An adult ash borer. The tree-killing bug has now been found in Toronto. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Agriculture)
Since arriving in North America in the 1990’s, the emerald ash borer
has largely been contained to the upper Midwest. But now scientists say
the destructive beetle is spreading. Noah Ovshinsky has more:
Transcript
Since arriving in North America in the 1990’s, the emerald ash borer
has largely been contained to the upper Midwest. But now scientists say
the destructive beetle is spreading. Noah Ovshinsky has more:
Since the emerald ash bore arrived, the pest has killed more than 20
million ash trees in North America. Canada has by and large been spared
with infestations confined to the extreme southwest of Ontario.
Now, Canadian officials say the bug has traveled more than two hundred
miles to Toronto. Scientists don’t know how many trees have been
infested. Ken Marchant is an ash borer expert with the Canadian Food
Inspection Agency:
“It can be in a tree at undetectable levels and be quit heavy and then
the tree dies and so it’s incredibly difficult to detect at low levels.
Nothing has changed, there’s no traps for it and really no effective
way of surveying for it with any great accuracy.”
The ash borer has now spread across southern Ontario and six states.
For the Environment Report, this is Noah Ovshinsky.
Cities can expand mass transit, getting more cars off the road and giving people more options to help reduce emissions that contribute to global warming. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Clive Doucet is a city councilor in Ottawa, Ontario. He is campaigning for cities to tackle the problems of global warming because he feels national governments aren’t doing enough fast enough. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Clive Doucet argues that cities can do more to reduce emissions that lead to global warming. Standing at a busy intersection in his town of Ottawa, Ontario he said, "This kind of street is a community killer, it's a planet killer." He says cities should be built for people, not for cars. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:
Transcript
Census figures show that more and more North Americans are now living in cities. For those who want to fight climate change, that means changing the way these urban folks live. In the second of a two-part series on climate change, Karen Kelly has the story of one city councilor who’s made that his mission:
“We’re at Bronson and Fifth. It’s a four lane roadway into Ottawa.”
Clive Doucet is a city councilor in Ottawa, Canada’s capital. He’s standing about half a block from where he lives:
“This kind of street is a community killer, it’s a planet killer. It’s the fruit of 5,560 years of building cities for cars and not human beings.”
Doucet loves cities, which is why it pains him to see a once-beautiful neighborhood street become, as he calls it, a traffic sewer. It’s loud, it’s polluted, and it’s not safe. Three pedestrians have been killed near this corner in the past five years, and there’ve been many accidents.
Doucet was an activist for a long time, but after running for city council he realized the city has the power to change the climate. It builds the roads and it controls the public transportation:
“Public transit has, every environmentalist knows is one of the main keys to solving the environmental crisis. I mean, 45 to 50 percent of greenhouse gases come out of our use of land and the tailpipes of cars and trucks. We can get rid of most of that and we can not change our lifestyle one bit; in fact, we can make it better.”
Doucet hops on his bike to show what he means. He winds through the traffic and then stops along Ottawa’s five-mile-long light rail track:
“This runs parallel to the road we were just on. It’s a test line. It carries a hundred and 50 passengers every 15 minutes and when we get the two lines up and running, it will carry three times the traffic or more as Bronson and it’s quiet. We’re standing at the station now. You’re like in a church. See the train’s coming. Do you hear any noise? It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
Doucet’s vision for his city is a comprehensive light rail system. He says it will reduce air and noise pollution, and make the city friendlier for pedestrians and cyclists, but Doucet is thinking about the bigger picture, too. And there, he’s not optimistic. He’s noticed that the winters in Ottawa are warmer now, and that’s disturbing for people because they really embrace winter.
Almost every park has an outdoor hockey rink, and people ice skate, not just for pleasure, but to get around. Doucet says he’s afraid that climate change will destroy what makes his city special:
“It’s incredibly sad. I mean, I’ve skated to work all my life and I live about a block from the canal I take my skates down and I’d skate to work and skate home. And I’ve seen countless marvelous sunrises on the canal. It is difficult to imagine my life without that. Those experiences have given my life poetry.”
Doucet says he’s pretty much given up hope on the federal government. He says they’re too beholden to big industry to really curb the emissions that cause climate change.
But at the local level? He says a lot can be done.
He recently wrote a book, Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual. In it, he says it’s time for city residents to get tough:
“Go after your municipal politicians and say, you know something, we want to have a city that’s pedestrian-based, that’s public transit-based and we want you to stop building roads. You can do stuff about your local government and the way you live locally.”
Doucet wouldn’t say it’s easy. Last year, Ottawa signed a contract to expand its light rail system. Then, a new mayor came in and the plan was scrapped. Doucet thinks it will happen eventually, but in the meantime, he’s still fighting the rush hour traffic on his bicycle.
A panel is speeding up its study into one reason why upper Great Lakes water levels
might be dropping. Sarah Hulett reports:
Transcript
A panel is speeding up its study into one reason why upper Great Lakes water levels
might be dropping. Sarah Hulett reports:
The International Joint Commission is investigating a theory that a 1960s dredging
project in the Saint Clair River has drained away water from the upper Great Lakes.
Frank Bevacqua is a spokesman for the IJC. He says the decision to finish the study
a year early was prompted in part by angry lakefront property owners who want
answers about dropping lake levels:
“And with that information, the commission will be in a position to decide whether or
not there’s a need to request remedial measures from the US and Canada.”
If the commission finds there is a problem in the St. Clair River, it could recommend
that the US and Canadian governments fund a project to slow the water loss in
hopes the lake levels rise.
Lake Superior's North Shore.
(Photo by Dave Hansen - Minnesota Extension Service)
For the first time, state legislatures in the Great Lakes region have a set of laws in front of
them that could comprehensively define how and where they can use Great Lakes water.
Melissa Ingells has a look at the document called the Great Lakes Compact:
Transcript
For the first time, state legislatures in the Great Lakes region have a set of laws in front of
them that could comprehensively define how and where they can use Great Lakes water.
Melissa Ingells has a look at the document called the Great Lakes Compact:
For a long time, nobody thought much about regulating the water of the Great Lakes.
They just seemed inexhaustible. There was no firm legal definition of who the water
belonged to, or who could give it away.
At some point, scientists figured out the boundaries of what’s known as the Great Lakes
Basin. It’s like a huge land bowl where all the waterways flow back into the Lakes. It
includes areas of eight states and parts of Canada. Scientists figured out that you had to
leave at least 99% of the water in the lakes in order to maintain all the important
ecosystems that depend on the water.
The natural boundary of the Great Lakes basin started to become a political boundary
when demand for water started rising. The only regulation for a long time was a 1984
federal law that said all the Great Lakes governors had to agree before any water could
be taken out of the lakes.
Then, in 1998, an organization called the Nova Group got a permit from Ontario to ship
water to Asia. People didn’t like that idea at all, and the politicians reacted:
“It seems like every major policy change has a triggering event.”
Dennis Schornack is the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission, which
oversees Great Lakes issues:
“The Nova permit granted initially by Ontario to this shipping company to take Great
Lakes water apparently by tanker to the far east… was the triggering event to start the
compact in motion. There have been a number of cases over the years… they all lead
down the same path, and that is that we had to have a structure to manage these waters
cooperatively.”
The Compact Schornack was talking about is the Great Lakes Compact. It’s a
comprehensive set of strict water usage laws. The states realized the need for something
like it after the Nova Group incident, and work on it was completed in 2006. It’s a strong
agreement because each state, and two Canadian provinces through a separate agreement,
must get it through their legislatures and get their governors to sign it. After all the states
have passed it, it has to be approved by the U.S. Congress.
Schornack was one of the people who helped write it. He thinks it’s a pretty good
solution for the lakes:
“This is really a big deal. Whether it’s a perfect solution, who knows, only time will tell,
but it certainly is a very strong and positive step in the right direction. When eight
governors get together and two premiers and decide we’re going to manage a fifth of the
world’s fresh surface water, and we’re going to do it with conservation, we’re going to do
it with very severe restrictions on diversions, this is all very good for the basin, this is
good news.”
The Compact does have its detractors. There are people from the business and
environmental worlds who have problems with some of it, but the general feeling is that something has to be settled on, and the Compact is a good start. Most states seem
to have bipartisan support in their legislatures, although so far only Minnesota has
actually passed it. Peter Annin is the author of “The Great Lakes Water Wars.” He
thinks that by legislative standards, things are moving pretty quickly:
“The pace of ratification to the average citizen might seem like it’s
painfully slow and laborious. But in fact, with compacts in general, some of them have
taken ten, twenty years to make it through all the various legislatures. And so here we
are about 18 months after the documents were released… if you look at the eight states,
the vast majority of them have some sort of activity going.”
Annin also thinks that given the pressing issues over natural resources everywhere, that
agreements like the Compact will change the way other regions think about their
resources:
“Why it’s a model I think is because it’s encouraging to people to think not just in
political boundaries, but in watershed boundaries, in that the Compact encourages people
to work communally to a greater social and sustainability good on behalf of the regional
water supply and water resources and I think that’s going to be a model for the future no
matter where you are.:
Annin thinks there will be a flurry of activity in the legislatures in the next year or so.
That’s because after the 2010 congressional redistricting, the water-hungry Southwest
will likely have more power in the U.S. House. So it’s in the interest of Great Lakes
States to get the Compact through Congress before those political changes happen.
The National Arbor Day Foundation's revised hardiness zone map. (Photo courtesy of the National Arbor Day Foundation)
If you’ve been thinking about landscaping your yard, you should know things have
changed. The climate is warming so quickly that one organization has changed the
plant hardiness zone map. That’s the little map you sometimes see on the back of
seed packets. Lester Graham reports… you might want to check out the new map
before you spend hundreds of dollars on a tree that might not live long in your
warmer zone:
Transcript
If you’ve been thinking about landscaping your yard, you should know things have
changed. The climate is warming so quickly that one organization has changed the
plant hardiness zone map. That’s the little map you sometimes see on the back of
seed packets. Lester Graham reports… you might want to check out the new map
before you spend hundreds of dollars on a tree that might not live long in your
warmer zone:
You know, I’ve talked to a lot of gardeners and homeowners who do their own
landscaping about this plant hardiness zone map change, and at first they’re
kind of astounded. The growing zones are changing? Because it’s getting warmer?
But then, they sort of pause and think for a moment… and usually say something like,
“That makes sense.”
The United States Department of Agriculture issues the plant hardiness zone map.
It’s basically a map of the annual average low temperatures that helps folks figure
out what they can plant and expect to survive. But the USDA hasn’t updated its map
since 1990.
The spokesman at the National Arbor Day Foundation, Woody Nelson – I kid you not,
the Arbor Day guy’s name is Woody – Woody says his organization issued a new
map because it really needed to be updated:
“You know, people were asking us to help out, you know, ‘This old USDA map just doesn’t
seem to work for us anymore. I don’t think it’s accurate. What can you do to help?’
So we took it upon ourselves to give tree-planters the most up-to-date information
that we could.”
So the National Arbor Day Foundation looked at the low temperature data gathered
by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration since 1990, and the people
were right: things are warming up:
“And over that 15-year span that we used, much of the country had warmed a full
hardiness zone.”
And there’s a ten degree difference from one zone to the next. It shows a real on-
the-ground trend.
Richard Andres is with Tantre Farm. They grow organic produce for farmers’
markets like this one in Michigan. Andres didn’t know about the new Arbor Day
Hardiness Zone map, but it makes sense to him. He says he’s seeing more
extremes:
“You know, last winter was unusually warm. The winter before, unusually warm.
So, we really didn’t even get a decent freeze. We had a huge amount of bugs the
following spring. So we are noticing more extremes.”
But a farmer or gardener can adjust things for annual plants. Long term, you’re
probably wondering whether you can now plant that dogwood or whether you
should plant that spruce from up north.
(Sound of sprinkler)
Phil Walsh sells a lot of trees at Lodi Farms nursery. He knew about the new Arbor
Day Hardiness Zone map. But, he says there’s a lot more to think about than just
the annual average low temperature when you’re thinking about planting:
“Cold is not the only, or really the most, important factor when determining plant
hardiness. Questions like soil: is it well-drained; is it not; is it wet; is it dry; is it acid
or is it alkaline; do you have wind; do you have shade? Questions like this: is it high
in organic material or low in organic material? These tend to have more impact on
whether or not plants survive than strictly the zone rating.”
Walsh says the trees are pretty tough, and most of them can adapt:
“Yes, things have warmed up over the last 15 years and they may well continue or it may change and it may go down. Pick a good, hardy plant that’s well-suited for your soil
and typically one that’s native here, that’s gone through these temperature changes
in the past and I don’t expect anybody’s going to have any problems with them.”
That’s not to say that every kind of tree is taking this in stride. For example, black
spruce trees adapted to Canadian and upper New England cold might not be such a
good choice as far south as it’s been grown in the past.
Woody Nelson at the National Arbor Day Foundation says trees native to the North
are starting to be affected by the warming climate:
“There’s a whole lot of white pines that have been planted in Georgia, in the South
as a nice landscape tree over the years. And now those white pines are coming
under a little bit of stress. The native lodge pole pines, the native loblolly pines in the
deep South, again native species are something that we want to promote and stick
with.”
So, the basic rule is: if the plant hardiness zone map has shifted one growing zone
warmer in just 15 years, you’ll probably want to stick to trees native to your area, or
from just a little south of you just in case this warming trend sticks around for a while.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Bill Dawson delivering light bulbs to his neighbors in Ottawa. (Photo by Karen Kelly)
Compact fluorescent bulbs could replace the traditional incandescent bulb in Canada. The Thomas Edison bulb is being phased out over the next five years. Photo by Lester Graham
The warmer weather brings gardens, barbeques, and often, solicitors to
your door. Many people dread opening the door for someone who’s asking
for money. But in a number of Canadian cities, volunteers are actually
giving something away: a compact fluorescent light bulb and a bit of
education, too. Karen Kelly has the story:
Transcript
The warmer weather brings gardens, barbeques, and often, solicitors to
your door. Many people dread opening the door for someone who’s asking
for money. But in a number of Canadian cities, volunteers are actually
giving something away: a compact fluorescent light bulb and a bit of
education, too. Karen Kelly has the story:
Bill Dawson is standing in this woman’s doorway holding up a
fluorescent light bulb. She looks a little unsure about it, but then he explains that even changing one light bulb can have an
impact:
“What can I do as an individual. Well, I could, just by my little bit,
can make a big difference. Because hopefully, once you start to use
this, it’s going to make you start to think, how can I save energy in
other ways.”
Dawson is a volunteer for Project Porchlight. They have a simple plan:
give one free compact fluorescent bulb to every household in Canada.
The bulb will last up to 8 times as long as a conventional bulb and use
a quarter of the electricity. And if every household changes one bulb,
it’s the equivalent of removing 66 thousand cars off the road.
It’s kind of hard to believe, but that potential is what motivated
Stuart Hickox to start Project Porchlight two years ago:
“I remember sitting there thinking, wow, that’s incredible. Somebody
should do a campaign about this. So I talked to a few friends. But the
big breakthrough for us was that we decided not to just do an awareness
campaign. We decided we’d bridge the gap between awareness and action
by raising money to give people their first bulb.”
So, with more than 250 volunteers and funding from HydroOttawa, the
local utility, the group delivered almost a quarter million light bulbs
in Ottawa last fall. They wore matching fluorescent green jackets and
hats. They drove rechargeable electric bikes with lime green saddlebags
packed with bulbs. And they answered lots of questions like, is the
mercury in these bulbs dangerous for people? The answer? No. But you
should throw them with out with other household hazardous waste.
Hickox’s theory was, if you can get someone to change a light bulb, you
might change their thinking as well:
“When you give them that bulb and that person makes that change, they
realize they can take action on climate change and they do. And it’s
the gateway. It leads to a sense of the individual that you can do
something, and that therefore they may participate and do other
things.”
It worked with Bill Dawson. Before he started volunteering with the
group, he says he felt helpless when he thought about global warming:
“I didn’t even think about what I could do as an individual. It was
just…I’d look at those smokestacks and I’d say, ehh, what’s the
point.”
Then Bill went to a Project Porchlight training session.
He came home with 120 lightbulbs and a radical plan for his own life.
He got rid of his luxury car, which he loved, and bought a Prius, an
energy efficient hybrid car.
Bill says his friends thought he was crazy. He’s 83, a successful
businessman and his car, an Audi A6, was part of his image.
But that’s changed:
“I’d think I’d much rather be an image of a green, someone concerned
about the environment, having 13 grandchildren and two great
grandchildren, it’s a pretty bleak future for those kids and…I don’t
know whether it’s too late or not, but we certainly have got to do
something.”
But now, Bill and people in every household in four Canadian cities are
doing something, thanks to Project Porchlight. And soon, everyone in
Canada will be changing their bulbs, because the Canadian government
has announced it is phasing out old-fashioned incandescent light bulbs
altogether over the next five years.
A program is trying to save another
native tree that’s being wiped out by an invasive
fungus. People who like the butternut are hoping
that by planting more seedlings, and tracking
mature trees, they’ll find some are resistant
to a blight that’s killing the butternuts.
Lucy Martin reports:
Transcript
A program is trying to save another
native tree that’s being wiped out by an invasive
fungus. People who like the butternut are hoping
that by planting more seedlings, and tracking
mature trees, they’ll find some are resistant
to a blight that’s killing the butternuts.
Lucy Martin reports:
Butternuts are rich in history. Native Americans used the tree for
medicine and dye. They ate the nuts. During the Civil War, so many
Confederates used the tree’s yellow-brown dye to make home-spun
uniforms that their army picked up the nickname “butternuts.”
Wood ducks, finches and songbirds eat the tree’s spring buds. The fall
nut crop feeds woodpeckers, turkeys, squirrels and other wildlife.
The tree’s hard wood resembles walnut, but with a lighter, golden tone.
That’s why it’s sometimes called “white walnut.”
The trees are seriously threatened by butternut canker, an invasive,
airborne fungus. The blight was first noted in Wisconsin in 1967. In
some states, up to 90% of all butternuts are now affected, but there’s
work underway to try to save the butternut before it’s wiped out.
Tucked in an old orchard, a cold-storage room serves as a distribution
station. Each spring, this is where the Rideau Valley Conservation
Authority gives away seedling trees to the public. Project technician
Rose Fleguel gave me the tour:
“So, I think there’s about 100,000 seedlings here. These are boxed or
bagged so that the trees stay moist and dark. We’ve already spent two
days re-packing into individual landowner tree orders.”
At this time of year, the dormant seedlings just look like twiggy
sticks. Many are still wrapped in brown paper sacks. Conservation
agencies plant all kinds of trees. But sometimes they target very
specific problems, like butternut canker.
“My thing is the Butternut Recovery Project, whatever amount of land
can sustain 10 seedlings, then you’re free to take the seedlings and
plant them out. ‘Cause what we’d like to do is get the seedlings out on
the landscape, get them growing. Replace the ones that have been killed
by this disease, already, and that continue to be killed, and hope for,
I mean, it’s going to be, it’s going to be a shot in the dark, but hope
that maybe some of these seedlings might be resistant.”
“Hope” is the key word. It’s not clear whether any butternuts are
resistant to the canker blight. The seedlings being handed out are
from trees that are still healthy. This recovery program also maps
mature trees and keeps track of the ones that still seem to be canker-
free. It’s a long shot, called “find the resistance.”
Rudy Dyck is the Director of the local Watershed Stewardship Services.
He says you can usually see if a butternut has been attacked by the
disease:
“Look for black patches, black streaks, black sooty areas on
the main stem, at the root collar, and always look on the underside of
the large branches, because that seems to be where the canker first
infects.”
“And if you notice that, is there anything to be done?”
“No, there’s nothing you can do. We’re asking people to keep them, as
long as they can. But one of the reasons that butternut is in such
extreme danger of extinction is that it just does not regenerate very
well.”
Dyck says that’s why it’s important to conserve existing trees.
Butternuts don’t bear seed each and every year. And when they do, the
nuts tend to get gobbled up. Growing new butternuts takes a few tricks:
“You have to stratify them, or prepare them for growing, the next
spring. So they have to spend a few months in kind of freezing
temperatures, an un-insulated garage in a pot of peat moss, or
something. Another strategy some people do, is they bury the nuts in
the fall, and they cover them with chicken wire, and then that protects
them from squirrels during that fall period and, as they start to grow
next spring, you can transplant them.”
Dyck says US and Canadian agencies are sharing ideas and results
because diseases don’t stop at borders:
“There’s literally thousands and thousands of heavily cankered, dying
butternuts out there, and we really want to focus on looking at
healthy, canker-free trees. Because those are the trees we want to get
into our geo-data base, for future seed collection, those are the trees
that may hold some resistance and those are the trees we want to
track.”
Butternut canker isn’t a well-known problem. The beautiful trees are
too big for most yards. They’re usually sparsely scattered in forests,
or old farmsteads. But Dyck says the butternut has an important place
in nature.
“There’s no question, bio-diversity and having many, many types of
ecosystems, habitats, species. They all interact, they all count on
each other, and it all makes for a healthier environment and place for
us all to live.”
Many native trees such as the chestnut, elm, and now the ash, are under
attack from invasive diseases or pests. The butternut is yet another
tree biologists want to save for future generations.
Canada’s conservative government recently unveiled the final details of
its long awaited policy on fighting climate change… and it says it
will not meet its Kyoto targets. And as Dan Karpenchuk reports, so far
the proposed eight billion dollar policy has been a tough sell:
Transcript
Canada’s conservative government recently unveiled the final details of
its long awaited policy on fighting climate change… and it says it
will not meet its Kyoto targets. And as Dan Karpenchuk reports, so far
the proposed eight billion dollar policy has been a tough sell:
Canadian Environment minister John Baird, laid out the details of the
framework policy called Turning the Corner, something he described as
the most ambitious environmental plan ever tabled in Canada:
“Canadian industry is today served notice that it will have to become
more efficient in order to both reduce its greenhouse gasses and to
reduce air pollution. We will do this by mandating strict targets for industry.”
Under the new green plan, the government hopes to reduce current
emissions 20% by the year 2020. It calls for industries to make
in-house reductions, participate in domestic emissions trading, buy
energy offsets and invest in a technology fund.
But there are no specifics. Canada’s oil industry, one of the biggest
polluters, is breathing easier, relieved there will be no hard caps on
emissions.
But environmentalists say it doesn’t even match the commitments made by
some other countries. And the liberals call it a scam.
Some environmentalists are calling for a moratorium on foreign ships entering the Great Lakes. Foreign ships are believed to be responsible for many of the invasive species causing billions of dollars of damage to the Great Lakes economy and ecosystems. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Environmentalists are trying to ratchet up pressure on the shipping
industry over invasive species. They’re calling for a moratorium on
allowing ocean-going ships into the Great Lakes. David Sommerstein
reports:
Transcript
Environmentalists are trying to ratchet up pressure on the shipping
industry over invasive species. They’re calling for a moratorium on
allowing ocean-going ships into the Great Lakes. David Sommerstein
reports:
Foreign freighters account for about 25% of overall tonnage on the
Great Lakes.
Jennifer Caddick says those ships’ ballast water bring a new invasive
species into the region, on average, every six months. Caddick’s
group, Save The River, has joined Great Lakes United in a petition
campaign for a moratorium:
“There is continuous talk, you know over the past 10 or 15 years, about having new, stronger ballast regulations
to stem the flow of invasive species, and unfortunately, nothing has
happened. Frankly, we have said enough is enough.”
Caddick admits a moratorium is unlikely. The agency that runs the
shipping lanes says it would violate a 1909 treaty with Canada.
Invasive species do billions of dollars of damage in the Great Lakes.
There are five bills in Congress to address the problem, but none has made
it out of committee.
For The Environment Report, I’m David Sommerstein.
Peter H. Gleick, President and co-founder of the Pacific Institute, is concerned that without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, global warming will have dire impact on water resources. (Courtesy of the Pacific Institute)
With concern about climate change growing, some scientists are trying to determine how global warming will affect sources of water. Lester Graham spoke with the President of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick about what climate change might mean to weather patterns:
Transcript
With concern about climate change growing, some scientists are trying to determine how global warming will affect sources of water.
Lester Graham spoke with the President of the Pacific Institute, Peter Gleick about what climate change might mean to weather
patterns:
PG: Overall, the planet is gonna get wetter because as it gets hotter, we’ll see more
evaporation. The problem is, we aren’t always gonna get rain where we want it.
Sometimes we’re gonna get rain where we don’t want it. And at the moment it looks like
the biggest increases in rainfall will be in the northern regions where typically water is
less of a problem. Or at least water quantity is less of a problem. And we may actually get
less rainfall in the Southwest where we need it more.
LG: Let’s talk about some of the precious areas to North America. For instance, a lot of
people are worried about snow pack in the Rockies.
PG: Yes, well, one of the most certain impacts of global climate change is going to be
significant changes in snowfall and snowmelt patterns in the western United States as a
whole, actually in the United States as a whole because as it warms up, what falls out of
the atmosphere is going to be rain and not snow. Now that really matters in the Western
United States, in the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada where our snow pack really
forms the basis of our water supply system. Unfortunately, as the climate is changing,
we’re seeing rising temperatures and decreasing snow pack. More of what falls in the
mountains is falling as rain, less of it’s going to be snow. That’s going to wreck havoc on
our management system, the reservoirs that we’ve built to deal with these variations in
climate. Incidentally, it’s also going to ruin the ski season eventually.
LG: You mentioned that the farther north you go, according to some models, we’ll see
more rain or more precipitation. At the same time, with warmer temperatures, we’ll see
less ice covering some of the inland lakes, such as the Great Lakes, which means more
evaporation. So, what are we going to see as far as those surface waters sources across
the continent?
PG: Without a doubt, global climate is changing. And it’s going to get worse and worse
as humans put more and more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. And as it gets
warmer, we’re going to see more evaporation off of the surface of all kinds of lakes,
including especially the Great Lakes. And interestingly, even though we don’t have a
great degree of confidence of what’s going to happen precisely with precipitation in the
Great Lakes, all of the models seem to agree that over time, the Great Lakes levels are
going to drop. And it looks like we’re going to lose more water out of the surface of the
Great Lakes from increased evaporation off the lakes than we’re likely to get from
precipitation, even if precipitation goes up somewhat. And I think that’s a great worry for
homeowners and industry around the margin of the lake. Ultimately for navigation,
ultimately for water supply.
LG: There’s a lot of talk about the gloom and doom scenarios of global warming, but
they’ll be longer growing seasons and we’re also going to be seeing, as the zones change,
more of this fertile ground in as northern US and Canada get longer growing seasons.
That’s not a bad thing.
PG: There are going to be winners and loser from global climate change. And
interestingly, there are going to be winners and losers at different times. Certainly, a
longer growing season is a possibility as it warms up. And I think that, in the short term,
could prove to be beneficial for certain agriculture in certain regions. Interestingly
though, and perhaps a little depressingly, over time, if the globe continues to warm up, if
the globe continues to warm up, evidence suggest that the short term improvements in
agriculture that we might see might ultimately be wiped out. As it gets hotter and hotter,
some crop yields will go down after they go up. We’re going to see an increase in pests
that we didn’t used to see because of warmer weather. Unfortunately, pests like warmer
weather. Furthermore, if we don’t really get a handle on greenhouse gas emissions, if we
don’t really start to cut the severity of the climate changes that we’re going to see, the
doom and gloom scenarios unfortunately get more likely. Over time, the temperatures go
up not just one or two or three degrees Celsius but four or five or eight degree Celsius.
And that truly is a catastrophe for the kind of systems we’ve set up around the planet.
HOST TAG: Peter Gleick is a water expert and President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security, based in California.
An adult ash borer. The tree-killing bug has now been found in Toronto. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Agriculture)
