You probably don’t know it, but Cape Town, South Africa, is on the brink of a crisis exceeding anything a major city has faced since 9/11 or World War II.

 

Don’t feel bad. If you get your news through Twitter or your peers, the way most of us do, how would you know that the major port city is about to run out of water? You wouldn’t know, because no one is talking about it. And yet there it is. The South African government has put Day Zero, the day when almost all public taps will be shut off, at April 12. That’s a little over a month away.

 

So how did the city of four million reach this point? And even more puzzling, at least to me, is why is this not a bigger story? I watch the news every morning, I read articles from The Washington Post and The New York Times regularly, AND I check Twitter multiple times a day. The first I heard about the crisis was just a few days ago.

 

Let’s start with the easy question. Cape Town is approaching Day Zero because the city gets almost all of its water supply from six rain-dependent dams. The coastal region of South Africa where Cape Town is located typically experiences very wet winters, which keeps the dams full through the dry summer season. But thanks to our friend climate change (it’s real and we’re starting to see the effects right now!), the past three winters have been unseasonably dry.

 

In other words, Cape Town is experiencing one of the worst droughts in its history, and the city has done such a good job of conserving water in the past that they didn’t start investing in additional water sources until very recently. The city is scrambling to finish last-minute desalination plants, while citizens who can afford it are digging their own private wells and water tanks.

 

And on April 12, all of the city’s taps, excluding those in vital institutions like hospitals, will be shut off. That means four million people will have to queue at 200 distribution sites for their daily 25 liters until a solution is found. It is, quite plainly, anarchy waiting to happen.

 

I think the disheartening answer to my second question is that most people aren’t well informed about world news, and the reason for THAT is that most people simply don’t care, or that most news platforms assume we don’t care.

 

America has always been a country separate, by chance and by choice, from the rest of the world. Lin Manuel-Miranda put it eloquently when he said our country is “young, scrappy and hungry,” with a desire to do things differently than any other country. Trump’s “America first” ideology has only exacerbated this isolation from the rest of the world. But the problem is that we don’t just want to stand separate from all the rest, we want to stand above them, too.  

 

Think about it. When a story breaks about a terror attack or natural disaster somewhere in the world, the first thing reported is how many Americans were killed or injured, as if death is less of a tragedy when the dead body belongs to a foreigner. Anyone can tell you about the Flint water crisis, but how many know or care about the famine threatening over three million people in Yemen? Obviously the first responsibility of a government is towards its own citizens, but who said the citizens have to be so globally unaware?

 

I don’t think that any of us believe an American life is inherently more valuable than a Yemeni life, or a South African life, or any other country. I’m also not trying to shame anyone. What I think we need to realize is that we have an America-first culture that subtly, and explicitly, implies that we are more important than any other country. That’s a message that goes against everything America stands for.

 

So I take the Cape Town water crisis as a double warning. Firstly, climate change is here, it’s starting to impact us right now, and if we don’t prepare Cape Town will not be the only major city facing a Day Zero. And second, as citizens of an increasingly interconnected world, it’s our responsibility to pay attention and care about what’s happening around us. Being informed about the events in our own country is important, but so is seeing the warning signs in other places around the globe.

 

After all, looking past ourselves, and caring for others, is truly what makes America great.