Drought. Fires. Some Evangelicals tell us that California and the other Western States are being punished by God for legalizing marijuana (recreational use in some states, medical usage in California, etc.) or leading the charge to recognize gay marriage or allowing abortion or not teaching creationism in schools. That the drought is hitting the most religious and socially conservative parts of these states seems to be lost, and that Oklahoma is raging in tornados, and the Bible Belt Gulf States face rising tides and powerful hurricanes in unprecedented volumes is simply glossed over.
Some other Evangelicals tell us that after the Great Flood, God promised mankind that there would be no further global natural disasters and that the humans could use the earth’s resources without concern. To West Coast skeptics, they point to the up-coming water-rescue of an expected heavy-rainfall El Niño that God is delivering to make it all right. This bolsters their point that weather cycles, even the extreme ones the earth is facing now with year-after-year of record-breaking average temperatures, are natural and not man-made realities. A few are beginning to admit that it just might be a combination of both.
Indeed, it does seem as if the West Coast is poised for a particularly wet and virulent El Niño this winter, one reminiscent of the recent extreme El Niño conditions of 1982/83 or 1997/8, where flooding and mudslides slammed damage and turmoil into California life (pictured above). The coming El Niño is likely to replicate some of this unpleasantness, but what it probably will not do is end California’s massive drought, a climate change that most experts set as a rather permanent and complete “reset” of California’s water patterns, one requiring a revolutionary ground-up rethink of her entire agricultural water usage patterns.
Her over-prosperous nut farming (at 1.1 gallons per single almond, 3.5 to 9 gallons for one walnut, .75 gallons per solitary pistachio) and wine industry (at .3 gallon per grape) – disproportionate profit centers for decades – are unsustainable in the face of this reality. As fires rage in and around the Napa wine country, this fragility of nature becomes hideously clear. Noah S. Diffenbaugh, associate professor of earth system science at Stanford, andChristopher B. Field, director of the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science, wrote this little reminder in the September 18th New York Times, that notwithstanding this coming El Niño, the drought is here to stay for two basic reasons:
“The first is that California has missed at least a year’s worth of precipitation, meaning that it would take an extraordinarily wet rainy season to single-handedly break the drought. Even if that happened, we would most likely suffer from too much water too fast, as occurred in the early 1980s and late 1990s, when El Niño delivered more rainfall than aquifers could absorb and reservoirs could store.
“The second is that California is facing a new climate reality, in which extreme drought is more likely. The state’s water rights, infrastructure and management were designed for an old climate, one that no longer exists.
“Our research has shown that global warming has doubled the odds of the warm, dry conditions that are intensifying and prolonging this drought, which now holds records not only for lowest precipitation and highest temperature, but also for the lowest spring snowpack in the Sierra Nevada in at least 500 years. These changing odds make it much more likely that similar conditions will occur again, exacerbating other stresses on agriculture, ecosystems and people.
“At the same time, extreme wet periods may also increase because a warming atmosphere can carry a larger load of water vapor. In a possible preview, persistent El Niño conditions this year could force Californians to face both flooding and drought simultaneously. The more rainfall there is, the more water will be lost as runoff or river flow, increasing the risk of flooding and landslides. Add in the fact that the drought and wildfires have hardened the ground, and a paradox arises wherein the closer El Niño comes to delivering enough precipitation to break the drought this year, the greater the potential for those hazards.”
While we know that these dire climatic changes are not simply a function of man’s burning fossil fuels; natural cycles, solar flares, etc., etc. have had their significant impact as well. But mankind has been a major contributor without doubt. Our new American tradition of kicking the can down the road, reacting to natural disasters instead of preparing for them, has become a perennial dance with disaster. It is a governmental pattern that has to change, but that change faces political resistance among people who really should know better.
Among poo-pooing the ability of mankind to influence climate-balance restoration, questioning whether mankind and not nature created the climate change, ignoring the massive costs of climate change to date, believing that any efforts to restore balance will destroy our economy and completely ignoring the massive job-creation that environmental alternatives will create, I watched as debating GOP candidates vied with each other to refuse to deal with that massive economy destroyer: global climate change. As farmers the world over abandon their farms over drought, joining in a growing chorus of discontent and migration has fueled recent fundamentalist uprisings, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, it is equally clear that there are many more costs that the world will face by reason of failing to grapple meaningfully with climate change.
“Even when we address the impact of climate change, the hard dollar costs are there... and growing. “In the United States, we experienced more than 80 ‘billion-dollar’ climate and weather disasters in the last decade, and several have cost much more. The regularity of these episodes and the resulting damage shows that we are not prepared for the current climate, let alone a changing one that portends more weather extremes.
From these disasters, we can take away two lessons: Increasing resilience now can build protection for the future, and stressed systems are more prone to disasters… For instance, the risk from a period of extremely low water supply in California is far greater when high temperatures, like those we’ve seen here over the last two years, prolong drought. There are also risks when the combined demands of households, manufacturing, farming and ecosystems tax water supplies even in good years, or when forest management practices create conditions that fuel fires. Californians will benefit by reducing these interacting stresses.” NY Times.
As politicians tell us that America has to become a leader again, garnering respect from every corner of the world, I wonder why that leadership is couched in military strength and not in technological leadership to counter the greatest challenge that all of humanity has had to face since recorded history: climate change. Climate change will kill and displace more people, directly or indirectly, than both the 20th century world wars combined. We can and must make a difference.
I’m Peter Dekom, and genuine leadership requires genuine goals from responsible politicians, a body of people who are indeed in very short supply.
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