LandDesk
by Jonathan Thompson
Hazed and confused Trip back to Durango overwhelms with evidence of climate change electrical utility’s equipment, grew to become the second largest fire in California’s history. One day Salt Lake City – which suffered through its hottest July on record – was ranked as the most polluted in the world; the next day it was Denver. Boise wasn’t much better, and it had its hottest July on record, too. As we drove into town, past big box stores and condos in a spot I will forever think of as the livestock Sale Barn
of irrigation water through a canal. At stake are crops like the corn grown at the Ute Mountain Ute Farm & Ranch very time I take the flight between Denver and DuEnterprise, which needs another few weeks of water to rango, I try to get a window seat with views unimreach maturity. peded by the wing. And from the moment the plane This is just one piece of the backdrop against which the tilts up and that distinctive feeling of the wheels leaving International Panel on Climate Change released its most rethe earth causes my stomach to sink, my forehead is cent, and grimmest, report yet. The heading for Section A.1, pressed to the hard plastic of the window and my gaze affor example, reads: “It is unequivocal that human influence fixed to the topography has warmed the atmosphere, below. I never read or conocean and land. Widespread verse with my neighbor or and rapid changes in the atsleep, regardless of how tired I mosphere, ocean, cryosphere might be or how many hours and biosphere have ocI may have spent in airplanes, curred.” airports, and security and The fires, drought, floodpassport lines already. If I did, ing and heatwaves are eviI might miss something, I dence of the change. And might overlook some tiny deevery ton of greenhouse gas tail – a distinctively shaped added to the atmosphere will patch of snow on the north further warm the planet and face of a rocky peak, the sildrive us deeper into this disasvery flash of late sun reflectter that is already playing out ing off a meandering stream – in the ground. Since there’s down below, in what I like to no chance of stopping emiscall my Home Country. sions tomorrow, the warming I made the trip again a likely will continue for few days ago, the last leg of a decades, and the adverse eflong journey that began in fects likely will grow worse. rural Greece, not far from While the report, even in the island of Evia, where catits staid language, oozes with astrophic wildfires continue despair, the authors do not to ravage forests, olive groves advise to abandon all hope, and villages, forcing thounor are we doomed to desands to flee by sea. From scend into the Inferno. If my seat in the bus, I global leaders act decisively watched the pyrocumulous and quickly to halt humancloud rise into the blue sky. caused emissions by 2050, The following day, from the then it’s possible to keep the airplane window, I saw simitemperature from climbing to lar plumes in northern levels that would make life on Smoke fills the skies above Durango recently as wildfires rage across the West./ Photo by Missy Votel Greece and Croatia before this planet rather miserable. flying over the brilliant green Hope on this matter is fields of Germany and Belgium, so recently wracked by and the Rocket Drive-In, and crossed the High Bridge over hard to come by these days. What’s left of my optimism deadly flooding. the Animas River, I took a gander to ground-truth the erodes with every story of another fire, another town All of that just made me more eager to get on the DuUSGS stream gauge that I had closely tracked all summer. burned to the ground, another heatwave, another rash of rango flight, knowing that the state was free of major After a disappointing spring runoff, the river seemed to heat-related fatalities in the Arizona desert. I despair every fires – for now – thanks to a robust and soaking monbe vanishing altogether before the monsoon came and time a politician blocks decent policy because it might soon. But when I finally got out of the plane in Denver shot the levels up above the median for this time of year cut into the profits of the fossil fuel corporations. And and looked out the airport’s huge windows, my hopes for a little over a week. Then the rains went and the water sometimes I just wanna say, “F*** it!” were dashed. The air was thick with smoke as dense as dropped back down. Now it’s once again approaching But then I hear my daughters talking so intelligently any fog. I stepped out on an outdoor terrace to, at last, re- bottom-scraping levels for the boaters. and compassionately about the world and the future, and move the mask I had been wearing for nearly 20 hours The water picture is far more grim elsewhere. Despite I see a new wave of young leaders taking the reins of straight, only to get a big gulp of campfire-scented air. huge rains that triggered massive debris flows in the scars power without compromising their values. I realize that So much for my plane’s eye view of the Home Country. I of last year’s big fires that shut down I-70 through Glengiving up is not an option. There is hope. Really. saw no farm fields laid out in rectilinear perfection, no wood Canyon, and even though the Bureau of ReclamaWhen I started writing this piece this morning, the jagged mountain peaks, no rivers, no lakes, no mesas, no tion has been releasing extra water from upstream hills and mountains lining the Animas Valley were still landforms. I only saw sea of light gray as opaque as any real reservoirs, Lake Powell continues to shrink and the big obscured by the smoke, and Hermosa Mountain, that ocean. I finally made out features on the ground through bathtub ring lining its sandstone shores grows. Lake icon of my childhood, was almost invisible. Then some the gauzy veil just before we landed: the distinctive form of Oroville, California’s second-largest reservoir, dropped so winds kicked up and, almost miraculously, the smoke the Hogback Monocline which provides a boundary for the low that it can no longer produce hydropower – the first blew away. I looked up the valley and there was Hermosa geologic San Juan Basin; the little boxes of a rural subdivitime that’s happened since it was built in the 1960s. In Mountain and its distinctive red cliffs watching over the sion; a coalbed methane wellpad, then another, and anAugust 2019, the dam’s power plant generated enough verdant valley. other; and the silhouettes of natural gas plant distilling electricity to power 639,000 California homes; this Autowers against an apocalyptic-orange sky. gust it will power zero homes. That will further strain the The smoke wasn’t from any Colorado fires but had em- California grid when the next heatwave hits and force The Land Desk is a thrice-weekly newsletter from Jonathan P. anated from massive conflagrations in California, Oregon grid operators to turn to natural gas for power. And Thompson, longtime journalist and author of River of Lost Souls, and Washington, got caught up in the wind, and blown McPhee Reservoir on the Dolores River is being dredged Behind the Slickrock Curtain, and the forthcoming Sagebrush Emacross the entire West. The Dixie Fire, likely sparked by an of 13,000 cubic feet of silt to squeeze the remaining drops pire. To subscribe, go to: www.landdesk.org.■
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telegraph
Aug. 19, 2021 n 7
