The awful weather in the Northeast is getting all the attention. So is the Pineapple Express, in northern California, delivering a stream of heavy rain to the drought stricken state. These are both instances of abundance.
It's the same thing when tornadoes rip through unfortunate communities. It is not just wild weather that attracts eyeballs to television news: it's the abundance of weather.
What is not getting so much attention, though, is drought. Scarcity of weather, as in the case of drought, doesn't get nearly the same degree of attention as snowstorms, cars piled up on interstates from the obligatory helicopter cockpit cam.
True: drought happens in slow motion, over a long period of time and in contrast, we are attuned to fast-moving stories of hurricanes and floods.
Today the biggest story about weather (and climate, of course) are the extraordinarily warm temperatures at higher elevations in the California Sierras. The Rocky Mountains/ Western ranges, too, are having a very poor snow year again.
A friend reports that a ski area in the mid-range Sierras, 7000 foot elevation, has announced it is closing until more snow arrives. More snow will arrive, but not enough to end a drought in California and the southwest that looks to be deeper than any encountered in the written record.
The snowpack is the Sierras is critical for drinking water for tens of millions of Californians.
Our politics, perhaps as soon as the next five years when water storage actually vanishes for some dense populated areas in the American west and southwest, will have to adjust. Too bad that human nature has shaped the world's greatest democracy -- that would be us -- into the logic of corporate depreciation schedules. Those accounting principles are typically required to plan a few decades out, at the most. That's what corporate America requires and what is produced for investors, to judge the value of their investment. Beyond a few decades, corporations do plan but the public doesn't get to see what those plans are.
Long-term planning counts for abundance in all things but aspirational when it comes to scarcity. Except for the US military, no one is planning for when the climate forces epochal change. See how we are on its leading edge right now.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article8050335.html
And here is a recent report from one California ski area: "SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8 … WE ARE TEMPORARILY CLOSED UNTIL WE RECEIVE MORE SNOW. WE ARE WATCHING THE WEATHER OVER THE NEXT 36 HOURS, AS THERE IS A CHANCE OF SNOW BEFORE THIS SYSTEM PASSES THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT. THERE IS NOT MUCH IN THE FORECAST FOR THIS COMING WEEK, BUT STAY IN TOUCH WITH THIS REPORT FOR RE OPENING UPDATES. IF WE GET ENOUGH SNOW TO REOPEN WE WILL DO SO IMMEDIATELY."
It's the same thing when tornadoes rip through unfortunate communities. It is not just wild weather that attracts eyeballs to television news: it's the abundance of weather.
What is not getting so much attention, though, is drought. Scarcity of weather, as in the case of drought, doesn't get nearly the same degree of attention as snowstorms, cars piled up on interstates from the obligatory helicopter cockpit cam.
True: drought happens in slow motion, over a long period of time and in contrast, we are attuned to fast-moving stories of hurricanes and floods.
Today the biggest story about weather (and climate, of course) are the extraordinarily warm temperatures at higher elevations in the California Sierras. The Rocky Mountains/ Western ranges, too, are having a very poor snow year again.
A friend reports that a ski area in the mid-range Sierras, 7000 foot elevation, has announced it is closing until more snow arrives. More snow will arrive, but not enough to end a drought in California and the southwest that looks to be deeper than any encountered in the written record.
The snowpack is the Sierras is critical for drinking water for tens of millions of Californians.
Our politics, perhaps as soon as the next five years when water storage actually vanishes for some dense populated areas in the American west and southwest, will have to adjust. Too bad that human nature has shaped the world's greatest democracy -- that would be us -- into the logic of corporate depreciation schedules. Those accounting principles are typically required to plan a few decades out, at the most. That's what corporate America requires and what is produced for investors, to judge the value of their investment. Beyond a few decades, corporations do plan but the public doesn't get to see what those plans are.
Long-term planning counts for abundance in all things but aspirational when it comes to scarcity. Except for the US military, no one is planning for when the climate forces epochal change. See how we are on its leading edge right now.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article8050335.html
And here is a recent report from one California ski area: "SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 8 … WE ARE TEMPORARILY CLOSED UNTIL WE RECEIVE MORE SNOW. WE ARE WATCHING THE WEATHER OVER THE NEXT 36 HOURS, AS THERE IS A CHANCE OF SNOW BEFORE THIS SYSTEM PASSES THROUGH MONDAY NIGHT. THERE IS NOT MUCH IN THE FORECAST FOR THIS COMING WEEK, BUT STAY IN TOUCH WITH THIS REPORT FOR RE OPENING UPDATES. IF WE GET ENOUGH SNOW TO REOPEN WE WILL DO SO IMMEDIATELY."
1 comment:
Too bad Boston couldn't send them some snow. They have so much of it, they don't know how to dispose of it.
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