Climate Change Is Already Affecting the West's Water

By Bob Burnett, Huffington Post. Posted August 14, 2008.

It's said our primeval ancestors had a simple arithmetic system: "One, two, three, many." That describes the focus of many 2008 voters, whose concerns are the economy, energy prices, Iraq, and "those other problems." As we get closer to the presidential election, most Americans aren't worried about global warming. Maybe they will be when they turn the tap and no water comes out.

In early August we toured Glacier National Park with the Sierra Club, catching a glimpse of several of the humongous ice fields. In 1910 there were 150 glaciers in the park; now there are 25, which are losing 9 percent of their mass per year. Sometime between 2015 and 2020 they'll disappear. Locals joke the 1.4 million acres will be renamed "Puddles National Park."

Worldwide, most glaciers are diminishing. So is the ice pack in places like the North Pole and Iceland. While ice loss is generally regarded as compelling evidence of global warming, most Americans aren't losing any sleep over it. An April Gallup Poll found that "while 61% of Americans say the effects of global warming have already begun," only 37 percent are worried about it, roughly the same percentage that were concerned when Gallup first began asking the same question, nineteen years ago.

Why isn't global climate change seen as a more important issue?

Many observers believe the typical American is too busy to be bothered by more than a couple of national problems -- it's the "one, two, three, many" phenomenon. Social scientists report that average voters don't have a lot of leisure time; they're too busy struggling to make ends meet. Most Americans are worried about the economy -- paying their mortgage and health insurance -- and gasoline prices. The little news most of us have access to either comes from talk radio -- cultural issues -- or cable TV -- Iraq and terrorism. While we're aware of the threat posed by global climate change, we're too harried to be able to consider the consequences.

Unless it slaps them in the face, the typical American can't be bothered by an abstract threat. If there's a global warming event -- a mammoth hurricane, tornado, or forest fire -- in our neighborhood, then we get concerned. From this perspective, the loss of a few thousand acres of ice in a remote corner of Montana hardly seems significant. Most of us don't see it as a danger sign.

But it is. Disappearing glaciers is a harbinger of huge problems. In the West, the most obvious is drought.

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Bob Burnett is a writer and activist in Berkeley, Calif.

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