i mean. i'm holland cook in washington this is the big picture on r t 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 we need to control this 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 investing powerhouses 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 tycoon 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 well it's it's actually unfortunate were experiencing water shortages literally from coast to coast here in the united states now. 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. well i think what we're seeing is we're seeing for the 1st it's important to understand that 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 and other 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. yeah so it's still very difficult to predict how the rainfall in snowfall is going to change in the coming decades but one thing that we do have a lot of confidence about is the fact that it's going to continue to get warmer and warmer over the coming decades and so 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 gaited crops and so it's putting a real strain on a lot of places where where

a lot of that 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 just 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. i don't think we're going to comedy 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 governments 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 have given us in a big college town certainly there's demand for bruno but there just wasn't enough water to supply yeah like say a lot of my friends are quite disappointed this is a company that makes some pretty good craft beer 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 at the state and 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 to irrigate your laws 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 you. 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 waters 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 you bet there's lots more in the big picture after this short break i'm holland cook in

washington you're watching r.t. america. the world is driven by a dream shaped by phone person and those words. no dares thinks. we dare to ask.

thinking of getting a new job on the ones we got in our shells no problem was he didn't know what to do he was trapped in this tiny little wired coach we don't need a crate with him he will just stir freaking out and she won't let us bring him anywhere near. the leading dogs or caged in in human conditions on puppy farm soon i mean 67 years you know they've been locked up in a cage outside you see no protection from the weather the heat you know the cold air the rain the snow the founder nothing they have no protection. to get well you . know it's ok. across the u.s. crude puppy mills are supported by dog shows and pet stores most of the puppies that are coming from these large scale factory farming kind of operations are being sold in stores even giant

a good businesses are involved like agoa mom center there has been a shocking amount of organized opposition to adverts to increase the standards of care for dogs bred in commercial breeding facilities most of that opposition is coming from huge agricultural groups and industries that have nothing to do with jobs don't buy dog. this is a story about what happens austria's stray bullet kills a young girl in the streets. who happens to have family and daughters in florida. no the mother daughter is very innocent and terry is meaning this is your what happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the police need is a scapegoat so why not choose a 19 year old's black kid with a criminal record who better to pin this on than him and what happens in court.

shot after shot as far as a side deal that we don't know still sure this is true. and it is just one source but you. still not know what childress. impeachment should be behind us although lindsey graham now wants to turn the tables and subpoena the whistleblower in the ukraine scandal fortunately cooler senate republican heads are eager to move on and one urgent issue is a painful one we have been following all along veteran suicides which number some 20 each day and some people think that number is low senator john bozeman an

arkansas republican notes that just this month in arkansas alone a veteran of the national guard along with 2 current national guard members and a member of the army reserve took their own lives our approach simply isn't working as impeachment seemed to stall other activity the senate veterans affairs committee unanimously v.a. grants to nonprofits and community programs step in the right direction or too little too late let's ask matthew hoh a former unite. it states marine and pentagon and state department official now a senior fellow at the center for international policy and he's a certified peer support specialist for mental health and substance abuse disorder and as matthew and i talk you're going to see a phone number at the bottom of your screen for the veterans crisis hotline if you are hearing this show is a pod cast that number is 802738255

matthew what's being called the mission the act will expand comprehensive assistance for family caregivers which until it's passed has only been available to veteran seriously injured in the line of duty on or after september 11th 2001 but these wounds run deep and many of the vets who are taking their lives served long ago correct. oh absolutely holland and thanks for having me on and thanks for continuing to talk about this yet the wounds of war the invisible wounds of war post-traumatic stress disorder moral injury and now as we're seeing traumatic brain injury. don't get better with time they can be managed with their p. with professional care with lifestyle changes however they stay with you for your entire life and as you and i have discussed before. this notion

that. as time goes on it sure gets better has been disproved by studies but also by the knowledge we have that you know men who are in their seventy's sixty's and seventy's who are vietnam veterans who fought 50 years ago or still killing themselves at rates $3.00 to $4.00 times higher than their civilian peers in world war 2 veterans you know so many have died off now because of the time it's been 75 years since the end of that war but we still see world war 2 veterans who are in their eighty's and ninety's. killing themselves and there was one study done a number of years ago that showed that that rate of suicide was 4 times higher than that for men their own age who didn't go to war so you're absolutely right in bringing this up that in mentioning it in this way that it doesn't get better

with time the only way it can be managed is when professional care is involved when family and friends are involved and when the severity of the invisible wound is truly understood following the iranian missile strike against the assad air base in iraq president trump weighed in on reports that 34 service members suffered traumatic brain injuries here's what the president said. then. they had headaches and a couple of other things but i would say and i can report it is not very serious no i don't consider them very serious injuries relative to other injuries and i've seen no i do not consider that to be that injuries no through that has got a sting. simply as a man who doesn't know what he's talking about. you know in where do you blame him for this and where do you blame his advisors in the people at the v.a. the people the department the fence the people at national institute of health who

should be advising him i don't think his ignorance on this issue runs much deeper than the ignorance of most americans it is a these are invisible wounds these are wounds that. are not seen you can even see these wounds by putting someone into an m.r.i. machine the hairs in the brain are so microscopic that the only way you could actually see this wound to see these types of brain injuries is when the person is dead and the head is cracked open and an examination is done of the brain up until that time you cannot actually physically say this person has a brain injury the only way you're able to diagnose it is through the symptoms as well as to through certain experiences the person may have had in this case explosive blast the other thing holland that is so important as to understanding

why this ignorance exists about traumatic brain injury is because these types of brain injuries caused by explosive blasts are relatively new in the sense that they are more common in this is because in these wars in iraq and in afghanistan. we states forces or we have such body armor and we have such vehicle armor that we are surviving things that previous generations of soldiers of war fighters would have been killed in that we are basically getting up and dusting ourselves off from explosive blasts that would have easily killed any of our counterparts in wars previous to this and you see this in such by knowing such information too as that in the 1st and 2nd world war the ratio of killed to wounded was about one of the killed was about $2.00 to $1.00 so for every 2 soldiers wounded there was one

killed but time korea comes around and into vietnam that ratio is now 3 to one in these wars the ratio is 10 to one in iraq and afghanistan because vehicle and body armor improved as well as medical and care improved even more the ratio of wounded to killed was 12 to one and in many cases those of us who were hit by these roadside bombs or by mortar blasts or other types of explosions are an even counted as wounded because we have at that time no visible signs of wound so that's why the v.a. says about 20 percent of the 2700000 men and women who have gone and fought in iraq and afghanistan have dramatic brain injury i mean when you do the math on that right that comes out to well over 500000 of us who have this form of traumatic brain injury because again we survived explosions that previous

generations would not have survived that is an interesting irony that here is better so the numbers don't compare it's apples and oranges now right that that's the right in the fact is that even there's even studies that have shown that our helmets cause the problem because the blast will go up into the helmet and then. we'll get basically trapped inside the helmet and bounce off the top of the helmet into the head so our helmets which protect us and survive and protect us and help us survive from a lot of other things like fragmentation and i know guys who've gotten shot in hit in the helmet and you know it may be making this issue worse for veterans who are surviving the war and coming home and of course i want to put out there that you've got to also consider about the iraqis and the afghans themselves right who have none of this protection and what they're going through right we're speaking with veteran and veterans advocate matthew hoh our servicemen and women are loyal and resolute and they follow the chain of command but how does stuff like

this from their commander in chief play with those in uniform and among vets it's got to be demoralizing to the folks who are in forward positions. i think it does you know when i came back from my 2nd deployment from iraq in 2007 we still had no real understanding of these issues and i had marines because we were combat engineers so we went out and we look for these roadside bombs. we have metal detectors and we looked for land mines and booby traps and things like that in the ground and i am marines who had been in vehicles that were hit by explosions 91011 times and every time they walked away and we came home in 2007 there was hardly any screening there was hardly any care we were basically asked do you feel ok and of course because you know these kids are marines they're going to say yes i feel 5 so

i mean. so maybe 15 years ago it may have been understandable for the commander in chief to make these comments but now it's completely unacceptable he made those comments the fact that like i said maybe you could blame it on the fact he wasn't invited as well but his ignorance was like most americans ignorance on this issue but now however many weeks after he has said this he still has not come back and said hey i'm sorry i made a mistake. i mean when one is trying to do that but you would you would think that to respect the men and women that he is keeping in these wars he would have the where athol to make to to realize his error in this but it certainly does affect us because if you yourself are not suffering from these types of wound then you certainly do know someone else who is and you see the effect that that has on just not on that person who can no longer function like they once functioned who can no

longer live a life like they used to live because of all the problems these bring on but also the way it destroys is absolutely rips of heart relationships families. friendships work situations can mean these things that are matthew we are showing on screen the number for the veterans crisis hotline and for those who are listening to this is a pod cast 802738255 i have about a minute left but i got to ask you for those who are watching or listening who may be veterans or friends or family members what are the warning signs. well you know that there are a number of manifestations one of the things interesting about these types of injuries is that they're late so it's very similar but it's not the same as what the football players are going through where the injury may have occurred you know

a couple of decades ago and now it's surfacing so maybe 101520 years afterwards you start to you'll start to see this in migraines and headaches in confusion and a lack of ability to focus area ability in anger issues or a big one and extreme fatigue and if you're experiencing these things you need to go and talk to your doctor about it and all of that one is you need to make exactly need to bring your your folks seeing your family or friends in if they're reluctant to go because a lot of us are macho we're tough guys well we can we can get through this right i feel i always appreciate you and you are always welcome on the show talking about this important topic please come again thank you and thank you for watching the big picture if your cable company does not have r t america cut the cord we're live at youtube dot com slash r t america and if you have directv we're channel 321 on pluto t.v.

channel 279 if you have the dish dish we're 280 there and all of our shows are available anytime anywhere on r.g.s. new bordeaux bowl t.v. app you can get it free in the app store or on google play and of course we're on demand that you tube dot com slash the big picture r e t i'm holland cook in washington at holland cook on twitter where if you follow me i'll follow you question more. seemed wrong but all wrong just don't call. me. yet to shape our disdain comes to advocate and in gains from it because the trail.

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depths. or a maybe in the shallows. every song cycle. with. the release. and they can be said usually they don't believe. you take a little shots walk this next don't. give a simple i should say. there are a lot of lawmakers in the state of missouri that we know received huge financial

contributions from agricultural industry groups those are the groups that opposed proposition b. and there is no doubt in our minds that those same groups pressured lawmakers to overturn proposition b. and before the session even started there were bills that were pretty filed to do just that you feel bad because it was repealed but you know all of your work all of your effort paid off as made a dramatic difference for this i mean just the fact that over almost half these facilities are out of business who could have envisioned that things are definitely much improved with many of the worst operations eliminated but you still have chronic while others who are operating you still have if you mean treatment of the animals and you still have this defiant attitude that some folks believe they can do whatever they want there are so many issues.