We can, at times, see with our own eyes what others would deny.
Recently, relaxing in the front yard of a friend’s home near Darrington, I gazed up through fire smoke to the glacier-topped summit of 6,800-foot Whitehorse Mountain. The bottom-to-top ascent is a bear, eased only at climb’s end in a gentle snow slope leading up to the summit. But no more. The summit slope has largely melted, leaving treacherous ice in its place.
That view is a composite glimpse of climate change in the Northwest, of fire and ice. Our glaciers are shrinking fast, changing visibly within the lifespan of Baby Boomers. We depend on them for summer river flow which provides electric power, sustains irrigation, supports recreation, and provides habitat for salmon.
Just visit the upper reaches of a river often nicknamed the “Magic Skagit.” Thunder Creek feeds into Diablo Lake, part of Seattle City Light’s harnessing of the Skagit River. The creek is filled with meltwater in spring but sustained in the summer and fall by the Boston Glacier. Upstream, on 9,075-foot Jack Mountain, the Nohokomeen Glacier feeds Ross Lake and 505-foot-high Ross Dam.
When I was a kid, both the Coleman and Roosevelt Glaciers on Mt. Baker were advancing. A University of Washington engineering professor, Dr. Art Harrison, was measuring the advance. Tongues of the Roosevelt Glacier were curling around a cliff face. Hauling measurement markers over stream outlets and up to remote Bastille Ridge was a major exertion.
Both glaciers are now retreating, the Roosevelt glacier having pulled way back from the cliff face. The Easton glacier, on the south side of Mt. Baker, has pulled back even further, leaving a long ice-sculpted moraine in its wake.
My friend in Darrington, Gary Paull, spent years as trails and recreation coordinator with the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. He has, in retirement, revisited mountains climbed years ago, reporting back on Facebook how far the glaciers have melted.
I have on a wall at home a picture of Mts. Hinman and Daniel, highest peaks in King County, taken from the Robin Lakes across the valley. Mt. Hinman is dressed in white with a glacier draped over its summit. That glacier has since melted. The Lynch glacier on Mt. Daniel survives, but not for much longer.
The Anderson glacier in Olympic National Park, long used for climbing training by Mt. Rainier-bound climbers, has totally melted. A small lake sits at the site of a vigorous glacier 30 years ago. The Lillian glacier has also vanished.
If you want definitive evidence, check out U.S. Geological Survey pictures from the South Cascade glacier, deep in the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area. The USGS has studied the Cascade glacier for half a century, monitoring its retreat and near-disappearance. Its shrinking mirrors that of the Grinnell glacier in Glacier National Park, once a popular hiking destination and now almost entirely gone. Ironically, the national park will soon be without its namesake glaciers.
The great third powerhouse at Grand Coulee Dam, largely secured by our Sen. Warren G. Magnuson, is an essential power source during wet, dark days of late fall and early winter. Water to power downstream dams on the Columbia River is stored in the 90-mile-long reservoir behind Mica Dam, located in the Rocky Mountain Trench between the Canadian Rockies and Selkirk Mountains. It is fed by meltwater from the Columbia and Clemenceau Icefields. Those glacial tongues from the Continental Divide peaks are rapidly retreating.
The impacts of climate change are also found in forest fires and record temperatures. The small town of Lytton, in British Columbia’s Fraser River canyon, recorded Canada’s all-time-record temperature of 47.9 degrees Celsius (118.22 degrees Fahrenheit) during the 2021 heat wave. A fire consumed much of the town, killing two of its residents.
The region’s fire season has grown in length and ferocity. We’ve experienced such blazes as the 256,000-acre Carlton Complex fire in the Methow and Okanogan Valleys. Last week, The New York Times carried maps of three California counties largely consumed by recent fires. To our north, in B.C., a fire last summer jumped the waters of Lake Okanogan.
The smoke from B.C. and Eastern Washington has, at times, inflicted Puget Sound population centers with the world’s worst air quality. In 2017, as I returned from a Netroots Nation Convention in Atlanta, the Northwest from the air was covered with smoke. Only the 14,410-foot summit of Mt. Rainier stood above the acrid layer.
Ever since the long, hot summer of 1988, pundits have speculated that climate change would be a major factor in that year’s November election. As temperatures have cooled, however, the political implications of global warming have melted away
Will it be so in 2024? We’ve experienced record fires in northern California and southern Oregon. Famed hiking destinations of the North Cascades have been closed due to a fire near Stehekin at the north end of Lake Chelan. Fierce tornadoes have hit America’s heartland. Warm Gulf and Atlantic waters are causing hurricanes to strengthen as they approach our coastlines.
The test will come at the ballot box, here and across the country. The Biden-Harris Administration, with its Inflation Reduction Act, has made record-setting investments in clean energy. Donald Trump, in his Thursday news conference, took up his (inaccurate) rant that windmills kill birds. He has joked that rising ocean levels will create more beachfront property. The Republicans are pledging to repeal provisions of Biden’s landmark legislation.
In this Washington, voters will pass judgment on Initiative 2117, the roll-back initiative handiwork of GOP state chairman Rep. Jim Walsh and wealthy initiative underwriter Brian Heywood. If passed, I-2117 would prohibit carbon tax credit trading and axe the 2021 Climate Commitment Act, which provides for a cap-and-invest program designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent in the next quarter century.
As with my Darrington view, the evidence is in front of our eyes. The key question: Will we focus on issues of the moment or display long term vision toward the planet and our corner of it? The West Coast is feeling consequences and has a leadership role to play. Keep in mind James Carville’s famous 1992 maxim about the economy: this year it’s the climate, stupid.
I suggest that “climate change” is not by itself the “Number One Issue.” Anthropogenic global warming is a manifestation of human political and economic systems that do not acknowledge the need for humans to conduct our affairs within the global ecology we were blessed with. Climate change is just one of a number of crises caused by our unsustainable behavior. Thus: “polycrisis.”
Another new-ish word that aptly describes our situation is “wicked problem.”
“Interesting times” indeed.
Maybe it’s less important to curate an ordered list of our problems, than of the solutions we may have for them.
The problem with our problems is that solutions are not readily available.