A Special Guest Commentary by Julia Olson, Executive Director, "Our Children's Trust"
This article was submitted courtesy of Ted Glick, National Policy Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, who states the following:
Reading the article below by Julia Olson made me
cry.
One of the big memories of my childhood is a
one-month vacation trip my family took when I was 14 years old, driving from Lancaster, Pa. to Colorado and staying in Manitou Springs, just
outside of Colorado Springs, for
two weeks. Now, Manitou Springs is burning.
And there's no clear end in sight to these
spreading fires. No clear end over the coming days and weeks (months?), and no
clear end for years and decades, given the certainty that the earth's
atmosphere will continue to heat up and regions of the world like much
of the U.S. West that are dry and hot will experience the destructive
effects accordingly. That is, no clear end except--God forbid--a scorched,
forest-less wasteland.
I pray with all my heart that this
literally searing fire experience will speed us toward the political tipping
point that makes it impossible for even our corrupt national government to deny
the truth, that a swelling upsurge of popular outrage leads to the kind of
strong action to get off fossil fuels and enact a renewable energy revolution
that is desperately needed.
To update the words of labor organizer Joe Hill,
"Don't just mourn, organize."
Colorado is
on Fire
6-27-12
By Julia Olson, Executive Director, Our Children's Trust
My home town is burning and my family's houses
are on the front lines, with searing temperatures, zero humidity and high winds
fueling a climate-driven fire.
On Sunday, June 24, my mom called to tell me
that they were evacuating their home in historic Manitou Springs and my 88-year
old grandmother was also forced to evacuate her home on the adjacent west side
of Colorado Springs, not far from the beautiful Garden of the Gods, at the base
of Pikes Peak. Pikes Peak is the most visited mountain in the
country and known to be the second most visited mountain in the world. Its
beauty inspired Kathleen Lee Bates to write the poem, which became the song
“America the Beautiful.”
It’s Tuesday evening now and I just received the
heartbreaking news that my grandmother’s neighborhood is on fire in what is now
the highest priority fire in the nation: the Waldo Canyon Fire. Over 30,000
residents of Colorado Springs and surrounding towns have evacuated
their homes and the fire is uncontained and growing.
A dozen wildfires are burning across my home
state of Colorado. Temperatures
are reaching historic records of over 100 degrees for days in a row. Creeks are
running dry and there is virtually no humidity. Many of the forests are sitting
timber boxes of beetle-ravaged pine and drought conditions. Whether started by lightning,
arson, or human error, the conditions making these fires so potent is a direct
result of climate change.
When I was growing up in the Rockies, with Pikes Peak as my backdrop, we had thundershowers
nearly every afternoon bringing moisture and coolness to the summer heat. My
friends and I would run through the puddles of water flowing in the gutters.
And just as soon as the storm clouds moved in, the sun would reappear. A day of
90 degrees was considered hot. And there were no mosquitoes.
Now, the forests I grew up in and adore are
dying from beetle kill, drought and wildfires that burn hotter and more intensely
than the natural fires of a healthy forest ecosystem. Mosquitoes are rampant on
a summer backpacking trip in the mountains and the thunderstorms arrive
infrequently and usually without a drop of rain, just the lightning.
Diminished snow pack and water shortages have become commonplace.
One of my closest childhood friends lives only
miles from the High Park fire
near Fort Collins, which has
burned for two weeks and destroyed more than 85,000 acres making it the most
costly fire in Colorado’s
history. My college-town of Boulder is also under threat by the Woodland
Heights Fire. And Rocky Mountain National Park and Estes, Colorado are also burning. We are losing
national treasures. Personally, I am losing places of childhood, public
property I belong to and that belongs to us all, and private property belonging
to my family.
My mom wonders not what will become of her
belongings should her home burn, but what will become of the black bear that
visits them regularly in the summer months searching for food. She shares the
landscape with innumerable wildlife that is losing thousands of acres of
habitat. As a nurse, she also worries for the many people with respiratory
conditions that make the smoke life-threatening.
Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, a young Coloradoan,
understands these threats to his community, too. He has asked his government to
reduce the state’s and our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, which are
contributing to the warming earth, the drought conditions, the beetle kill, and
ultimately the increasing frequency and severity of fires in the west. In the
short video below, Xiuhtezcatl tells his story of another recent devastating
fire near Boulder. In his decade
of life, he already knows well the losses that climate change brings.
In all of the reporting of the Colorado fires, the media fails to mention
climate change or carbon dioxide emissions as a culprit. But let’s get honest.
We are heating our planet, our nation, our communities. We are creating
conditions friendly to insects that invade our forests and harm human health.
We are changing our climate system so substantially that precipitation patterns
are altered and drought in the southwest and west is going to be the new norm
for generations to come. And yes, we will see more and more devastating
wildfires that feed off of heat and drought and dying forest. We can keep
trying to put out individual fires, but until we address the underlying coals
of a heating nation, we won’t stop the inferno.
This loss is personal for me. And yet it’s just
one of the devastating impacts of climate change affecting families around the
country and the world.
After yet another disappointing round of
international talks on sustainability and climate at Rio+20, and during another
season of climate-induced fires and tropical storms, one thing should be
abundantly clear: it is time the United
States government and our state
governments took our life, liberty and property seriously and developed a
national climate recovery plan. Climate crisis threatens the very foundation of
our Constitution and our nation, which was created to protect our lives, our
freedom and the property and resources we hope to leave our children.
Our thoughts are with all of those families in Colorado who are losing places and people they
love. And we will continue our work to hold government accountable to the
people to protect the very things we hold dear.
Photos courtesy of http://blog.chicagoweathercenter.com.
Photo credit: Tracy Naranjo, Colorado Springs, CO
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