I have a niece. She’s my brother’s kid. I don’t have any children, but I have a wonderful niece. She’s nine.
Her name isn’t Kjersten, of course. Blabbing the names of other people’s children on the internet simply isn’t done. But I do have a niece. A strong, bright, opinionated, silly, grubby, clever, wicked funny girl who is still soaking up the world around her like a ShamWow (what – you thought I was going to say ‘sponge?’) and hurtling into her future with gusto.
Kjersten swims, and paints, and sings – and is learning to play the guitar. She loves school, and cats, and whale sharks, and sparkly princess dresses, but she’s grown out of Hello Kitty. She’s a voracious reader, and has already devoured most of the Joan Aiken books, the Hobbit, and the Ring Trilogy. (I was going to send her Anne of Green Gables for her birthday this year, but I think she’s past it.)
I’ll be seeing her this summer, when the family (small but close) descends on the family farm in Chickasaw Country, Iowa. I don't know Kjersten very well yet, and I'm looking forward to spending time with her. Even though I don't see her often, though, I love her. And I worry about her.
Sometimes when considering a problem of global magnitude, your brain kind of shuts down. There's something about the suffering of a horde of strangers that is less real, and less intense, than the suffering of someone close to you - someone you know.
We humans are expert at making the untold suffering of millions just - poof! - go away. The seething mass of humanity at peril from sea level rise in Bangladesh may, perversely, tug at our heart strings less than the possibility that someone we know may be flooded out of house and home, or lose their job, or be uprooted by changing circumstances.
So I want to talk a little about Kjersten.
There's more below the fold.
When she grows up, Kjersten may remember a day or two from her visit this year. A picnic, perhaps, in the field where the orchard used to be. Or a cookout over a fire her Da will build in the driveway, over which we’ll roast sweet corn and toast marshmallows. She might remember a breezy afternoon spent reading on a clean cotton blanket spread in a patch of shade, or lying on her back being dizzied by the immensity of a vaporous blue Iowa sky, or peering intently into a patch of weeds, hunting for katydids.
Or maybe she’ll remember going fishing. There are yet a few bluegill and crappie and sunfish in the Wapsipinicon River. The old bamboo poles from when I was a kid still rest along the rafters of the garage, waiting to be dusted off, fitted with fresh line and shiny new brass spinners, and plopped into the water where it runs beneath the old Red Bridge Road.
The freshwater fish climate change report linked to above notes:
Changing climate poses new risks for our treasured freshwater fish resources. Warming waters mean lost habitat for cold-water species, the likely encroachment of species typically found in warmer areas, and exacerbation of existing stressors such as habitat loss, pollution, invasive species, and disease. More extreme weather events—especially longer and more intense droughts, heat waves, wildfires, and floods mean increased likelihood of fish mortality. Shorter winters with less snow and ice cover mean shifts in stream flow and water availability through the spring and summer months, as well as lost opportunities for ice fishing.
So there's that.
Perhaps Kjersten will remember the bird feeder where my mother and my aunt treat the local red-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, and cardinals to a never-ending seedy feast, and set out grape jelly to entice the orioles. She’ll surely remember the goblets of sugar-water my mother hangs from the back porch eaves, where hummingbirds like miniature clockwork jewels thrum and dart and sip. If half of America’s birds are lost to climate change, what will she see at the feeder when she’s my age?
“Half of the birds of North America are at risk of extinction,” says Gary Langham, Audubon’s chief scientist. That estimate is based on the 314 bird species, out of 588 studied, that could lose most of the area they currently occupy, because of a warming planet.
Nearly 200 of these threatened species may find hospitable conditions elsewhere, but for 126 species there will be nowhere else to go, Audubon estimates in a report released Monday night. Shifts in climate could affect the range of grasslands, forests, and other bird habitats.
And what about the rest of her youth, which isn’t spent in Iowa, but near Savannah, Georgia? Savannah is prominently mentioned in a
report by Climate Central (excerpts from an article on the report say in part):
Savannah and Jacksonville are among the east coast cities most vulnerable to rising sea levels due to climate change, a study finds.
The city of Savannah essentially becomes an island in about a category 2 storm— Savannah, Georgia’s main seaport, with storm surges, hurricanes, and waves on top: what will that look like?
What
will that look like? How will it affect her? Will she have to leave – become a climate change refugee? Will she stay and battle back the water, petitioning her City Council to reinforce the seawall, and invest more local tax dollars into a levee system? And does her future hold a terrifying night of lashing rains and rising water, a frantic scramble for higher ground, scraps of people’s possessions swirling in the filthy torrent as the waters rise, sucking and dragging at her hubcaps as she drives madly, hoping to outrace the monster tide?
What she’ll remember of her childhood world – just like we all remember our childhood worlds – will be her baseline. This summer in Iowa will form part of her normal. It will be her halcyon days.
By any stretch of the imagination her halcyon days are in a world that is much diminished from the world of only 40 years ago. Sure, she's got a Wii and will probably have a smart phone soon, and everything in her home is modern and clean and on-demand, but at what cost? At what cost plentiful food from around the globe, and a riot of fashion choices in the girl's section at Target, and huge appliances and new cars every couple of years?
A recent study published in Science and led by UCL, Stanford and UCSB found that invertebrate numbers have decreased by 45% on average over the last 40 years.
Our friends the polar bears are threatened. Puffins are facing extinction. Bumble bees are being crushed in a climate change-induced vice.
Alaska is burning. Europe is sweltering. The Queets rain forest in Olympic National Park is on fire.
So I can’t help but wonder what sort of world she’ll be living in when she’s my age, 40 years on. Will today’s planet, with its rising seas, terrible drought, killing heat waves, acrid air pollution, and escalating panic about where we’re headed seem like a dream?
Or can we turn this hurtling 18-wheeler around?
I had a vivid dream last night. I was riding shotgun in a semi, going fast in the dark along a stretch of broad black freeway. There was something large in front of us, a hulking darkness on the distant horizon that wasn’t mountains. I clung to the frame of the open passenger window and watched fires flare up along the verges, leaping spurts of blue and yellow flame reaching for our tires as we hurtled along.
Without warning, the driver suddenly grunted, set her hands on the steering wheel and turned. HARD.
The tractor became a fulcrum as she accelerated into her turn, wheel shuddering with the force, and the immense trailer fishtailed wildly behind it, across all four lanes of traffic. It was silent. I saw a man’s face through the windshield of his SUV, eyes flared open, utter panic on his face.
The trailer slapped motorcycles and sedans out of the way as metal crunched and gears ground. The driver turned and turned and turned… flames bent toward us... the trailer began to buckle, its seams squealing…
And then I woke up, so I don’t know what happened. Did the trailer split asunder? Did I die? Did the driver get control, right her rig, and get us pointed back in the direction from which we were coming?
Sometimes I have amazing, evocative, delicately nuanced dreams. Sometimes, the message is so silly and so obvious that I'm almost loathe to share.
I don't know what happened to my nightmare semi last night. But if what I'm reading in scholarly journals and the popular press is any indication, I have a fair notion of what will happen in real life if we don’t get off our asses and do something about climate change NOW.