This blog is adapting, too

Check out the new tagline: Adapting Locally, Networking Globally.

And the new description: Collecting reports of local climate change impacts and responses from around the world, I'm accumulating a database that can be used for strategic planning by other localities as lessons learned, best practices and valuable contacts.

We're on the verge of new social movement. Where it's going is hard to tell at this point, but the pressures to change and adapt are growing. This year will be regarded from the future as a tipping point where the combined effects of extreme weather, economics and dysfunctional government spurred many people to adopt new viewpoints on the way ahead.

Business as usual just ain't gonna cut it from now on. Especially if you've got kids and grandkids, this is a time to begin thinking and acting adaptively. The path ahead may not be clear, but the articles I'm gathering here show that it's smart to stay light on your feet.

Busy professions for extreme drought

If you live in the drought-affected areas of northern Georgia and Alabama, your employment fortunes might be in the dumpster or they may be soaring. Clearly, you'd better be a creative landscaper or nursery owner to be getting any business these days, but as this AP story tells us, well-drillers and water recyclers are unable to keep up with the booming demand, even when an average new well will cost $6500 to drill with no guarantee that water will be found.

"The drought's got people thinking about water more," said Charles Cone of Southern Energy Solutions in Marietta. "I think there's going to be a gradual shift toward this sort of thing."

This summer, Cone's company sold its first residential gray water recycling tank in Atlanta. The system recycles bath, shower and laundry water and reuses it for toilet flushing.

"I think it's going to change people's mind-set," he said. "You don't need potable water to flush your toilet. It's just something we've always done."

And not all landscapers are crying in their begonias. Those who sell and install miserly watering systems are being called on to save private and public greenery with drip irrigation systems and water salvaging reservoirs.

The RainHarvest Company, a suburban Atlanta business that outfits homes with systems that capture and reuse rain, said business has quadrupled since the drought began.

"People have suddenly decided that water is a lot more valuable than it was a few weeks ago. It's pretty typical — the less we have of something, the more valuable it is," said Paul Morgan, the company's co-founder. "We can't do all that business, so we've had to pick and choose."

He installs large underground tanks that capture and store falling rain water. The water can be pumped back into the home and reused in the shower, dishwasher and irrigation system, or it can be purified and used as drinking water.

"We don't want people to change their lifestyle," said Morgan. "But we'll show you how to continually reuse the water so you're not wasting it."

S. F. Bay Area Residents Indicate Willingness to Adapt

Early indications from a poll show that many residents would be willing to live in smaller homes and pay taxes on gasoline if it would lower the emissions levels that cause global warming.

The random telephone poll of 1800 residents of the greater Bay Area elicited the following responses:

64 percent thought global warming was the most important factor to consider when developing transportation and land-use plans. Another 28 percent considered it at least somewhat important.

Asked whether they would choose to live in a small house with a small backyard instead of a larger house that required a longer commute, 74 percent said yes.

On the controversial issue of gas taxes, a 25-cent-per-gallon boost was OK with 45 percent of those responding, but was opposed by 30 percent. At 50 cents, 28 percent approved the tax increase, and 49 percent were opposed. Only 17 percent said yes to a dollar-a-gallon tax increase.

The Association of Bay Area Governments - faced with meeting state-mandated emissions cuts - was relieved to hear of such receptivity on behalf of residents, but the task they face is huge.

The Bay Area might need smaller houses, higher gas taxes and tolls on busy roads and congested business districts if it is to meet the state's goals for the reduction of greenhouse gases, transportation and land use officials said Friday.
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"The challenge for us is, are we going to be able to walk the talk?" said Henry Gardner, executive director of the association. "We've been talking for a long time about focused growth, smart growth, but there has not been a lot of smart walk."

For the Bay Area to meet the state goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1999 levels, people will need to drive less and growth patterns will need to change to emphasize infill development over suburban sprawl, said Gardner and Steve Heminger, his counterpart at the commission. That is likely to mean smaller homes and more trips on mass transit, bike or foot.

Wildfire close to home

Looking out my home office window, Mt. Tamalpais can be seen through the haze of smoke that has drifted north from San Diego. Appropriately, the San Francisco Chronicle published a story today about how the homes on the slopes of Mt. Tam are one of the most at-risk homes in the Bay Area.

We've had a few days of heavy rain and it's tempting to think that the fire season is over for us. We haven't had anywhere near the heat and extended drought of San Diego. Yet a fire department engineer stationed on the slopes of the mountain told the reporter, "We regularly take the fuel moisture reading here, and the fuel load right now is at 64 percent. Sixty-six percent is what we consider critical, so I'd say we have to be pretty careful right now."

Not your father's wildfire

Yeah, Southern California is a natural desert area and yes, it gets especially dry every year in early fall. And yes, the Santa Ana winds blow every year creating a heightened risk of fast-moving fire. But this year the conditions were different. It had been hotter and drier through this past summer. The winds blew harder. And housing development further into the brush was just tempting disaster.

My friend, Paul, who lives in San Diego, tells me that San Diego County used to have a 40 acre minimum lot size in the backcountry and there was intense debate on changing the zoning. In what is called GP 2020, the general plan is to make room for a million more residents by 2020. Here's a Sierra Club call for action sent to its members in 2003. It calls for lower density development, lower population and (as a result) less commute traffic in what was were the rural boundaries of eastern San Diego. It could be argued that development alone did not cause the current firestorm, but obviously the exposure of more housing to the potential of wildfires stretches the ability of fire departments to respond and protect. In other words, you move into one of those developments and YOU'RE ASKING FOR IT. Impacts on insurance, taxes, lives and our collective emotions are unavoidable.

The Chief of the U.S. Forestry Service, Gail Kimbell, says, "Fires are burning hotter and bigger, becoming more damaging and dangerous to people and to property. Each year the fire season comes earlier and lasts longer." And as the same S.F. Chronicle article points out:

The 16 wind-blown fires that forced the largest mass evacuation in California history may or may not be the result of climate change, but studies have shown that the hot drought conditions that fed the flames are becoming more common.

The flames stretching from Malibu to the Mexican border struck during the driest year in Southern California history. Measurements taken by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection detected less than 10 percent moisture in the region's vegetation. The moisture level in kiln-dried lumber is generally 12 percent.

"They got less rain than they've ever gotten," said Hugh Safford, a Forest Service ecologist. "Any time you have a dry year like this one, you are going to get fires."

It is so dry that state forestry officials said a newly shod horse started a fire earlier in the year from the sparks it created running on the pavement.

Chronically drier than normal conditions promotes the growth of invasive plant and insect species that may add to flammable material. We all know about the bark beatles that are killing off conifers and leaving forests of firewood. And sources of ignition - specifically lightning - are predicted to increase with the increase of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

Other experts quoted in the Chronicle article pointed out that the Santa Ana winds had sustained longer than usual in fanning the San Diego flames. And though none could say for sure that the fire was a result of climate change, it was undeniable that the smoke from the fires is contributing to global warming.

One link that can be made, according to Tom Bonnicksen, a California forest and wildfire expert, is how the fires are contributing to global warming. Almost 20 million tons of greenhouse gases - the equivalent of what is emitted in one year by 3.6 million cars - have been spewed into the atmosphere, he said.

"The problem isn't global warming causing fires," he said. "The real problem is these fires contributing to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming."

All of which could be a foreshadowing of worse problems in the future. Kimbell said the fire threat in California and other states is more severe because cities are now pushing up against the wilderness.

How Not to Deal with a Drought in Progress

Athens, Georgia, may have had its act together - at least from what the local utility manager said. But the rest of the state, and its neighboring southern states, too, seemed to have ignored the fact that they were rapidly running out of water. This New York Time story (thank goodness one major paper is closely following these extreme weather stories) tells a story of neglect, irresponsibility, delusion and probably gross over-optimism.

Maybe the past has included plenty of dry spells. A couple weeks during the normal rainy season. A couple months through a hot summer. Even a whole season of hot dry weather, lowering the reservoir levels. But this situation has been going on intensely since the last rains of the winter. Even I've been following the story long enough that it's been plain to me that there was a crisis. But look at what's been going on down there while I've been worrying about them from way out here in California:

The response to the worst drought on record in the Southeast has unfolded in ultra-slow motion. All summer, more than a year after the drought began, fountains blithely sprayed, football fields were watered, prisoners got two showers a day and Coca-Cola’s bottling plants chugged along at full strength. In early October, on an 81-degree day, an outdoor theme park began to manufacture what was intended to be a 1.2-million gallon mountain of snow.

In late September, with Lake Lanier forecast to dip into the dregs of “dead storage” in less than four months, the state imposed a ban on outdoor water use. Gov. Sonny Perdue declared October “Take a Shorter Shower Month.”

On Saturday, he declared a state of emergency for more than half the state and asked for federal assistance, though the state has not yet restricted indoor water use or cut back on major commercial and industrial users, a step that could cause a significant loss of jobs.

Jeez Louise! Can we please elect some intelligent problem solving managers to public office? Soon? Here's more evidence of criminal incompetence:

The sense of urgency has been slow to take hold. Last year, a bill to require low-flow water devices be installed in older houses prior to resale died in the Legislature. Most golf courses are classified as “agricultural.” Water permits are still approved on a first-come, first-served basis.

And Georgia is not at the back of the pack; Alabama, where severe drought is more widespread, has not passed legislation calling for a management plan.

A realistic statewide plan, experts say, would tell developers that they cannot build if no water is available, and might have restricted some of the enormous growth in the Atlanta area over the last decade. Already, officials have little notion how to provide for a projected doubling of demand over the next 30 years. The ideas that have been floated, including piping water from Tennessee or desalinating ocean water, will require hundreds of billions of dollars and painful decisions the state has been loathe to undertake.

What can you say but, "Oy!"

Adapting to Drought in the US Southwest

This week's New York Times Magazine has a long article on the drought in the Southwest by Jon Gertner. I've blogged about this situation here and here, but you've got to read all of this article to come to grips with how water shortage may be the climate change impact that takes a greater toll on humanity than a slow rise in the sea level.

Just considering the Colorado River - one of many rivers in the world that is depended on by people living in otherwise arid climates:

Some 30 million people depend on that water. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. An almost unfathomable legal morass might well result, with farmers suing the federal government; cities suing cities; states suing states; Indian nations suing state officials; and foreign nations (by treaty, Mexico has a small claim on the river) bringing international law to bear on the United States government. In addition, a lesser Colorado River would almost certainly lead to a considerable amount of economic havoc, as the future water supplies for the West’s industries, agriculture and growing municipalities are threatened. As one prominent Western water official described the possible future to me, if some of the Southwest’s largest reservoirs empty out, the region would experience an apocalypse, “an Armageddon.

Bradley Udall, whose testimony before Congress was described in the article, took the author to visit some of the reservoirs in Colorado that are being impacted by the drought in the Southwest. He was, in essence, trying to illustrate the need for all of the dependents on the dwindling water supply to begin adapting to the current and future reality.

As he put it, he wants to connect the disparate members of the water economy in a way that has never really been done before, so that utility executives, scientists, environmentalists, business leaders, farmers and politicians can begin discussing how to cope with the inevitable shortages of fresh water.

The water manager for Aurora, Colorado described his town's efforts to find water sources where there are none. Drilling wells next to a nearby river, sucking the river water out through the "filter" of its shoreline, using the water and then releasing treated wastewater back into the river, upstream from their wells allows them to re-use the same water repeatedly...for a while. It's still going to be one of the most expensive municipal water systems in the US, but it may be the method used by other cities in the Southwest to replace the shrinking snowmelt water sources. It may even be adopted by towns in the drying Southeast, like Athens.

But if the current drought is, indeed, the leading edge of climate change and not just a periodic climatic variation, then such measures are just stop-gap. One scientist quoted in the article - Richard Seager - put it this way in a Q&A with the author:

“You know, it’s like, O.K., there’s trouble in the future, but how near in the future does it set in?” he told me. “In this case, it appears that it’s happening right now.” When I asked if the drought in his models would be permanent, he pondered the question for a moment, then replied: “You can’t call it a drought anymore, because it’s going over to a drier climate. No one says the Sahara is in drought.”

This is how they're approaching the megadrought in southern Australia, where it's become known as the Big Dry. Another climatologist, Roger Pulwarty - who has long studied adaptation to dry climates - is worried about this present stretch of drought.

Pulwarty is convinced that the economic impacts could be profound. The worst outcome, he suggested, would be mass migrations out of the region, along with bitter interstate court battles over the dwindling water supplies. But well before that, if too much water is siphoned from agriculture, farm towns and ranch towns will wither. Meanwhile, Colorado’s largest industry, tourism, might collapse if river flows became a trickle during summertime.

The article also includes extensive interviewing with the water manager of Las Vegas, who is endowed with enough money to offer to build large desalination plants on the Pacific coastline to supply California with water in exchange for getting some of Cali's share of the Colorado River water. (Desalination requires lots of energy and produces lots of brine.) Las Vegas continues to grow, and to use water lavishly as a desert city. Perhaps its collapse will come as a result of rising fuel (and airplane ticket) costs before it comes from lack of water.

Can humans adapt under these crisis situations? Can much less water still be enough water?

To Peter Gleick, head of the Pacific Institute, a nonprofit based in Oakland, Calif., that focuses on global water issues, whether we can adapt to a drier future depends on whether we can rethink the functions, and value, of fresh water. Can we can do the same things using less of it? How we use our water, Gleick believes, is considerably more complex than it appears.