Whether you believe in global warming or not, it”s time to start paying attention.
California is going into its fifth year of a drought, the driest and hottest four-year period in California history. Washington and Idaho are tinderboxes and as of Aug. 18, the year-to-date acres burned in the country clocks in at about 7.1 million. Glaciers around the world are melting faster than scientists can neither understand nor explain.
The Earth is changing. It”s important that we at least think about the effects, even if it means only thinking about the area in which we live.
Yes, all of these phenomena affect people here in Moscow. While it may not seem like it to some, it really does make an impact. The drought in California has its effect in this area. Fish are dying in the rivers, aquifers are shrinking, wheat production is diminishing and things are literally catching on fire.
Claire Whitley
Just look around the area at the multiple fires burning throughout Idaho. Boise has even deployed active military personnel in order to combat the flames. Fires in the Clearwater Complex have burned more than 60,000 acres, and that was caused by a lightning strike.
Sure, wildfires happen every summer, it”s a part of living in Idaho, but this year has been particularly crazy.
There are 88 “large fires” across the U.S. and there have been almost 41,000 fires from Jan. 1 to Aug. 17. That is nearly 5,000 more fires than last year and nearly 10,000 more than 2013 at this time. And last year from January to mid-August there were only about 2.6 million burned acres across the nation, which, arithmetic tells us, is about 4.5 million acres less than this year.
And everything just keeps burning. Is it still not looking like a problem?
Let me put it this way. Remember the great snow Moscow got last winter? I don”t. I remember slush and frost. Maybe the area saw slush and an inch of snow on occasion, but never the healthy, hearty five or six feet of snow that Idaho used to get. Without that snow melt, without that water, we essentially created the ideal conditions for fire. Everything is dried out and just waiting to burn.
While not all fire is bad, as some vegetation needs fires in order to reproduce and grow, it”s hard to argue that 7.1 million acres needs to burn first. Every year that goes on like this will make the problem worse.
California looks like it will have another year of drought, and a drought is also affecting the inland Northwest. River flows are almost a third of what they usually are. Farmers have had to harvest their wheat early because they couldn”t irrigate because of water shortages. Fish are washing up on riverbanks. The only thing that doesn”t seem to be dying out are the grapes used for wine. So at least we can all make toasts about our water problem.
I know that this may rub people the wrong way. I”m not suggesting that the way people look at the world is wrong or that humans are destroying the world or that we need to save the planet by never driving or slaughtering cows.
I just think people should look up every once in a while. It takes more courage to just look around than to blindly follow what you”ve always thought to be true. Interpret the science however you want, but at least look.
Claire Whitley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @Cewhitley24