I think about climate change every single day. It impacts my son and his family living in Mesa, AZ. It is said that in 10 years, Phoenix as we know it today, will cease to exist because of water problems. My kids have been working for years to be able to return to the Northwest where they were raised, and now what? Wild fires and triple …
I think about climate change every single day. It impacts my son and his family living in Mesa, AZ. It is said that in 10 years, Phoenix as we know it today, will cease to exist because of water problems. My kids have been working for years to be able to return to the Northwest where they were raised, and now what? Wild fires and triple digit heat waves. They keep hoping that it's just a short cycle, a "one-off" so to speak, but they know it's not, and they are broken hearted. The last time my sister flew out of Phoenix back to her home in Wisconsin she said how aghast she was to see all the expansive green lawns and backyard swimming pools in the desert. And yet the powers that be question drought conditions and water shortages. I live in SE Arizona, in Cochise County. Here we contend with big agricultural concerns. My son and his wife and I had been talking about the water crisis and big ag over the 4th of July weekend. On my trip home, I was detoured just 7 miles from my house. The reason? Earth fissures and major subsidence happening. The County denies it, but geologists and engineers have looked at the situation, and say that it is due to drought and the over pumping of ground water by big ag. We live in the Sonoran desert, yet we are surrounded by cotton fields, cornfields, huge pecan orchards, wineries, as well as a mega dairy which pumps hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day for their cattle. Have we made any changes in our daily routine because of it? Yes. Now we have to filter our water twice because the quality is getting worse while the price goes up. So we're going north, selling our home here and heading for Michigan to spend our golden days walking the shores of Lake Huron. It's at least a temporary reprieve. How do we make changes? I've held out hope for more than fifty years. My partner and I were born in the 50s, raised in the 60s, and embarked on adult life in the 70's. There was such a sense of hope back then that mankind could and would evolve, work out its problems and save itself. But today? If you can't even get someone to believe that Covid is not a hoax as they draw their dying breath, how are you going to convince someone that we all need to act to save ourselves from what they deem the "climate hoax"? I don't know, Dan. COVID should have been a clarion call, but to quote an old saw, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." As for us, we can only change ourselves. We will leave behind our too-large-for-two territorial house, pack our bags, and move into a modest home where we will continue the practices of reducing our footprint. We'll walk and ride bikes rather than drive, grow a nice vegetable garden (without the aid of chemicals), reduce our reliance on too much packaging, move more and more toward the Mediterranean lifestyle of eating mostly fish and vegetables. We'll continue to recycle everything we can. I can't change anyone's mind, so I'll mind my own business and do what I can to not be part of the problem.
I think about climate change every single day. It impacts my son and his family living in Mesa, AZ. It is said that in 10 years, Phoenix as we know it today, will cease to exist because of water problems. My kids have been working for years to be able to return to the Northwest where they were raised, and now what? Wild fires and triple digit heat waves. They keep hoping that it's just a short cycle, a "one-off" so to speak, but they know it's not, and they are broken hearted. The last time my sister flew out of Phoenix back to her home in Wisconsin she said how aghast she was to see all the expansive green lawns and backyard swimming pools in the desert. And yet the powers that be question drought conditions and water shortages. I live in SE Arizona, in Cochise County. Here we contend with big agricultural concerns. My son and his wife and I had been talking about the water crisis and big ag over the 4th of July weekend. On my trip home, I was detoured just 7 miles from my house. The reason? Earth fissures and major subsidence happening. The County denies it, but geologists and engineers have looked at the situation, and say that it is due to drought and the over pumping of ground water by big ag. We live in the Sonoran desert, yet we are surrounded by cotton fields, cornfields, huge pecan orchards, wineries, as well as a mega dairy which pumps hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day for their cattle. Have we made any changes in our daily routine because of it? Yes. Now we have to filter our water twice because the quality is getting worse while the price goes up. So we're going north, selling our home here and heading for Michigan to spend our golden days walking the shores of Lake Huron. It's at least a temporary reprieve. How do we make changes? I've held out hope for more than fifty years. My partner and I were born in the 50s, raised in the 60s, and embarked on adult life in the 70's. There was such a sense of hope back then that mankind could and would evolve, work out its problems and save itself. But today? If you can't even get someone to believe that Covid is not a hoax as they draw their dying breath, how are you going to convince someone that we all need to act to save ourselves from what they deem the "climate hoax"? I don't know, Dan. COVID should have been a clarion call, but to quote an old saw, "There are none so blind as those who will not see." As for us, we can only change ourselves. We will leave behind our too-large-for-two territorial house, pack our bags, and move into a modest home where we will continue the practices of reducing our footprint. We'll walk and ride bikes rather than drive, grow a nice vegetable garden (without the aid of chemicals), reduce our reliance on too much packaging, move more and more toward the Mediterranean lifestyle of eating mostly fish and vegetables. We'll continue to recycle everything we can. I can't change anyone's mind, so I'll mind my own business and do what I can to not be part of the problem.