they didn't want to be there they were uninterested in education they knew they had a job when they were done in their father or mother's firm or their cousins for their completely different animal from those people who go to

a community college and they're not one with smarter but they're in a different social class and that is a profound shaper of what we do and don't do in our education system the so-called legacies well with the 2020 elections looming democrats are talking up and republicans are marking up free college where i live the rhode island promise program makes a 2 year associate degree community college tuition free to all in-state high school grads and as her fellow governors and other states was similar plans reckon our gov gina rimando figures we live in a world now where almost every good job requires something past high school whether it's a green credentials or an apprenticeship hillary a minute ago you called case through 14 the new k. through 12 is somebody who just has a high school diploma now ily quipped well guess what our economy requires and if

you look at the jobs that actually guarantee over $100000.00 in 2 years on those jobs are actually an executive pastry chef i could never do that pastries but i'm an executive pay success chef but also radiologists are many jobs that are $100000.00 in 2 years for a tree. community colleges and a lot of those are related to anything to do with anything in engineering 4 year degrees also anything to do with engineering with a petroleum engineering job computer science engineering job almost anything in engineering as guaranteed a job for life so those kind of qualifications are required and there's still a lot of employment opportunity for those that graduate with those kind of degrees well there are jobs and there are gigs and every time i get an ride i always ask the driver what's your day job and increasingly he or she says it's this so richard about this gig economy if you're always a bartender there will always be work but is full time employment now merely an

option. absolutely the growth in part time work the growth in this so-called big con the me is staggering over recent years that's the direction of the future it's more profitable for businesses to have short term employees at least they think so they don't want the long term they don't want the full time partly because they don't want to give the benefits that normally are expected and sometimes mandated by law for all of those things it's a very sad condition here to respond to the hunger for education that our people have particularly our young ones and make them have so little in the way of prospects to get the job to get through the education without a load of debt i might mention a proposal of your previous question another point germany the most successful and powerful economy in europe a few years ago abolished all too we should all see is everyone who

wants to go to the university in germany whether or not they are a german citizen can go to school get a college degree for nothing there's somewhere between $10.20 americans who have gone over there. for that purpose if the germans can do it if they understand exactly the correct point made by the other guest you have about the need for qualifications the germans see that as their road to a successful future it's a mystery to me why americans can't make the same understanding work for the kids in the schools imagine all the things you're going to accomplish if you're not blundering into what the president calls these stupid endless wars well actually yeah and you look at it in terms of education 6 american states actually project the number of prison cells to build depending on the literacy rate in 3rd grade if we were just educate our students better young children better actually then we

would reduce crime and many of society's ills will be wiped away i spent a couple of decades training radio advertising sales representatives and i am convinced the great sellers are born with their gift hillary got about 30 seconds yes sure false if you can sell you'll never starve right absolutely true george foreman said being able to sell as is worth more than a heavyweight championship way worth more than a college degree i'm worth more than a 1000000 in the bank you'll never start so i agree with george foreman who is now worth over 600000000 but i will say no you don't have to be born actual with sales skills it can be trained and taught it's one of the things i do on the side and it's very important to have everybody can one have a cell some are better at it than others so i particularly enjoyed training the ones who could sell ice cubes to eskimoes thank you mark president hillary ford which in us amherst professor emeritus richard wolfe pleasure holland you and thank

you for watching the big picture next week we will come to you from las vegas where i assure you it's all business we're going to be there for the massive mind boggling consumer electronics show and show you how technology is changing all. most every aspect of our lives almost every day you won't want to miss that in the meantime happy hanukkah and happy new year from all of us here at the big picture in washington. thousands of american men and women choose to serve in the country's military and the decision little sheltered lives every song came to

a complete. the day that i was right. you know told to shut up with it kill me and i see how it destroyed my life many screamed at me and he made me come in and he grabbed my arm and he write me this berthing area if you take into account that women don't report because of the extreme retaliation and it's probably somewhere near about half a 1000000 women have now been sexually assaulted in the us military rape is a very very traumatizing thing tat happen but i've never seen trauma like i've seen from women who are veterans who have suffered military sexual trauma reporting rape is more likely to get the victim punished and be offended and almost 10 year career or chose very invested in and i gave a sex offender who was not even put to justice or put on the registry this is simply an issue of tower and violence male sexual predators for the large part of target whoever is there to prey upon whether that's a man or woman. breaking

news on r t international 6 people are reportedly killed in an airstrike in baghdad targeting a convoy carrying. the u.s. killed a high profile iranian general. on friday. a war. we did not. just start a war president strongly defending friday's attack as necessary to prevent a new conflict even as protests erupt across the middle east and iraq. calling it an act of terrorism. police in the french capital shoot and kill a man.