Linda Lyon, a military veteran and former president of the Arizona School Board Association, writes here about the devastating effects of climate change and the lack of will to confront it.
Consider some of the evidence she offers:
The news over the past month has been full of climate change stories. You’ve no doubt seen that Lake Powell, Lake Mead and the Great Salt Lake are all at record lows and although drops were predicted, the pace at which they are happening, is shocking. Lake Powell is now below the target level requiring mandatory cutbacks next year to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico with California following if the decline continues.
Record heat blasted the Pacific Northwest last month, with Portland hitting 116 degrees and Seattle 108 degrees, both record highs. Even more surprising, was the 121 degree temperature hit in the British Columbiavillage of Lytton.
The deaths of almost 200 people is attributed to the recent Pacific Northwest heat wave, 50 hawk chickswere found to have flung themselves from their nests 50 feet high just to try to escape the heat, an estimated one billion mussels, sea stars and other shore-dwellers died from exposure to unusually hot air, and countless fish are struggling to survive, including the endangered Chinook salmon which can’t survive beyond their egg stage in overheated waters.
And it isn’t just in the Pacific Northwest. As of July 23rd, the U.S. had set 585 all-time heat records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). One place, Death Valley, hit 130, considered the hottest reliable temperature ever recorded there.
According to the University of Nebraska’s Drought Monitor, 60% of the U.S. West is in exceptional or extreme drought with less than 1% of the West not in drought or abnormally dry. Average rain- and snowfall per year in the West has fallen from 22 inches per year in the 1980s and 1990s, to 19 inches from 2010 to 2020 and only 13.6 inches from July 2020 to June 2021. Now in a megadrought, the West has extremely low soil moisture, setting the stage for more frequent, and much larger and hotter wildfires.
These fires now rage across the U.S. West, and in Oregon alone, over 475,000 acres have burnt thus far in eight fires, with the largest, the Bootleg fire, generating so much energy and extreme heat that it’s creating its own clouds and thunderstorms and sending dense smoke 3,000 miles from one side of the country to the other. By the third week in July, 60 other fires were burning across the American West for a total of over one million acres consumed by fire. In fact, the average million acres burned in wildfires each year has doubled in the past two decades. And, they are happening earlier in the year and more often over the years, negatively impacting the ecosystem’s ability to regenerate.
Open the link and read it all.
The rhetoric of “Save the Planet” and “We are Killing the Planet” is quite wrongheaded. The planet will be here long after we are gone.
We are killing ourselves, our babies and grandbabies is what we are doing. Tens of thousands of children starve to death every year because we are too greedy to “share the wealth.” Weather is becoming quite chaotic because we are too greedy to do what is necessary to curb climate change. People are dying in droves because we are too selfish to wear masks, get vaccinated, etc.
We are not killing the planet! We are committing mass suicide.
Good points all.
The Planet doesn’t care
The Planet doesn’t care
If humans suicide
No matter how we fare
The Earth will just abide
The climate doesn’t care
If humans curb emission
It always will be there
Despite its hot position
The Sapiens don’t care
If species will survive
If future will be bare
And no one will survive
“With no one left alive”
The Dinosaurs won’t fret
If humans swell or shrink
Cuz Dinosaurs are dead
And also went extinct
And Dodo won’t regret
If human disappears
Instead, be glad, I bet
“It serves ’em right, so cheers!”
The Universe is moot
On humans and their kin
To give them all the boot
Is really not a sin
The Universe is mute”
Not moot
Self Preservation”
Save the planet
From the human
Just de-man-it
Just entomb him
The Gift of Death?
Suicide or homicide?
Really, what’s the diff?
Human folks will not abide
Living as a gift
Even before the most recent drought, Colorado River water was already more than spoken for.
In other words, more water was allotted to the various states than actually existed.
Apart from drought, there is simply a problem with too many people living in the arid southwest.
Places like Tucson have been sucking water out of ancient ground reservoirs at rates that far exceed replacement by orders of magnitude.
Tucson will eventually collapse quite literally, since the ground is no longer supported after the water is removed.
Not sure what it is like now, but when I lived there in the 90’s development was completely out of control. Their official policy was to have the average Joe conserve water to allow for more development! (more golf courses, hotels, outside “misting” air conditioning, etc). It was nuts.
Officials saw no irony whatsoever in fining the average person for “wasting” water, while at the same time granting permits out the yin yang for limitless development.
And then of course, in their infinite wizdumb, Arizona officisls installed an “open” aqueduct (from which a huge amount of water simply evaporates) to feed southern Arizona cities and towns with Colorado River water that had already been spoken for upstream.
And of course, Mexico said adios to the Colorado River years ago.
To get any water now, they’d have to hire Elon Musk to bore a tunnel to siphon water from up in Colorado somewhere.
Or maybe they could hire drug smugglers, since they are very good at digging tunnels.
It’s getting difficult to live here. We’re on fire alert, air quality alert, pandemic disease alert, drought alert, “flex” energy saving alert to avoid blackouts, and always earthquake alert, all at the same time. The water levels are so low, they’re going to have to shut down carbon saving hydroelectric turbines soon. I’m trying to save water, and yet I still see my neighbors watering their lawns in the morning instead of the evening or not at all, watching most of the water evaporate. Broken sprinkler heads pour gallons into the street. The country club’s expansive golf course nearby is still pristinely green. Not too far from me, mansions keep huge swimming pools full. Privatization moguls live there.
The restaurants and bars down the street were packed last night with the huddled, maskless masses. It’s a different kind of yearning to breathe free, a dumber kind. I see countless people sitting in cars by the curb, idling their engines to charge their phones while they use them. Private jets fly overhead with single passengers, all day. Everyone’s face glows looking at a device that was extracted from the earth using low wage labor overseas. And now they want to start extracting the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to sell more batteries that store, not generate electricity.
One block to the northwest of my little apartment live the One Percenters, who emit double the carbon of the poorer half of the world. https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/carbon-emissions-richest-1-percent-more-double-emissions-poorest-half-humanity Two blocks to the southeast of me, a sprawling homeless veteran camp of tents fills all the sidewalks and parks.
Way up high overhead, the occasional immature billionaire floats by in suborbital space, leaving combustion products in the stratosphere, a dewey eyed look of infantile wonder on his face.
And Congress and Biden just “failed” (refused, really) to renew the rent moratorium, so the tent city will grow bigger.
Our society is coming apart at the seams. I’d give it 20 more years max.
Eviction moratorium
I have learned in the last few weeks to keep my eyes on the ground in front of me when I go out for walks. The looks on people’s faces as they sit on the sidewalk with nice wristwatches, shoes, clothes, and garbage bags full of all the worldly possessions they have left is unbearable. I feel guilty being able to pay my rent. School starts here in a couple weeks. I’m going to have to do triage. The cold blooded vipers who rule the world just — I can’t even finish this sentence.
That Congress is going on “summer break” leaving 11 million people to potentially be evicted in coming weeks is grotesque.
But the homeless don’t matter to most members of Congress or the President, because without an address, they probably won’t — and maybe can’t — even vote.
Joe waited a month, until the day before Congress was to leave, before calling for an extension of the eviction moratorium. Too little too late. The Dem majority of Congress gave the extension a shrug of the cold shoulder. Some threatened to leave town if it came to a vote. The third branch of government outright opposed the extension. The fourth estate was watching the Olympics. The infrastructure bill is half what it originally was, and one sixth of what was needed to meet the moment. I think the media can stop the comparisons to FDR now. Meanwhile, a company called Nuro is about to eliminate jobs in food and medicine delivery. They’re already delivering Domino’s pizza with driverless vehicles in Houston. Then, there’s Amazon. What’s the minimum wage, one shell with two peanuts, right? The rich are getting richer.
Shock. Doctrine. Disaster. Capitalism.
Whew, the WordPress moderation program has me in its sights today.
And you didn’t even say Kavemanaugh
I like beer and kave
I am really brave
Kavemanaugh my name
Justus is my game
Kaveinawe my name
Say it just the same
Kavernbetweenhisearsnaugh. Not sure his name and the word ‘moderation’ belong in the same discussion.
@ Leftcoast. It sounds like you are in an area where all these issues are amplified – which makes it feel even more discouraging. I wish more people could understand try to embrace the motto, “Live simply so others my simply live.”
understand and try
Yes, thank you, climate change and economic injustice despair is as dangerous as is climate change and economic injustice denial. Seeing the faces of students in person will soon buoy me. Always does. This year, reading their writing on paper instead of a screen is going to be a little thrill too, like never before.
LeftCoastTeacher,
Thank you for such poignant, achingly true writing. Your description of the problems and the wealth disparity is powerful.
I’m too tired to try to describe Montana, but the daily smoke is so depressing. It can feel like waking up to an apocalypse every day. It is so hard to keep our spirits up.
Yes, I very much know what that’s like. When the pandemic hit, I already had masks to deal with the smoke.
It is apparent that most people in the United States and around the world that are aware of global warming do care, but it is also apparent that the wealthiest 1 percent use their wealth to corrupt governments when their wealth is tied to the old way of doing things that is causing global warming and polluting our water, soil, and air.
How long has a majority of Americans favored a wealth tax yet the country still doesn’t have one?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-poll/majority-of-americans-favor-wealth-tax-on-very-rich-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1Z9141
How long has a majority of Americans favored abortion rights but there is no end in the effort to restrict and do away with abortion?
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/07/730183531/poll-majority-want-to-keep-abortion-legal-but-they-also-want-restrictions
How long has a majority of Americans wanted the government do to more on climate change?
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2020/06/23/two-thirds-of-americans-think-government-should-do-more-on-climate/
The explanation may be that rich people and psychopaths tend to have 7 distinct traits.
“There’s an unsettling correlation between psychopathy, a personality disorder characterized by a lack of conscience, and those who find personal wealth and success.”
…
“Psychopaths often share the same goals as many others: money, power, material goods, and influence. But as Babiak and Hare report in their co-authored book “Snakes in Suits,” the difference between a typical corporate worker and a psychopath is that the latter views any means, even the harmful, cruel or illegal, as justified if they help achieve the end.”
…
https://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-the-7-distinct-traits-many-rich-people-have-in-common-with-psychopaths-2015-3
I’m so worried about our native fish, which require cold waters to live.
And insects. And birds… And mammals.
Why did they call it social distancing? It’s physical distancing. Why do they call them social media? They are social harms. Why do they call it social justice? If there is no economic including climate justice, there is no justice at all.
Why do they call it social justice if there is no economic including climate justice”?
So ‘s all just us.
Any other questions.