In the wake of a setback from his legislative agenda to combat climate change, President Biden on August 3, 2022 announced a set of new actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “The conditions in the American West which we're seeing around the Colorado River basin have been so dry for more than 20 years that we're no longer speaking of a drought,” said Lis Mullin Bernhardt, an ecosystems expert at UNEP. “We refer to it as ‘aridification’ - a new, very dry normal.” The river is also struggling thanks to overconsumption due to a growing population and an outdated agreement that guarantees allotments for its neighboring states. The reservoirs provide water for agricultural and residential use in Arizona, California, Colorado, Wyoming, Nevada and New Mexico. If conditions don’t improve, Lake Mead and Lake Powell are at risk of reaching “dead pool” status, in which the water is so low it stops flowing out of a reservoir.
