Climate Point: As ever-worse disasters wallop the US, how do we keep looking up?
Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. From Palm Springs, California, I'm Janet Wilson. Happy New Year everyone, may it be a good one. Despite mounting evidence of climate change piling up via ceaseless wildfires, unprecedented drought and now record-breaking snow, I've resolved to find a bit of optimism, or at least gallows humor, in environmental news this year.
I had a chance to watch "Don't Look Up" over the holidays. It's pretty brilliant in its own goofy way. Lest you have doubts about whether the plot of a planet-destroying asteroid hurtling toward Earth while politicians twiddle their thumbs is a thinly veiled metaphor for rapid climate change or not, Leonardo DiCaprio himself answered that and other questions from Lindsay Bahr of the Associated Press.
As Bahr notes, DiCaprio has been an outspoken environmentalist for as long as he’s been famous. But the topic never overlapped with his acting. That changed when he read the script for "Don't Look Up."
"The brilliance of this screenplay is the analogy of making it a comet that is going to wipe out mankind within a six-month timeframe created this massive sense of urgency, rather than some slow-moving climate behemoth narrative," says DiCaprio, who plays nerdy Professor Mindy. "It perfectly held a mirror to our society and how we deal with the climate crisis, that we just let it continue and don’t take the actions that we need to take in order to survive on this planet."
People are watching. "Don't Look Up" was the most-streamed English-language film on Netflix from Dec. 20 to 26, and to date, it's the third most-watched Netflix film ever.
My favorite line comes from Mindy, as Hollywood-sized shockwaves from the comet's impact destroy his family's dining room table. "We really did have everything, didn't we?" he says.
Yes we did and we do, so here's hoping for swift planet-saving actions this year.
Here are some other stories that may be of interest.
Must-read stories
Danger, danger. Back in the real world, December ended with devastating urban firestorms in the suburbs of Boulder, Colorado, and record-setting snow dumps in Lake Tahoe. New Year's Day brought tornados to Kentucky and this week a snowstorm shut down a 50-mile stretch of Interstate 95 in Virginia, stranding motorists all night, including Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., who was at a standstill for 19 hours on his way to Washington.
Even before the latest mayhem, the United States was walloped by extreme weather in 2021, report USA Today's Janet Loehrke and Doyle Rice, with at least 19 weather disasters with costs that exceeded $1 billion, and more than 500 people dead. Hundreds perished in a triple-digit heatwave in normally temperate Oregon.
Climate sets the stage. While it's difficult to tie a particular disaster to our overheated atmosphere, experts laid out for the Washington Post and Associated Press how extreme climate conditions and our building patterns fueled Colorado's Marshall fire, destroying more than 1,000 homes suburban homes at a time of year when such blazes historically didn't happen.
Goodbye to all that. In a sweeping personal essay for ProPublica and the Sunday New York Times Magazine, writer Liz Weil faces head-on the new normal of choking wildfires everywhere in her once beautiful home state of California. There's grim hope in a veteran official's assessment that the state's torched forests will find a way to survive, even if humans are forced to flee.
Weil argues for pragmatic acceptance. "Across California — across the world — it’s easy, even comforting, to sit in despair. To stay depressed and mired. ... But nihilism is a failure of imagination, the bleak, easy way out. We need to face the lives before us. We need to name the discontinuity: See, there it is, the tear in the universe created by our fear and greed."
Hot takes
What lies ahead. A round-up of how key federal agencies will — or won't — tackle oil leases, carbon capture technologies and more in 2022. E&E News
Have faith. Amid a climate crisis, people of faith seek a deeper connection to the environment. Arizona Republic
It's complicated. Want to do your part? "Climatarian" diets reduce global carbon, but be careful with your own nutrition. USA Today
Hydrogen a hit. Oklahoma wins hydrogen manufacturing after state taskforce identifies potential. The Oklahoman
What's in your blood? Docs show widespread risk from PFAS, common chemicals. USA Today
Water, water everywhere
Right on. After a key population of the world's most endangered large whale went missing in 2010, researchers started sleuthing. It took a combination of detective work and luck to eventually find the North American right whales — and where they ended up dramatically altered the landscape for whale survival and fisheries management. Doug Fraser with Cape Cod Times has the tale.
Expired. As drought continues to grip the West, a USA Today investigation found thousands of expired permits for private companies to take water from public lands. Of all the national forests in the U.S., the five with the largest number of expired permits are in the Golden State, writes The Deseret Sun's Erin Rode. Much of Arrowhead's water comes from the San Bernardino National Forest east of Los Angeles, for instance. And the withdrawals continue as fires burn hotter and larger than ever before.
On tap in Utah. Remembering a year of water, or lack thereof. The Spectrum
And another thing
Slow fade. The Desert Sun's Jay Calderon has chronicled wildlife and loss at California's largest water body, the Salton Sea, for more than 20 years. Officials have known since 2003 that it would largely dry out if water was diverted to thirsty urban areas, but they did it anyway, unleashing dangerous dust storms, massive fish die-offs and more. Calderon has waded through muck, stuck his camera out of small planes and flown a drone above the receding shorelines. From angry birds to freakish mud pots to geothermal drills, his photos in a recent multi-part series are stunning.
Despite the losses, he still has hope.
"At the Salton Sea, I've always felt a sense of peace. We can’t give up," he says. "I hope we will find a way to protect and keep the sea as a place where life can flock and flourish."
That's all for this week. Keep looking up, subscribe to your local paper, and for more climate, energy and environment news, follow me @janetwilson66. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.