Today's EEI newsletter notes that: The New York Times reported that the California Environmental Protection Agency released a report compiled by the California Climate Change Center that said "regional temperatures would be as much as 10 degrees higher by 2100, leading to severe air pollution, dwindling water supplies and an increase in heat-related deaths. The report also warned that the heat could virtually eliminate winter snowmelt, the primary source of California's drinking water. As temperatures rise, it said, residents can also expect to see increasing threats from pests and pathogens, wildfires and coastal flooding."
Associated Press via Houston Chronicle , Los Angeles Times , New York Times , Washington Post , Aug. 2.
California is not just "some state." California is the world's 7th largest economy. Within the next 100 years -- that is during the lifetimes of our children and grandchildren -- temperatures there will get 10 degrees hotter, California will run out of drinking water (and electricity, as much of California's summer power comes from hydro plants in the Pacific Northwest; no snow, no hydropower in the summer). The people who live in California aren't going to simply go into their houses and die of thirst. They're going to move to places where there is drinking water. Remember what happened after Katrina when people tried to go to nearby towns and states to escape the storm? Remember how the government was totally unprepared to deal with that?
How much worse does it have to get before the Bush junta wakes up and begins to do something about overpopulation and the need to find sources of energy that don't contribute to global warming?
2 comments:
You have read Starhawk's The Fifth Sacred Thing, haven't you? She's starting to look amazing prescient.
elizabeth,
Yes. It's one of my favorite books. But it gives me chills, about now.
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