What would happen to Albuquerque if the Southwest suffered a double whammy from climate change — rising seas on the West Coast and a mega drought in the Colorado River and Rio Grande Basins?
Would we see a migration of the dispossessed from California and the big cities that depend on the Colorado River, Tucson, Phoenix and Las Vegas? How big would it be? Would we see tens of thousands? A million? Would they trickle in, or come in waves, or in a deluge over a year or two? Would they be homeless or coming with small businesses? Would they be employees of branches of big corporations looking for a safe haven in the Middle Rio Grande Valley? And when might that happen, 25 years, 50 years, 5 years?
How much population growth could we sustain, given that we too are drinking Colorado River water and watching with concern the dwindling snowpack in the Rio Grande watershed? And why would desperate people and companies look to us at all? An answer to that last question has much to do with the lingering myth of our abundant aquifer and with the never-say-die attitude in the business community about prosperity being tied to population growth. It’s entirely possible that with old fashioned leadership, Albuquerque could even seek out and lure drought and sea-flood refugees, promising Santolina-like pie in the sky.
And if a mass migration should hit us, slow or fast, would it prove to be a boon or a disaster, knowing the perilous nature of our water supply and the ongoing cover ups of potential dangers from the contamination of our legendary aquifer.
Are we prepared for a sizable influx of people migrating inland from conditions of distress? I’m sure we’re not. I’m sure that over the last eight years our leadership didn’t even entertain the possibility. We’re not prepared to answer the most basic questions because much of our leadership, of course, is still denying that climate change is a legitimate threat to our way of life.
In 1919, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes summed up our predicament precisely: “Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect information.” Albuquerque appears to be waging that not much is going to happen to us from global warming. But information grounding the prophecies of climate change have proved to be, around the world, not imperfect at all. Seas are rising, and drought, when it hits, tends to be profound.
Trying to think about such things in a deep enough way to avoid getting caught completely flatfooted, with no contingency plans whatsoever, is as common sense as keeping a business viable. Everyone who is not an employee knows this.
When students used to ask me what it took to make a living as a writer, I’d tell them, somewhat glibly, that after becoming disciplined with the goal of learning your craft, you had to understand how to handle resources and how to plan for withstanding downturns and upheavals, and somehow make the most of them — if longevity was your goal.
My answer would be almost hokey if it weren’t absolutely true. It’s the same for any enterprise and for any city, especially in a time of profound change. With virtually every reliable expert in the world warning of rising seas, severe drought, and monster storms, would you invest your capital in a city that didn’t at least have some precautionary plans in place?
Let’s imagine that severe water rationing and steep rises in property taxes to pay for climate change really do start to move people around the Southwest in greater numbers than anyone right now expects. Let’s say that it happens much faster than even the direst predictions of ten years ago but in a random and unpredictable way. And let’s acknowledge that no major city in the Southwest, except El Paso, has made enough investment in conservation technology, including recycling black water, to even marginally cope with severe shortages. Would we have enough housing, enough jobs, enough water, enough health care providers and a sufficient educational system to accommodate a large influx, even if its comes slowly in drips and drabs?
I am sure some leaders will consider these questions purely academic. But if city employees in Albuquerque are still treating our aquifer and river like a cesspool, as a city Inspector General report recently revealed, then the signs are not good at all. A Westside transit department supervisor directly instructed his people to send some 300,000 gallons of wastewater ruined by petroleum products into the storm drains, instead of a storage tank far from our water supply. He did this, the report says, simply because a hose wasn’t long enough to reach the storage tank. If this is indicative of the city’s managerial mindset then we’re even more behind than I feared.
Is drought real in the Southwest and the intermountain West watersheds that desert cities depend on? How can you deny it after 18 years of dwindling precipitation, major reservoirs shrinking to dangerously low levels and this winter in which, once again, we’ve had far less snowpack than normal? March, so far, hasn’t seen any improvement, according to Colorado climate change experts. March, in fact, is unexpectedly dry, just when the soil is beginning to lose what winter water it had to evaporation. And if you read of California’s worries about coastal flooding, it sends a chill up your spine. Scientific American recently reported that “melting ice sheets in Antarctica will wallop California with greater sea-level rise than the world average, threatening the world’s iconic beaches and important infrastructure.” The piece quotes a report on land-ice melt submitted to the California Ocean Protection Council, which says: “For California, there is no worse place for land ice to be lost than from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. For every foot of global sea-level rise caused by the loss of ice on West Antarctica, sea-level will rise approximately 1.25 feet along the California coast.” The Scientific American piece goes on to say that “melting in Antarctica puts the California coast essentially ‘in the bull’s-eye’ of the magnified sea-level rise,” quoting a Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist. And sea-level rise “already is affecting coastal California … creating more extensive coastal flooding during storms, periodic tidal flooding and increased coastal erosion.”
It’s worth quoting Justice Holmes a second time: “Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.” The point is that knowledge is always imperfect but often usefully correct. And if we bet the wrong way on climate change, or not bet at all, we could see everything we cherish about our city wiped out by emergencies we didn’t see coming, even though the whole world was shouting, “Watch out, it’s on the way!”
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
Another thoughtful, knowledgeable, really important piece. When will we begin thinking ahead, instead of trying to deal with each successive crisis in the moment of its assault? Climate change worldwide tells us scenarios like those you suggest are more likely than not. It’s refreshing to wake up each Monday and be able to read a text that gives us real food for thought… and action.