The Scales Tip

Across the planet, nature’s losses accelerate.

The case for stewardship, not only in our backyards but in every corner of the globe, grows more compelling with each passing day.

I began writing this on Monday, October 14, 2024. Late that morning, the wind picked up and temperatures dropped about five degrees Fahrenheit—a cold front blowing in. But unlike most cold fronts this one involved no rain.

It is remarkably dry here. According to the National Weather Service, nearby Wilmington, DE, received one-third inch of rain in the past six weeks. Normal is six inches for that time period. And there is no rain in the 10-day forecast. Zero. One wonders what normal means anymore.

Whether, and at what point, this atypical dryness becomes genuine drought, I don’t know. I do know that climate science suggests more frequent extremes of dryness and wetness. At the moment of this writing, Wilmington precipitation year to date is slightly greater than average because so much rain and snow fell earlier in the year.

The problem is that living things don’t do averages; they survive or fail in the present. Plants that dry to a crisp may not hold on for the next rain. Animals that drown in the deluge aren’t here to see the sunrise.

Consider the difference between the humid continental climate of Pennsylvania and the desert Southwest. At Puddock Hill we receive almost 45 inches of rain annually. In the Southwest, the total is around seven inches. I’m not making predictions based upon a small data set, but it’s startling to consider that the pattern of the past six weeks, extended out for a year, would turn Eastern Pennsylvania into a desert.

Of course, that is an unlikely outcome, at least in the near term. Things might just as easily turn unnaturally wet for an extended period. Of equal concern is a third possibility: extreme swings from dry to wet and back again. In my climate novel, We Once Were Giants, there are only two seasons: fungus and sere.

That’s just one possible long-term outcome of having used our atmosphere as an open sewer for so many decades, but it prompts the question: How well do the flora and fauna that evolved for a different epoch survive in our climate future? I don’t think anyone knows yet, but stronger and stronger hints have begun to appear.