As I followed the news of the terrible wildfires in Los Angeles, I thought back to reading How Nature Speaks: The Dynamics of the Human Ecological Condition and its definition of nature.
According to Yrjö Haila and Chuck Dyke, the editors of the book, nature is the parameters of what is possible. The Los Angeles fires and their devastation suggested to me new parameters for what is possible and what is not possible.
It is pretty clear that we can and have changed what is possible in terms of wildfires, droughts, and storms. By releasing tons of greenhouse gases, we have warmed the planet, expanding the parameters and therefore the power and impacts of such phenomena.
In return, our expansion of these parameters has received a response from the phenomena. As Haila and Dyke would argue, our actions sent a message to the climate, and the climate engaged with that communication through its parameters. Specifically, the climate is now putting tighter limits on where and how we can live. The increased likelihood and strength of climate-related disasters means that humans will have to adjust to these new parameters. Some areas will likely no longer support the population sizes they once did; others may prove entirely incapable of fostering human life.
We've changed the parameters for nature, and that includes ourselves.
As I saw reports this week of Midwestern skies filling with smoke from the Canadian wildfires, I experienced the feeling of returning to that area in my mind.
Having spent five years teaching at the University of South Dakota, I remember when wildfire smoke turned the skies of Vermillion, South Dakota, orange-pink in the spring of 2016. That smoke was also from Canada though I think it was from the western part of the country. I remember thinking how wildfire smoke can provide a strong connection between people as we deal with the impacts of global warming.
This year's Canadian wildfires have been sending smoke far and wide for months. In early May, I looked out my window in western Washington and saw that familiar yet strange tint of orange-pink in the evening light. As it turned out, that color was courtesy of smoke from western Canada. Later, smoke from eastern Canada darkened skies on the East Coast of the United States.
When the smoke zeroed in on the Midwest, I felt like I was back in South Dakota. I could see myself looking up into the open, hazy sky of Vermillion. It was a powerful feeling.
Through its impacts on air quality and our senses and health, wildfire smoke provides tangible connections to global warming and between people who are hundreds or thousands of miles away.
I know where I am, but I don't recognize this place.
Never in my life have I seen an October in Washington state like this one. Summer will not let go, and hardly a hint of fall has presented itself. Seattle recorded its latest day of 85+ degrees on October 16 by reaching 88, one degree shy of breaking its all-time October high temperature, which was set on October 1, 1987, more than two full weeks closer to summer.
Perhaps the most disorienting factor comes from the constant presence of wildfire smoke. For the second time since September 2020, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, have the worst air quality in the world because of wildfires. Socked in for days on end, the smoke has defined this October as it had done to August and September in recent years. Today, even despite rain, the smoke would not relent.
Once one of my favorite months, the Pacific Northwest October has become an alien experience. It's hard to make sense of it.
Something's been lost here, and now, I am as well.
Obviously, the pandemic has defined the last two years for most everyone on the planet. However, as I look back on that time, some other p-words also come to mind.
While the pandemic made its impact, I couldn't help but notice the plundering and pillaging that was happening simultaneously. From the corporate bailouts and the giveaways of federal land for oil and gas drilling that plundered the country to the pillaging of natural resources in the Pacific Northwest, the pandemic-era has left its mark far beyond the arena of public health.
To all of this, I might add a fourth p-word: paralysis. The failure of the United States to protect its people during the pandemic has been paralleled by an alarming inaction on important issues like global warming even as heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and increasingly powerful storms pound our country and the world more frequently.
All I have left to say about this state of affairs is that it's pathetic!
Judging by the sun, I can tell it's time for the regulation of carbon emissions.
Smoke from wildfires turning the morning sun
an eerie red on August 22 in Washington state.
Once a rare sight, sunlight turned hazy red from wildfire smoke has become a consistent feature of Pacific Northwest summers in the last decade. This year, it colored much of August in Washington state, bringing with it hazardous air quality and oppressively low visibility. Suffocating and disorienting, the smoke and the hellish scene it created set off a flight mechanism in the back of my mind. It didn't feel safe, and I wanted to get out of it.
Besides suggesting a need to flee, the flashing red light of smoke-filtered sun carries another message for Washington residents in 2018: Go! And by that, I mean it's a sign to go forward on the regulation of carbon emissions by enacting Initiative 1631.
As I've blogged about before, I-1631 regulates carbon emissions by placing a fee on the big polluters responsible for the majority of those emissions, disincentivizing the use of fossil fuels. It also funds renewable energy and prepares Washington's communities for the effects of global warming, effects like increasingly difficult wildfire seasons and the smoke that accompanies them.
When we're filling out our ballots for this November's election, let's remember the red skies of August and go enact I-1631.
Wind turbines churn out renewable
energy near Grayland, Washington.
American journalist Mignon McLaughlin wrote, "The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next."
The state of Washington needs that courage now from its legislators and from its people. We stand on the edge of a transition from one moment to another, and that move asks us to take a major step.
During the past five years, Washington has seen major impacts of global warming but no legislative action to address it. Consequently, that half-decade did not contain the fondest moments for Washington's environmentalists. In November 2012, voters elected Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat who has highlighted global warming as a key issue. That same year, two Democrats switched allegiance and began caucusing with Republicans, putting the state senate in GOP control. Every year since then, with major droughts, die-offs in sea life, and record-breaking fire seasons taking place, Inslee has called for climate legislation only to have Republicans block it.
Election results from a single race on Tuesday made possible a new and brighter moment in Washington government. Democrat Manka Dhingra won election to the senate in a district previously represented by a Republican, returning control of the chamber to Democrats. That means, no obstacles remain to prevent Inslee's desired legislation. As long as Democrats have the courage to make it happen, we can finally address this urgent issue.
This is the moment the state has waited for, and we must make the most of it. Our beloved region desperately needs action on global warming, and that work has to start at home. No excuses, no procrastinating. Whether the legislation comes in the form of a cap-and-trade system like the one Inslee proposed three years ago or a carbon tax like the one voters placed on the ballot in 2016, this legislation needs to get done, and needs to be done well.
Our moment is here, Washington, and we must be courageous. Contact your legislators and the governor, and tell them to seize this opportunity for a healthier planet.
When I drove through the Columbia River Gorge on my way to Multnomah Falls in summer 2016, I couldn't imagine having to write this blog post.
I have blogged before about the feeling of losing what was the Pacific Northwest to global warming. Although many of the changes brought to the region by the warming climate, including the staggering heat of July 2015, the shrinking glaciers at Mount Rainier, and the die-offs off starfish, birds, and other species along the cost, helped me realize that the PNW had already become something different from the place of my youth, they didn't prepare me to see the gorge consumed in the red flames of wildfire. So last week, when fireworks set ablaze the gorge's tinder-dry forest, which had been parched by months of relentless heat and rainless skies, I realized with new sadness and urgency the magnitude of our increasingly hot situation. Seeing the flames close in around Multnomah Falls, I felt a powerlessness akin to watching time slip away. To gain a sense of the awful scene still developing in the gorge, watch the video from The Oregonian below:
In recent years, I have increased my efforts to see places in the PNW precisely because I felt the need to race the changes that would alter them forever. In spite of the changes they've already seen, most of those places retain part of their essence and a good amount of their iconic beauty. For this reason, the trip to Multnomah Falls last year left a satisfying impression. I was glad I had taken the time to know and appreciate that place better; I felt at home below the high walls of the gorge; and I considered it a place I would hold in my heart despite any of the changes I imagined coming to it.
As it turns out, I haven't been racing change; I've been racing erasure. I will always have the memory of the 2016 gorge trip. Still, until last week, I didn't think the situation so dire that the drive would stand as my last time seeing the gorge in that state of beauty. Firefighters protected some of the area around Multnomah Falls, including the historic lodge, but much of that stretch of the gorge on the Oregon side went up in flames. The smoke and ash from that fire combined with the output from numerous fires throughout the region to blanket and choke the PNW in a hazy, red hellscape so alien I hurt to even think it the same place I once knew.
Nearly beyond our imagining but definitely beyond any doubt, we find ourselves in a race to the last and quickly disappearing remnants of something special.
The right move can take us to the ends of the Earth.
Last Tuesday, as record-setting heat settled into the Pacific Northwest, my mom and I drove to Kalaloch on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula. The trip gave me aneeded escape from the oppressive temperatures and smoky air.
Although we'd scheduled the outing before forecasts began predicting the extreme heat, I couldn't help thinking on the drive up the peninsula how nice the ocean air would feel instead of 95 degrees. With each mile, we left further behind the temperatures escalating inland. When we reached Kalaloch, which resides on the western boundary of Olympic National Park, the temperature stood in the 60s. On the beach, a fresh breeze blew light fog from the water, and the tide washed cool waves over our feet.
Driftwood on the beach at Kalaloch.
Walking near the surf, I found myself surrounded by shorebirds, including a semipalmated plover, which represented my very first sighting of that species. We left the beach for lunch, climbing the cliff at the edge of North America. When we reached the top, a group of people informed us that they saw gray whales just offshore. Putting off lunch, we stayed to watch the whales, which ventured inside the breakers, flipped on their sides, and occasionally spouted into the air. It had taken a long drive, but looking at the whales forage at the end of the world's greatest ocean, I knew I'd come to the right spot on what otherwise might have been an uncomfortably hot day.
After watching the whales, my mom and I enjoyed a wonderful lunch in the cool restaurant at the Kalaloch Lodge. Next, we explored the Kalaloch Creek Nature Trail. A little warmer than the beach, the forest through which the trail wound nevertheless provided abundant shade, and its quiet confines completed the satisfaction of escaping the less favorable conditions to the east.
As we returned home to find temperatures still in the 90s and smoke filtering in from wildfires in British Columbia, the lesson of the day shone clearly through the haze: Know what place is right for you, and go wherever that may be even if it's the very end of the line.
The saying holds that people who keep their heads while everyone else loses theirs don't understand the situation. My experiences this summer taught me that the people who don't lose their heads might just understand the situation as fully as possible.
I spent the summer amid the sound of First Aid Kit, a Swedish folk band with a flair for Americana, and the fury of a Pacific Northwest burning in the face of global warming. We typically overcome the kind of sadness and fear associated with watching a beloved place shrivel up and incinerate by turning away from the most terrifying details. As much as I might have liked to do that at the beginning of the summer, by the end, I realized that this time (and from now on), I would, as First Aid Kit's song says, "Walk unafraid."
I bought the song, which comes from the soundtrack of Wild, along with the band's Stay Gold album in early May before I returned home for summer vacation. The music became the soundtrack of a summer that contained equal parts devastation and empowerment. I listened to very little else, but the songs never faded. They played in my head through adventures that filled my heart and events that broke it.
I saw Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and Olympic National Park with lyrics like those from My Silver Lining echoing in the vastness of the extraordinary scenery. I watched the overwhelming heat of July bring a usually vibrant ecosystem to its knees and August's wildfires and their accompanying smoke finish the job with merciless suffocation. By that time, Fleeting One, the eighth track on Stay Gold seemed all too appropriate.
Still, I never turned away or tuned out. I took it all in. I reached a point where I knew and could feel everything that was happening. I could tell how close the land and plants were to breaking. Several times, I just had to cry. Then, a strange thing happened: Out of the chaos came the confidence of clarity. I'd played Walk Unafraid so many times in those three months, but suddenly, I was doing what the song said. I understood the situation fully, and I met it head on.
Trees had already started dying on my parents' property by August 2 when I turned on the sprinkler for the first time. We haven't watered our yard for years, but we still have a good sprinkler and some long hoses. During the next two weeks, I used them to get water to the native trees and plants on the property. At first, I wasn't sure if I was having any positive effect or merely tilting at windmills. I didn't even know how to feel when I read that Olympic National Park was also using sprinklers on its forests. Suddenly and unexpectedly though, the weather shifted in the slightest of ways. A bit of rain fell, and the temperatures cooled a little. Combined with my efforts, these changes helped the local plants revive. I felt the satisfaction of knowing a situation, responding to it, and making a contribution.
Although the last images I saw of the Pacific Northwest as I drove east for the school year were shrouded in smoke, I looked upon them without flinching. Those scenes would have torn me apart before. This time, they hurt, but I also knew nothing could break my connection to that place or my commitment to helping it as we face global warming together.
It's the same effect that occurs when music puts people in sync, and it's only possible when everything (joy, sadness, fear) is fully experienced.
Recession of the Nisqually Glacier at Mount Rainier
When I came home to Washington state this summer, I said goodbye.
Early in the spring semester while working at the University of South Dakota, I started making plans for my summer in Washington. I wanted to go back to Olympic National Park and Mount St. Helens. Also, I wanted to visit Mount Rainier for the first time. That mountain had watched over so much of my life, but I had never been up to it.
Accompanied by my family, I was able to keep all my plans, and I had a great time doing it. Still, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was losing old friends and the state where I grew up.
Global warming is tearing apart my home state this summer with drought and heat. Two weeks after I visited Olympic National Park, one of the wettest places in the world, a massive fire started there. Days before I visited Mount St. Helens, the state Department of Ecology declared that Washington's snowpack was at zero percent of normal levels. Sure enough, the only snow I saw on that trip was at the top of St. Helens and in the volcano's shaded crater. Then, days before I went to Mount Rainier, a news story ran about the mountain's disappearing Nisqually Glacier. I was sure to take pictures of the glacier and its recession on my trip because I wasn't sure how many more chances I'll get to see it.
I was glad about my choice to visit these icons of Washington this summer. Global warming is changing them, and I needed something of the way they were to keep as a last memory. That's what we must do when we say goodbye.
Rain, moderate temperatures, snow: The band has broken up in Washington, and in the words of singer Michelle Branch, "Goodbye to you. Goodbye to everything that I knew. You were the one I loved, the one thing I tried to hold onto."
Welcome to the land where environmentalists provide more timber jobs than the logging industry.
For years, the increasing mechanization of logging has stripped away tree-falling and mill jobs in Washington state and Oregon. Work that used to require dozens can now be done by a handful. In contrast, this article demonstrates how the environmental movement can increase logging jobs while addressing important environmental issues.
In summary, the story documents how Oregon Wild, a regional environmental group, enlisted loggers and a mill in John Day, Oregon, to thin forests at risk from wildfires. The thinning reduces fuel for the fires. It has also kept John Day's Malheur Lumber mill going, led to the hiring of more mill workers, and produced a 10-year contract for a local logging company.
The impacts of collaboration in this story are amazing. Some of the old hostilities between environmentalists and loggers are still apparent in the article's quotes, but they serve more as testaments to the power of common ground to overcome major political and social obstacles. Perhaps the most powerful realization is that once the ice was broken, innovative ideas like using logging for conservation purposes and developing ongoing partnerships flowed freely. When we are able to let go of positions that keep us apart, we can achieve a lot.
The partnership between environmentalists, loggers, and the mill in Oregon shows how finding common ground and new ideas can revitalize public discussions, help resolve conflicts, and result in a better world.
Global warming's impacts continue to grow, but the public pressure to address it is on the move as well.
More and more frequently, we see the influence of warming on our planet. In June, I blogged about the release of the National Climate Assessment and the efforts to communicate its findings, which show global warming already at work. Last month, record-setting wildfires, fueled by dried out forests, hit my home state of Washington. These fires are just the latest chapter in the expanding story of global warming.
Another story continues to unfold along with global warming though. As temperatures increase and the climate changes around them, people throughout the world remain committed to pressuring governments to address the issue. The People's Climate March, scheduled for New York City (and other participating locations) on September 21, represents the latest installment of the worldwide effort. Check out a video about it below:
Aimed at moving the participants of the United Nations' climate summit to action, the march brings together people representing many different organizations. The wide-ranging support demonstrates that while binding, international agreements remain elusive, concerns about global warming aren't going away (and neither are the people who voice those concerns). For more information about the march, click here, and even if you can't attend the NYC march, you can still plan your own to support it.
Only you can stop thinking about forest fires in the old way.
Smokey Bear famously encouraged us to prevent forest fires. We took the slogan to heart, but perhaps we overdid it. While it's true that we need to take care not to start them, the idea that all wildfires are completely negative for the environment needs revision.
Recent scientific research, including this study by Oregon State University, has shown that wildfires are yet another important life force in ecosystems. Among other things, fire helps contain invasive species and functions as a starter for new life processes. This means that total fire suppression prevents the natural cycle from playing out.
We had the best of intentions in preventing forest fires, but this idea about the key environmental role of such fires needs to ... well ... catch fire.
