Colorado flooding creating a long emergency.
Colorado continues to be in a state of emergency this morning as I write this. Record breaking rains have created a flood zone the size of Connecticut. Over a half year’s worth of rain fell in less than a week. Thousands upon thousands of people are evacuating the area because there will be no clean water, power, food or passable roads for quite some time.
Colorado is now a long emergency. We’re seeing more and more of these events. Katrina and Sandy were two other weather related long emergencies. It took months for basic infrastructure to be restored and some areas never got back to “normal”.
These long emergencies are on one level, created by our short term thinking. We have not taken any meaningful action to curb our fossil fuel consumption. Scientists have known since the 1950’s that burning fossil fuels puts carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, creating what was called a “greenhouse effect”. Today, 97% of climate scientists agree that climate change is very likely caused mainly by human activity.
Extreme rainfall events, like what is happening in Colorado right now, have become more frequent due to manmade global warming. Warmer temperatures cause the air to hold onto more water vapor than it used to. We can expect more extreme weather like this in the near future.
Our future starts now. We must do everything in our power to decrease the use of fossil fuels. If not, then we can expect to experience more and more long emergencies. Climate change is real, it is here and it is impacting all of us. Our kids and grandkids will be even more deeply impacted if we don’t stop our short term thinking and get to work on this huge predicament.
A warmer planet holds more water, resulting in bigger downpours.
