Last Week Tonight is one of those variety shows that keep you guessing, not about what story is the actor-comedian John Oliver is going to cover but instead it’s how he’s going to piss off someone, let it be a person, a conglomerate, or a city and we’ll have an awesome time. Now, what did this week’s June 26th, 2022 episode brought?
Let’s take a look at the episode and recap what happened in today’s episode
John looked at the Supreme Court decisions that took place in the last week and talked about how they roll back the progress made for basic human rights. One of the decisions being, the expansion of gun rights by striking down the New York Gun Law. A major decision coming from the US Supreme Court was overturning Roe.
V. Wade advocated for pregnancy rights and gave access to US Citizens a constitutional right to abortion. Not only overturning the abortion right, but the bill also punishes or investigates it as a crime if a loss of pregnancy has been deliberate or not, and for evidence, but they can also use data from browsing history, search history, text messages, call data & even period tracking apps for women.
The main story was about water, specifically in the American West which has been facing the driest 22-year period since 800 A.D which has had a massive impact on the Colorado River which is one of the key sources of water in southwest America.
John also mentioned that during the initial times when the river’s water was being allocated, the numbers were shown wrongly which was the river only had 12–13-million-acre feet of water but the allocated number was 15-million-acre feet. It was also mentioned that for agricultural use, the water usage for farmers is either use it all or you get none due to which farmers are planting water-intensive crops.
To find an alternative to the dying riverbed, conglomerates are digging up wells and drying up the groundwater digging more wells than required but this is also ending up in the deflating of the ground or other canals that carry water which has also become a serious problem.
Show also showed a couple living under these conditions that reuse the water that they get via groundwater and after reusing it 3 times, that water is used to flush the toilet. They have to go to other people’s houses to shower or either show an ad through craigslist.
John showed that one city which is using the water correctly is Las Vegas and even though the population has increased, the water usage overall has decreased with time making the case that Las Vegas can be a model city that can be looked at, for water usage practices.
The show ended with a message from GOD who with good humor told the people to be mindful about their water usage.
Last Week Tonight is going to be off for a couple of weeks and will be back on July 24, 2022.
