California isn't experiencing cold weather this winter, but
it's as vulnerable to the deepening climate crisis as the rest of the country.
“It’s been a bit cold
here,” my dad told me on a recent phone call. He lives in Chicago; I’m in San
Diego. The next time I turned on the news, I saw headlines screaming “Polar
Vortex!” with sub-zero temperatures across the Midwest.
Dad’s known in our
family for his stoicism and even keel, but his understatement about the weather
was a bit much, even for him. Surely he’s noticed that the weather has taken a
turn from its normal Chicago standard of freezing and windy to
hypothermia-inducing temperatures so cold that even the polar bear at the
zoo couldn’t take it anymore.
I feel like a kid
who’s been told Christmas is canceled because the drought we’re suffering will
hurt this year’s crop of wildflowers. But the lack of snapdragons and lupines I
look forward to each year is nothing compared to the other catastrophic impacts
of California’s drought.
Half of the fruits,
nuts, and vegetables grown in the U.S. are grown
in California. And growing them
requires water. Our annual rainfall also helps mitigate the risk of wildfires
like last year’s massive Rim Fire. And those are just two major impacts of the
drought on humans. Who knows which endangered species could be pushed over the
edge by the lack of moisture?
Across the nation, the
weather this winter is strange. And yet, some feel that the cold temperatures
are proof that “global warming” is not upon us after all.
The term “global
warming” refers to the average increase in global temperatures. The key word in
that sentence is “average.” If you average the wealth of Bill Gates with your
own holdings and my own, then on average we are billionaires. But I’m still
broke.
Accordingly, the world
can heat up and freak polar vortexes can cause record lows in most of the lower 48 at the same time. The world’s 10 warmest years on record occurred after the year 2000, according
to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
That’s why it makes
more sense to use the term “climate change.” After all, the phenomenon caused
by increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can sometimes
manifest itself in ways that don’t involve warmer–than-usual weather every
single day. We can expect the changing climate to dish out more weather
extremes than before — including extremely cold and snowy winter weather.
But climate change
sounds almost benign. It doesn’t convey the disaster at hand. The climate is
just changing. No biggie.
That’s why I prefer
the term “climate crisis.” It removes the idea that we won’t have winter
extremes but adds the notion that this change is, in fact, a major problem.
We’re seeing the
beginning of climate change in our country, and we’re getting such an
insignificant taste of it that many Americans deny it’s happening at all. But
if the climate crisis continues, the drought that is bringing California to its
knees will become the “new normal.” The rest of the nation will have to get their fruits and
veggies from somewhere else.
In other parts of the
world, the existence of a climate crisis isn’t up for debate. In the Bolivian
Andes, the rains now come late, causing trouble for farmers. In Kenya,
scientists have documented malarial mosquitoes bringing the disease into new
parts of the country as temperatures rise. Along with many small Pacific
islands, Palau is pleading for climate action that might save their
homelands from being washed away.
We need to take action
to prevent the climate from making our planet inhospitable to human life, and
we won’t get very far if our national debate on the existence of the climate
crisis is set back by every single snowstorm.
OtherWords columnist Jill Richardson is the author
of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do
to Fix It. OtherWords.org
