Rain of Terror

  

There are large regions of California that are redder than Ron DeSantis’ governor’s office in Tallahassee, Florida. It’s no accident that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a major Trump apologist, represents a district in California… and that there are many counties within California that have been trying to break off from that otherwise bright blue state. That of course would move these relatively sparsely populated parts of the Golden State squarely into right-wing populist red voting states, tilting both the US Senate and the House further severely to the right. Since the rest of the state would have to support that split, it just ain’t happening.

Red California blames the “tree-hugging” left for environmental policies that to them are the direct cause of all of California’s wildfires, shrugging off the obvious impact of searingly hot, and still rising temperatures, that have turned so much woodland into kindling. They toe the GOP line that global warming has to take a backseat to expanding fossil fuel usage (California has plenty of oil, by the way) and encouraging business interests with a vast reduction in green-oriented policies and regulations. Water needs to be pulled from those massive blue cities and relegated back to farmers, they plead.

To be sure, urban vs agricultural usage is a balancing act, but economic realities tend to tilt the playing field. Here in California, one of our most profitable crops sit on almond trees. Indeed, the Golden State produces almost all of our nation’s almonds and the vast majority of almonds sold worldwide. But almonds are water-hogs, even as drip irrigation and other water-saving techniques have been tried. But according to foodevolution.org:

“A single almond takes about 1.1 gallons of water to produce. Or close to 10 gallons for a handful… California dedicates about 8% of its total agricultural water supply to growing almonds… Almond trees need water year-round, even when they’re not producing almonds… And more almond trees are being planted in California, with the number of almond orchards doubling in the last 20 years.” This is just a sample of that balancing act, with billions of dollars in the offing. And just one example of why not one single Republican US Senator voted for the recent $369 billion bill that prioritized a 40% reduction of US carbon-based emissions by the end of the decade.

We are looking at “once in a thousand” or “once in a hundred” years extremes in mega-destructive weather events… happening every year. Intensity and frequency rising. Still, denial among red voters is staggering. Even as eastern Kentucky was writhing in sequential rainstorms, killer floods decimating entire towns and vast tracts of farmland, her elected representatives voted against the very legislation targeting climate change containment.

And while wildfires plague western states the most, recent flash flooding in inland California communities just may portend another aspect of climate change that has not plagued California for 160 years. Writing for the August 12th Los Angeles Times, staff writer Louis Sahagún reminds us that our past may become a reminder of what out-of-control weather, the product of unrestrained climate change, just might revisit on some of the most valuable land in America: “Even today, as California struggles with severe drought, global warming has doubled the likelihood that weather conditions will unleash a deluge as devastating as the Great Flood of 1862, according to a UCLA study released Friday [8/12].

“In that inundation 160 years ago, 30 consecutive days of rain triggered monster flooding that roared across much of the state and changed the course of the Los Angeles River, relocating its mouth from Venice to Long Beach… If a similar storm were to happen today, the study says, up to 10 million people would be displaced, major interstate freeways such as Interstates 5 and 80 would be shut down for months, and population centers including Stockton, Fresno and parts of Los Angeles would be submerged — a $1-trillion disaster larger than any in world history…

“The paper is the latest piece of research to describe the whiplash effects of a heating planet, where increasing temperatures allow the atmosphere to absorb and store more and more moisture. This atmospheric ‘thirstiness’ can result in either extreme drought and aridity or the massive release of water in the form of an atmospheric river.

“The study used a combination of new, high-resolution weather modeling and existing climate models to learn that the risk of a ‘megaflood’ increases as global temperature rises. It also simulated how a long series of storms fueled by atmospheric rivers over the course of a month in the projected climate of 2081-2100 would affect parts of California at the local level. They found that some locations would get more than 100 inches of precipitation.” Floods here? We have fires. And so what? That’s more than 60 years from now. We’ll figure it out by then. Right…

This notion of distant damage from failing to take action now continues our failure to communicate the imminent seriousness of climate change. As a chunk of polar ice the size of Rhode Island recently broke away within a three-days period, we still speak of “drought” (which is temporary) versus “desertification” (which is both permanent and what is really happening all over the planet). As Miami streets routinely flood, ever so much farther inland after less-than-a-hurricane-level of rain, we speak about what the US would be like in 50 or 100 years. As wildfires devast forests the size of states, we pretend as if this is just a one-off event… although we clearly expect such fires to increase even next year.

Who are we kidding? In early August, Palm Springs (first above picture) shut down its famous tramway, stranding hundreds of tourists, cars were locked in mud, and water poured into Las Vegas Casinos (second picture above) from totally “unexpected” but massive rainfalls. Unexpected? Seriously? I hate to break the news to all those “in the distant future” climate change prognosticators, just about every such prediction has somehow accelerated into the present or the immediate future in recent times. Exactly how angry will the rising generations be at their parents and grandparents for standing by and allowing their futures to be decimated so that a few very rich special interests could make even more money… until their customers are washed or burned away.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we still have not learned that Mother Nature does not particularly care if trying to contain climate change is not politically popular with red state America… she’s still coming at us all!