My friend Nejem Raheem (whom I met at the University of New Mexico, where I encouraged him to get a PhD in Economics) wrote this Op-Ed in the New Hampshire Union Leader.
Here goes:
AS THE Union Leader and many other papers have reported, all of New Hampshire is experiencing some level of drought and nearly one quarter of the state is experiencing severe drought (despite our recent batch of rain), according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
This is our fourth hottest and ninth driest summer on record. Farmers in southern New Hampshire in particular are struggling. While coronavirus is a more immediately pressing issue, drought is not going away. And it’s most likely going to get worse.
I’m an environmental economist who has worked on drought and water issues for nearly 20 years. I work with scientists at the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Neb., who developed the drought monitor and with farmers in New Mexico. While New Hampshire doesn’t have a history of crushing drought like California, New England is on its way to having hotter and longer droughts. Much of that is due to climate change.
New England has been pretty wet for most of written history. That’s still true compared to the west, but we’re seeing climate change-driven shifts in precipitation patterns and temperatures that match predictions for more intense droughts. You might have noticed that rainstorms have become more intense and less frequent, for instance, or that winters are milder and less snowy. That itself isn’t likely a predictor of drought, but almost all of the climate models predict hotter and drier conditions.
People often fight over water; cities want it for their residents, ranchers want it for cattle, and forest ecologists worry about trees dying, bears coming into town, and fires. My work as an environmental economist is about getting people to work together and plan better for when a drought comes. Because, where drought is concerned, we are all part of the landscape. And while it’s clear that climate change is making droughts worse, it’s also clear that cooperation is part of the way to deal with it.
Having a climate change denier as president is incredibly dangerous. Not just for liberal environmentalists, but for farmers and ranchers, city people, and anyone who lives near the woods. (In New Hampshire, that’s all of us, by the way.)
As I watched the Democratic and Republican conventions, I was struck not just by the anti-science style of Donald Trump and his surrogates but also by their divisive rhetoric. I’ve worked on water issues in New Mexico, Montana, California, and Labrador, Canada. One crucial part of any solution to addressing future water problems, even here in small-town government New Hampshire, is cooperation and communication. This means getting past “I’ll only fight for those on my side.” Everyone needs water.
I was born and raised on the East Coast, but I lived out west for many years. We have no real experience with drought here in New England and we don’t really know what it’s like to have conflicts over water. But we will, and sooner than most think. And unless we get past the climate science denial and brawling combativeness of our current president’s approach, we’ll never solve the problem when it gets here. We need better leadership. We have to vote for a president who not only supports and endorses science, but also who will strive for collaboration and cooperation.
If we re-elect Donald Trump, New Hampshire will lose out on opportunities to plan for a water-scarce future.
New Englanders are good at working together, but we might be getting worse. I’ve been talking with people about politics all summer, mostly against my will. I’ve talked with environmentalists who don’t want to talk with loggers, and the reverse. Gun-owning rural folks who don’t want to talk to summer people from Boston. The divisive rhetoric is very compelling. We’ve seen it for years. We need to get past that and recognize that our neighbors are our allies, even if they’re not necessarily our friends. We need to realize that we’re all in this together.
Having a president who tells us otherwise is going to make things worse. We need a president who listens to scientists. And for the sake of all of us here in New Hampshire and all across New England, we need to start working together.
So is New England experiencing a drought? Take a look here (about 72% of NH is in a severe drought) and see below:
The text said there are about 13M people in the drought area.
Why is this a big deal? Perception. Some of us, especially those of us who have spent a lot of time in the arid West, often forget that droughts occur in the East as well.
I actually recall some droughts in Long Island, New York when I was growing up. TV weathermen would talk about how low upstate reservoirs were (never mind that we got our water from underground). Then we'd get a hurricane coming up from south to fill the reservoirs up. No such luck out here...
So what's with 'Wicked' in the title? Look here.
And Nejem is an Associate Professor of Economics at Emerson College in Boston. Wicked good!
Enjoy!
"Live Free Or Die; Death Is Not The Worst of Evils." - General John Stark, in a letter to his NH Revolutionary War comrades at their 32nd reunion
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