How serious a threat to our well-being is climate change? And how important is it, therefore, that our nation do more to counter it?
Ask the more than 35 million people in seven western states (plus a number of tribes and Mexico) who depend on the Colorado River. One out of every 10 people living in the United States relies on the Colorado River for drinking water. The river also irrigates five million acres of farmland, which contribute to 15 percent of U.S. agricultural production. Two dams along the Colorado generate electricity vital to the region.
But, due in part to climate change, the river–and the millions who depend on it–face a crisis. Lake Powell, a massive reservoir that straddles the border of Arizona and Utah, is more than 20 feet lower than it was at the start of the year, as noted by The Associated Press. It is at risk of falling below levels needed to generate hydropower, The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Ulick reported.
The second giant reservoir, Lake Mead, 24 miles southeast of Las Vegas, is only 27 percent full. Seventeen giant turbines at the adjacent Hoover Dam provide power vital to California, Arizona, and Nevada.
Last month marked a grim milestone: the combined volume of both reservoirs hit their lowest level since 1957, when Glen Canyon Dam was still under construction.
Record-low snowpack in many parts of the Rockies last winter deprived the Colorado River of needed replenishment. The dry conditions follow a “megadrought” that has gripped the region since 2000. Scientists have determined that this has been the worst dry spell for the Southwest in at least 1,200 years.
“In the 21st century, the average natural flow of the Colorado River is 16 percent less than was the natural stream flow between 1930 and 2000,” Jack Schmidt, senior research scientist at the Center for Colorado River Studies at Utah State University, told NPR’s Ailsa Chang. “So we can call that the long-term decline in runoff associated with a warming climate.”
The seven states that rely on the river couldn’t agree on a plan of their own, so on August 21, the Interior Department produced one, at least for the short term. Arizona, California and Nevada will take about 20 percent less water from the river over the next two years. Arizona will shoulder the largest portion of those cuts.
The plan does not force cuts for the upstream states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico because the federal government doesn't think it has the authority to do that.
“We expected to be in a very unpleasant place, and that’s where we find ourselves,” said Kathryn Sorensen, the director of research at the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University. “Mother Nature is in charge of this system,” she told Scott Dance of The New York Times.
Agriculture uses more than two-thirds of the Colorado River’s water, with alfalfa and other sources of livestock feed accounting for nearly half of the water consumed. Options for reducing those numbers include “more efficient irrigation, less water-intensive crops and short-term fallowing of fields,” according to Michael Cohen, a senior fellow at the Pacific Institute.
While such steps have potential, it is clear that our government needs to tackle the climate change that is a major cause of this problem. How? We need to shift more quickly from burning fossil fuels to building solar and wind power facilities. That transition will occur more rapidly if we make fossil fuels pay for their external costs (by pricing their emissions) and stop subsidizing them. It’s time for Congress to get serious.