Earth Journey

First Stop: Africa

Water is one of those resources, like breathable air, that most of us take for granted. Unlike much of the world where finding clean sources of the precious fluid is a daily chore, we need only turn on the tap or open a bottle to quench our thirst. We might be forgiven for assuming this will always be the case. But we would be mistaken.

While the exact outlines of our future world remains murky, one thing is certain. The Earth and especially the western United States including northern California will be a lot hotter and drier. It is a fact of physics that heat converts liquid water to gas in an evaporative process that is as elegant as it is deadly.

Lake Chad is an example. In the 1960's, it glistened like a giant Vermont-sized blue jewel on the edge of the Sahara desert in central Africa. But as we filled the thin sleeve of air that envelopes the Earth with man-made, heat-trapping gases, the atmosphere became a thick, smothering blanket, a kind of super-sponge, insatiably drawing water from the Earth's lakes, rivers and reservoirs, and disrupting the climate across the planet, especially in Africa. Once equaling the surface coverage of 330 Shasta Lakes, Lake Chad has steadily shrunk over the past 40 years, largely due to climate change and is now officially extinct, vanished into the desert-the latest spectacular ecological disaster in what promises to be an endless series of such calamities this century. Once relied upon by 20 million people, the absence of the great lake has transformed the region into confusion and chaos and sparked some to wage a murderous rampage of genocidal frenzy in Darfur.

Second Stop: North America

Closer to home, our own dry misery is just beginning:

" According to the federal U.S. Drought Monitor, approximately 34 percent of the contiguous U.S. was in moderate-to-exceptional drought in early June.
" According to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. the 12-month period from May, 2006 through May, 2007 was the driest on record for California and Nevada.
" The abnormally dry conditions have led to severe-to-extreme drought from the southern California coast eastward to Arizona and north along the Sierra Nevada Mountains where seasonal snowpack was less than 50% of average.
" The water year (July 1-June 30) in Los Angeles continued to be the driest on record for the city since records began in 1877.
" Downtown Los Angeles had received only 2.47 inches of rain, almost one foot below the normal amount of rainfall for the period.
" In the West, where mountain snowpack is relied upon to supply water needs throughout the region, below-average rain and snowfall have become increasingly common. In only two of the past nine years has snowpack on April 1 been at or above the long-term average in at least half the region.
" This was the driest spring on record for Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, with severe-to-extreme drought conditions throughout the region including Florida, and North Carolina.

And where there is extreme drought, we will often find unrelenting heat:

According to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ncdc.html, the world's largest active archive of weather data,

" 23 of the 24 hottest years ever recorded on Earth occurred in the last 26 years.

" 17 of the hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 19 years.

" 13 of the hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 15 years.

" 11 of the 12 hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 11 years.

" 8 of the 9 hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 10 years.

" 6 of the 7 hottest years ever recorded occurred in the last 6 years.

" The 2006 average annual temperature for the contiguous U.S. was the 2nd warmest on record and within 0.1°F of the record set in 1998.

" 2005 was the hottest year ever recorded for global temperature.

" The last eight 5-year periods (2002-2006, 2001-2005, 2000-2004, 1999-2003, 1998-2002, 1997-2001, 1996-2000, 1995-1999), were the warmest 5-year periods in the last 112 years of national records.

" The 1990's was the warmest decade of the millennium soon to be eclipsed by the present decade.

" The 20th century was the warmest century of the millennium but the 21st century will exceed it by far if present trends continue.

" According to scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. this past May was the hottest May ever, according to global land-surface temperature recordings.

" The global April land-surface temperature was the warmest on record.

" March 2007 was more than five degrees F warmer than average throughout the contiguous U.S., making it the second warmest March on record.

" More than 2,500 daily record-high temperatures were set in the contiguous U.S. in March.

" On March 13 alone, more than 250 daily high temperature records were set.

" The combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the highest for any January on record.

" The March to May period is also the hottest ever recorded.

" The period from January to June of this year is hotter than any comparable period ever recorded.

" The combined global land- and ocean-surface temperature tied with 1998 as the warmest January-May period.

" For the January-April period, the global surface temperature ranked warmest on record.

" The global temperature was the warmest on record for the December-February three-month period.

" During the past century, global surface temperatures have increased at a rate near 0.11°F (0.06°C) per decade.

" U.S. and global annual temperatures are now approximately 1.0°F warmer than at the start of the 20th century.

" The rate of temperature increase has been three times larger since 1976, or 0.32°F (0.18°C) per decade.

Third Stop: Australia

Africa and North America are not the only continents to experience a severe drought.

" According to the Australian Government's Bureau of Meteorology National Climate Center, "many catchments in eastern Australia are excessively dry from a very protracted period of below average rainfall and above average temperatures." (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/drought/drought.shtml)
" For the 12-month period from June 2006 to May 2007, there were "serious to severe rainfall deficiencies" across Australia. Severe rainfall deficiency is defined as rainfall that is among the lowest five per cent for the period in question.
" The rainfall deficiencies have occurred against a backdrop of multi-year rainfall deficits that have severely stressed water supplies in the east and southwest of the country.
" According to the London Guardian in November of 2006, "great swaths of the continent are entering what scientists yesterday called a 'one in a thousand years drought'". (http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1941942,00.html)
" With many regions in their fifth year of drought, more than half of Australia's farmland was experiencing drought.
" The Murray-Darling river system, which provides three-quarters of the water consumed nationally, was already 54% below the previous record minimum. Last month it recorded its lowest ever October flows. Inflow this year was just 5% of the average.
" Last week, the government forecast its lowest wheat crop for 12 years, a 62% decrease on last year.
" Adding to the government's embarrassment, the leading scientific body in Australia - the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation - predicted that rainfall in parts of eastern Australia could drop by 40% by 2070, along with a 7C rise in temperature (12.6F).
" It said that by 2030 the risk of bush fires would be higher, that droughts would be more severe and that rainfall and stream run-off would be lower.
" South Australia's premier, Mike Rann, said, "What we're seeing with this drought is a frightening glimpse of the future with global warming."
" In April of 2007, according to the London Independent, Australia is in the grip of its worst drought on record, the victim of changing weather patterns attributed to global warming. (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/australasia/article2465960.ece)
" Australia warned that it will have to switch off the water supply to the continent's food bowl unless heavy rains break an epic drought - heralding what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation.
" The Murray-Darling basin in south-eastern Australia yields 40 per cent of the country's agricultural produce. The basin, the size of France and Spain combined, provides 85 per cent of the water used nationally for irrigation. The two rivers that feed the region are so pitifully low that there will soon be only enough water for drinking supplies.
" The Prime Minister, John Howard announced that unless there is significant rainfall in the next six to eight weeks, irrigation will be banned in the principal agricultural area. Crops such as rice, cotton and wine grapes will fail, citrus, olive and almond trees will die, along with livestock.
" A ban on irrigation, which would remain in place until May next year, spells possible ruin for thousands of farmers, already debt-laden and in despair after six straight years of drought.
" Some farmers have already given up, abandoning pastoral properties that have been in their families for generations. The rural suicide rate has soared.
" The causes of the current drought, which began in 2002 but has been felt most acutely over the past six months, are complex. But few scientists dispute the part played by climate change, which is making Australia hotter and drier.

Fourth Stop: South America

North America, Australia and Africa are not the only continents to be affected by climate change.

" According to Reuters, "Scientists said "the once-massive Chacatalya glacier above Bolivia's La Paz city will disappear within 12 months, provoking mass water, food and electricity shortages." (http://tvscripts.edt.reuters.com/2007-06-08/35342909.html)
" According to Edson Ramirez, Coordinator of PHI-UNESCO Work Group For Snow and Ice in Latin America and the Caribbean, "Without a doubt global warming is one of the principal factors that is provoking the melting of these glaciers. It is something that is not just having a local impact - as could be thought in the case of Chacaltaya - but we are observing its impact in all of the different glaciers we are monitoring. For example there are around 10 glaciers and in all of them it has been observed that since the 1980s they have been melting much more significantly. The proportion (of glacier melt) has tripled."
" Ramirez said, "The water that comes from glacier melt…feeds into and provides drinking water to the city of La Paz and, importantly, the city of El Alto. On the other hand the water from this glacier melt feeds into 10 hydroelectric plants that also generates the electricity for La Paz and El Alto. And there is a third point in that we find food security will be compromised because the water from the Altiplano glacier melt is being used for agricultural activities."
" Ramirez warned that is just the start of the real disaster - predicting that the entire Chacaltaya glacier could disappear within the next 12 months.
" Glaciers act as the world's water towers - in fact 75 percent of the world's fresh water is stored in glacial ice.
" Ramirez said if Chacaltaya disappears as expected, the results will be catastrophic. Without water the region's hydroelectric system would also collapse and no water for irrigation would result in severe food shortages.
" According to National Geographic, "Scientists are finding that glaciers and ice sheets are surprisingly touchy. Instead of melting steadily, like an ice cube on a summer day, they are prone to feedbacks, when melting begets more melting and the ice shrinks precipitously. At Chacaltaya, for instance, the shrinking glacier exposed dark rocks, which sped up its demise by soaking up heat from the sun. Other feedbacks are shriveling bigger mountain glaciers ahead of schedule and sending polar ice sheets slipping into the ocean." (http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0706/feature2/index.html)

Final Stop: Denial

The facts of climate change are undeniable, unmistakable and seemingly unstoppable. It is clear that as we continue business as usual, the planet will grow warmer and the ramifications will touch every continent and every life. No one will escape. It is the most severe cataclysm to affect Earth since the evolution of the human mammal. We are the first and only species on the planet capable of destroying ourselves and most other biological species and we are doing so with great speed, determination and intensity. It is a remarkable thing to witness what would seem to be a kind of blind, unknowing planetary genocide while completely denying it is occurring. The evidence could not be more clear and yet the denial could not be more absolute. We will do this thing and we will not stop and we will not admit we are doing this thing until it is too late. We are like happy, naïve guards at Buchenwald or Dachau, just doing what we do each day, completely oblivious to the death happening across the Earth, the death we are all causing, the death that will one day visit us and all we love, the death we deny, deny, deny, the death we refuse to see.

According to the Alcohol Community Information Program (http://www.nh-dwi.com/caip-202.htm),

"Denial is the psychological process by which human beings protect themselves from things which threaten them by blocking knowledge of those things from their awareness. It is a defense which distorts reality; it keeps us from feeling the pain and uncomfortable truth about things we do not want to face. If we cannot feel or see the consequences of our actions, then everything is fine and we can continue to live without making any changes.

Denial comes in many forms. It is not just for chemical dependents either. If you are human, you have denial about something--your relationships, your behavior, your health, your family, etc. We all want everything to 'be fine.' We have denial to keep us from pain."

We have traveled on a journey across the planet, from dying lakes to soaring temperatures, to endless droughts to melting glaciers, all signposts of climate change. We are to be forgiven if we conclude from this that the changing climate is the worst problem we face but we would be wrong. Climate change is fixable, even now. We know what is causing climate change and therefore we know what must be done. But like any addict, we cannot stop our addiction and it is our addiction which will continue to change the climate.

And so that is our biggest problem: the denial that allows us to blindly continue the very thing we know will kill us and everyone and everything we love. And that is the ultimate test. How can we see our denial while we are in denial? It would seem that until humanity itself "hits bottom" as it were, it will refuse to see. Until climate change almost kills us, in other words, we will not see it. Only then will humanity finally look itself in the mirror and see the truth at last. And then and only then our real journey might begin.