ATHENS — The unprecedented heat waves, droughts, and wildfires that have afflicted so much of the country this summer, along with recent scientific findings about global warming and climate change (GWCC), indicate strongly that we are in a new ball game.
It's not just that we're way beyond reasonable denial at this point, it's also that what we're dealing with is no longer simply an ominous threat for future generations, for our children and grandchildren.
To the contrary, what's becoming quite obvious is that GWCC is a clear and present danger for all of us - right now.
The evidence has been gathering for some time, of course; but the summer of 2012 has brought this reality home, big time.
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Perhaps nowhere was this alarm more dramatically sounded than in an article by Bill McKibben that appeared in the Aug 16 issue of Rolling Stone.
McKibben wrote that ice all across Greenland was melting far more quickly than had been expected. While scientists had earlier predicted that it might take up to a decade before the surface of Greenland's ice sheet melted all at once, it has actually occurred within a few weeks.
Noting that what is happening in Greenland is significant for the entire planet, McKibben went on to observe that “[w]ater pouring into the North Atlantic will not only raise sea levels, but is also likely to modify weather patterns.”
Underscoring this potential catastrophe, the world's foremost climatologist, NASA's James Hansen, said: “If the world allows a substantial fraction of the Greenland ice sheet to disintegrate, all hell breaks loose for eastern North America and Europe.”
In a Washington Post op-ed article two weeks earlier, Hansen wrote that he and other scientists had been “too optimistic” about their previous GWCC predictions. The work that they had more recently done “revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.”
“This is not a climate model or a prediction,” he went on to write, “but actual observations of weather events and temperatures that have happened.”
“Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change.
“To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.”
A week later, The New York Times published another op-ed piece in which the authors stated that “[w]idespread annual droughts, once a rare calamity, have become more frequent and are set to become the 'new normal.'”
They went on to add that “what we consider today to be an episode of severe drought might even be classified as a period of abnormal wetness by the end of the century and that a coming megadrought - a prolonged, multidecade period of significantly below-average precipitation - is possible and likely in the American West.”
As with other recent devastating climate-caused events in the world, this summer's killer heat waves and droughts are having a profound impact on our agriculture. In July, the U.S. Department of Agriculture declared more than 1,000 counties in 26 states natural disaster areas.
According to the USDA, this year's corn yield is projected to be the lowest since 1995 because of damage from the nation's worst drought in 56 years.
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All these events point to higher food costs in the months ahead as corn and other crop prices rise to record highs.
This is but the latest chapter in the growth of food insecurity that has affected much of the world since 2008, a crisis that has developed in lockstep with rising oil prices and climate-change-induced floods, droughts, and storms.
For many, this change has meant serious hunger, famine, and food riots; for us in America, it has involved higher food prices and deprivation for many, a reality that particularly impacts the increasingly growing number of income-challenged people in our society.
When “100 year” droughts and violent storms have become the “new normal,” compromising our food system, is it not reasonable to ask: How are we going feed ourselves?
Can we continue to depend on a profit-controlled, petroleum-dependent, industrially-run, highly-centralized food system that is especially vulnerable to climate change because of these very characteristics?
These conditions are creating this new ball game, one in which we need to act now so that the growing food crisis doesn't overwhelm us before we are better prepared.
What can we do?
In general, we need to expand our commitment to the production and consumption of local food, not only because it strengthens our farmers and local economy, while improving individual and community health and well-being, but also out of growing necessity: to better provide a sustaining and sustainable diet for life in the age of climate change.
There are at least three things that we can do right now that would have an enormous positive impact in meeting the challenge we face. What's so promising about them is that we're not starting from square one.
1. Here in southern Vermont, we'll be building upon what we're already doing, and continuing to support our local and regional farmers is a perfect example. We have a growing agriculture community in our region that can contribute significantly toward realizing a food sufficient people.
To the extent that our circumstances allow, making the purchase of local produce, meat, and dairy products a priority of our weekly food plans is enormous. Doing so through farmers markets, CSAs, and farm stands are obvious choices; encouraging local grocery stores, co-ops, and restaurants to buy (and serve) local food is also important.
2. As important as our farmers are, though, they cannot feed us, alone. We all have to assume a greater responsibility for our food - growing it, cooking it, preserving and storing it - if we're to survive.
By (re)learning skills and knowledge that our great-grandparents took for granted, while working together as families, neighbors, and towns, we can grow exponentially the linchpins of sustainability, food, and community.
3. We must engage our public officials around climate change and food security, and to encourage their involvement in these issues. The effort to feed ourselves cannot be a movement of citizen volunteers alone.
Notwithstanding the diminishing resources of our public and private agencies and institutions, we need the legitimacy and clout that the active support of our elected and appointed officials would lend to this effort.
In this way we can build a truly community-embracing effort, much like, say, the highly successful Victory Garden campaign in World War II.
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While neither presidential candidate has yet talked about climate change and food security, why are Bernie Sanders, Pat Leahy and Peter Welch so silent on this subject, not sounding the alarm, and calling for action, as we expect from Vermont's political leaders?
Montpelier has demonstrated progressive tendencies in the recent past around CCGW; local reps should be contacted, especially Windham-3 Rep. Carolyn Partridge, who is chair of the House Agriculture Committee.
Closer to home, we need to engage our selectboards and town planning commissions. Their public support, however financially limited, would provide invaluable leadership and energy to developing the infrastructure necessary to a resilient, community-based food system that is accessible and affordable to all.
Additionally, since the Windham Regional Plan influences town plans, we should urge our town commissioners to include a section on food security.
And while commending the work of Southeastern Vermont Economic Development Strategies (SeVEDS), we might also encourage this group to consider that “to generate long-term growth and prosperity,” as their mission calls for, its members must envision our economy as becoming a dynamic and redundant agricultural one operating within the context of climate change and energy descent.
We can implement all of these measures, if we so choose. Expanding our efforts to support local farmers, to grow more of our own food, and to engage our public officials around the issue of climate change and food security is well within our capabilities.
The power is ours to exercise, as is the decision to do so.
The outcome may very well decide our future.