Nothing compared to ecosystem collapse that is.
Spreading hands as dry and cracked as the orchards he tends, the stout man his mates call Tank explained what damage a decade of drought has done.
“Suicide is high. Depression is huge. Families are breaking up. It’s devastation,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ve got a neighbor in terrible trouble. Found him in the paddock, sitting in his [truck], crying his eyes out. Grown men — big, strong grown men. We’re holding on by the skin of our teeth. It’s desperate times.”
A result of climate change?
“You’d have to have your head in the bloody sand to think otherwise,” Eddy said.
Ten years ago I traveled to Adelaide, South Australia, the driest province in the driest continent on Earth. I spent five months of my Junior year in college studying sustainable development, environmental politics, and climate change. It was the first time I grasped the issue of global warming. At that time, the drought described by Tank had only just begun.
Now, ten years later, Australia is teaching me a new lesson – as depressing as they may be, articles about climate impacts can still teach us something.
My climate reading for today all started with this news story about global warming creeping into Joshua Tree territory. Have you no decency, Mr. Crisis. That’s my tree you’re messing with.
We are so far from you, and sitting in yesterday’s big rain puddles, hearing about a possible snow down to the 500 foot level for tonight. Snows this late, this low are not usual for us either, but we don’t hear about you. For one thing, we have lost one of two newspapers, and the one that is left, even though family-owned, never tried very hard anyhow to tell us the truth. We don’t even know what is going on around here.
But I am going to send this article around a little to see if it will even make a dent. People say there is so much to think about between the time you get up and go to bed just to make it through your own little day.
I do think the race is reflective as yeast.
Seattle