The Durango Herald’s Good Earth story about rising sea levels (Aug. 27) brings home the increasingly hard to ignore fact that climate change is no longer a problem for the next generation. The story quotes experts from NASA who argue that sea level rise of three feet is likely a certainty and will continue for decades. Living in a state that is about as far away from the ocean as it is possible to be does not exempt us from these impacts.
In Colorado, we are contending with longer and more destructive wildfire seasons, reduced snowpack and increased incidence of respiratory disease. Research from the Union of Concerned Scientists and a climate change vulnerability study from CSU shows a doubling in the frequency of fires since 1970 and an expected increase of 400 percent to 650 percent in burned area by mid-century if the trend continues. With Colorado’s average temperature projected to increase by 4 degrees Farenheit in the same time, drought conditions will lower stream-flows, create severe reductions in snowpack at low-elevation, and move spring runoffs earlier by as much as month.
These impacts are beginning to affect the things that I love most about Colorado. I won’t be able to take my lunch break fishing in the Animas if flows won’t support a healthy trout population (or if the water is orange, but that is another can of worms), and I would hate to see my ski season end a month earlier (especially after paying through the nose for a season pass). Climate change is happening now and it is high time we start doing something about it before it’s too late.
PJ Higgins
Durango
