A2 · Elementary
7 min
climateurban planningtechnologyenvironment
Water in the Streets: Cities, Climate, and the Future
El Agua en las Calles: Ciudades, Clima y el Futuro
An American company recalls 3,800 robotaxis because they can drive into flooded areas. Fletcher and Octavio go deep on climate change, cities, and what water is doing to the world we built.
Una empresa americana retira 3.800 taxis robotizados porque pueden entrar en zonas inundadas. Fletcher y Octavio hablan del cambio climático, las ciudades y el agua.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| inundado | flooded | La calle está inundada después de la tormenta. |
| inundación | flood | Hay una inundación en el centro de la ciudad. |
| tormenta | storm | La tormenta llega muy rápido en primavera. |
| absorber | to absorb | El suelo absorbe el agua de la lluvia. |
| lluvia | rain | Hay mucha lluvia en Madrid este año. |
| seco | dry | El verano en España es muy seco. |
A tech company just had to recall nearly four thousand self-driving cars because they kept driving into floodwater.
And the more I sat with that, the more it felt like a perfect little parable for where we actually are with climate change.
Waymo.
Waymo.
Sí, yo leo esto también.
Yes, I read about this too.
Right, Waymo.
For listeners who don't know, this is Google's autonomous vehicle spinoff.
They operate robotaxi fleets in several American cities.
No driver, you just get in and the software takes you where you're going.
El coche es inteligente.
The car is intelligent.
Pero no ve el agua.
But it doesn't see the water.
That's exactly it.
The software didn't recognize flooded roads as a hazard it should avoid.
So you had these autonomous vehicles just...
rolling into standing water.
Which, if you know anything about cars, is not ideal.
El agua es un problema grande ahora.
Water is a big problem now.
En muchas ciudades.
In many cities.
And that's where I want to go with this, because the Waymo story is almost too neat.
You've got the most sophisticated driving technology in the world, and it fails because of flooding.
Flooding that is happening more and more because of climate change.
These two things are colliding.
Madrid tiene muchas lluvias fuertes ahora.
Madrid has a lot of heavy rain now.
Antes, no.
Before, it didn't.
Has it gotten noticeably worse in your lifetime?
Sí.
Yes.
Yo recuerdo veranos muy secos.
I remember very dry summers.
Ahora hay tormentas grandes.
Now there are big storms.
Spain actually had one of the deadliest flash flood events in European history just a couple of years back.
The Valencia floods.
Over two hundred people killed.
That was the reality behind the statistics.
Valencia es muy triste.
Valencia is very sad.
El agua llega muy rápido.
The water comes very fast.
La gente no puede salir.
People cannot escape.
And that speed is the thing that catches people off guard.
We tend to imagine flooding as this slow, rising process.
But flash floods don't work that way.
A dry riverbed fills in minutes.
That's what happened in Valencia, and it's what's happening in cities around the world with increasing frequency.
Las ciudades tienen un problema.
Cities have a problem.
El suelo no absorbe el agua.
The ground does not absorb the water.
This is something urban planners have known for decades and mostly ignored.
When you pave everything, you remove the ground's capacity to soak up rainfall.
The water has nowhere to go except along the surface, into streets, into buildings, into cars.
Sí.
Yes.
El cemento no bebe agua.
Cement does not drink water.
Solo el suelo natural bebe agua.
Only natural ground drinks water.
"Cement doesn't drink water." I want to put that on a bumper sticker.
Las ciudades construyen más casas, más calles.
Cities build more houses, more streets.
Y hay más agua ahora.
And there is more water now.
Both things at once.
That's the pincer.
Urbanization is accelerating at exactly the same moment that rainfall patterns are becoming more extreme.
More surface area that can't absorb water, plus more water coming down in shorter, more violent bursts.
En Sevilla también.
In Seville too.
En el sur de España, hay más inundaciones en primavera.
In the south of Spain, there are more floods in spring.
The Mediterranean basin is one of the regions climate scientists flag as particularly vulnerable.
It's warming faster than the global average.
The rainfall doesn't become more frequent, necessarily, but when it comes, it comes harder.
El verano es muy seco.
The summer is very dry.
Y después viene mucha lluvia.
And then a lot of rain comes.
Es un problema.
It is a problem.
Dry, baked earth can't absorb a sudden downpour either.
So the drought actually makes the flooding worse.
Which is one of those cruel ironies that climate science keeps handing us.
Las ciudades necesitan cambiar.
Cities need to change.
Pero el cambio es muy difícil.
But change is very difficult.
When you say difficult, do you mean technically or politically?
Because I think they're different problems.
Los dos.
Both.
Pero la política es más difícil que la técnica.
But politics is more difficult than the technical side.
Hard to argue with that.
There are cities doing interesting things, though.
Rotterdam in the Netherlands has essentially redesigned itself around water.
They have public squares that double as reservoirs.
Parking garages built to flood intentionally and then drain.
They call it the sponge city model.
Una ciudad esponja.
A sponge city.
Me gusta esta idea.
I like this idea.
El suelo absorbe el agua, como una esponja.
The ground absorbs the water, like a sponge.
Exactly.
And Rotterdam has history with this.
Half the Netherlands is below sea level, so they've been engineering their relationship with water for centuries.
The difference now is that other cities, cities that never had to think this way, are suddenly scrambling to catch up.
Madrid no tiene este historia.
Madrid doesn't have this history.
Madrid es una ciudad en el centro.
Madrid is a city in the center.
Lejos del mar.
Far from the sea.
Which is part of why it's so striking when Madrid floods.
It's not a coastal city.
It's not supposed to be thinking about this.
And yet.
Ahora todas las ciudades piensan en el agua.
Now all cities think about water.
Es el futuro.
It is the future.
Back to Waymo for a second, because I think there's something almost philosophical in that recall.
We're building the technology of tomorrow on the infrastructure of yesterday, and the infrastructure of yesterday was designed for a climate that no longer fully exists.
These cars aren't broken.
The world they were designed for has changed.
El coche no tiene la culpa.
The car is not at fault.
El problema es el agua en la calle.
The problem is the water in the street.
Right, and fixing the software is a patch.
The real fix is the street.
That's an enormously bigger undertaking.
But it raises the question of whether cities are actually budgeting and planning for this kind of adaptation, or whether they're just waiting and hoping the storms stay manageable.
Muchas ciudades esperan.
Many cities wait.
Actuar cuesta mucho dinero.
Acting costs a lot of money.
And the people making budget decisions today are not the people who will be dealing with the consequences twenty years from now.
That's the fundamental misalignment.
It's not stupidity, it's incentives.
Which doesn't make it less dangerous.
Los políticos piensan en cuatro años.
Politicians think in four years.
El clima necesita cien años.
The climate needs a hundred years.
That is a genuinely sharp observation.
Four years versus a hundred years.
The electoral cycle and the climate cycle are completely out of sync, and that gap is where a lot of the inaction lives.
Oye, Fletcher.
Hey, Fletcher.
"Inundado" es una palabra importante hoy.
"Inundado" is an important word today.
¿Sabes qué significa?
Do you know what it means?
Flooded.
Waterlogged.
You used it earlier when you were talking about what happened to streets in Madrid.
"La calle está inundada." The street is flooded.
Muy bien.
Very good.
"Inundado" es un adjetivo.
"Inundado" is an adjective.
La ciudad está inundada.
The city is flooded.
El coche está inundado.
The car is flooded.
And the noun is "inundación", right?
Like "una inundación en Valencia." A flood in Valencia.
Which is also, funnily enough, related to the English word "inundate." Same Latin root.
It literally means to wash over with waves.
Sí.
Yes.
"Inundación" viene del latín.
"Inundación" comes from Latin.
El agua entra en la ciudad.
The water enters the city.
Eso es una inundación.
That is a flood.
So next time I'm watching a Spanish weather forecast and I hear "riesgo de inundación", I know exactly what to do.
Stay home.
Keep the car, autonomous or otherwise, out of the street.
Muy bien, Fletcher.
Very good, Fletcher.
Pero tu coche inteligente no escucha la radio.
But your smart car does not listen to the radio.