Getting Worse

Spectator

Why, my friend asked, do you keep writing about the environment? Because people should know things keep getting worse.

Some scientists believe a tipping point has already been reached and our actions no longer have much mitigating consequence—we are heading for an environmental apocalypse no matter what. Others are more hopeful. The current administration in Washington does not believe there is a problem. What does the current data indicate?

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Monitoring and the Copernicus Climate Change Service, global temperatures keep increasing and keep setting records. (Accurate temperature records go back about 132 years, so broken records happen within that time window. Yes, some pedants will be happy to point out the Earth was much, much hotter tens of millions of years ago, but humans weren’t yet around then.)

This past summer tied with the summer of 2024 as the hottest, globally, on record. August tied with August of 2023 as the hottest month on record, globally. For Western Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia, it was the hottest summer ever. August turned out to be a scorcher everywhere, and was the hottest month ever for North America and Africa.

And in what surely must seem like an unusually cruel joke, Arizona experienced their hottest summer on record, and that is some accomplishment considering the furnace-like conditions they’ve experienced in the past. It wasn’t the blistering daytime temperatures, though they had plenty of them—it was the relentless heat overnight. This summer Phoenix had an almost incomprehensible 27 days in which the overnight low never dipped below 90. Let’s repeat that – on 27 days the temperature in Phoenix was never below 90 degrees. That means air conditioning running 24 hours a day, consuming enormous amounts of energy while pumping even more heat into the air.

The endless heat brings with it additional problems like drought. The U.S. Drought Monitor keeps track of drought conditions filing weekly reports. The news is not so good. About 60 percent of the country is currently in some form of drought condition ranging from “abnormally dry” to “severe drought.”

Nearly all of Oklahoma, the Texas panhandle, northern New Mexico, most of Utah, southern Idaho, a good chunk of northern Wisconsin, most of Puerto Rico, eastern California below the Sierra Nevada, and Arizona are currently the hardest hit, but plenty of other areas are teetering on the brink. Even a tiny piece of the far western Upper Peninsula falls into the “serious drought” category.

The heat would be tolerable if not for the drought, and the drought is caused by lack of precipitation. It significantly stresses available water supplies while population and demand continue to increase. Water scarcity will very soon be more than a hypothetical, future problem for many in the American southwest, especially the tens of millions relying on the Colorado River.

The Colorado River basin, which includes seven states—Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, California, Arizona—30 tribal nations, and Mexico, provides drinking water for about 40 million people, irrigation water for 5.5 million acres of farmland, and the dams that impound the river forming Lake Mead and Lake Powell provide electrical power to about 7 million people.

But the river is running low, and the reservoirs are running dangerously low. Lake Mead is currently at 26 percent of capacity, a startling 190 feet below its maximum level. If it falls by just another four feet, it will be forced to reduce its hydroelectric output by 70 percent. Lake Powell is 185 feet below its capacity, now at just 22 percent of maximum, and if it shrinks another 27 feet, it will be unable to produce any power at all. California, Nevada, and especially Arizona will face substantial cuts in the amount of Colorado River water they receive starting next year unless El Niño produces huge rain and a maximum snowpack.

The heat hasn’t helped the glaciers, either. Nature reports glaciers have lost a stunning 6.5 trillion tons of ice since 2000, helping accelerate destructive avalanches and landslides.

With less precipitation and more heat also comes more fire. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, the U.S. is currently fighting 58 major wildfires in eight different geographic regions, but there are a total of 315 fires burning just under two million acres. The total for 2026, so far, is about 54,000 wildfires that consumed about 8.4 million acres. (The fire center counts any fire event that requires a professional response, so they can be as small as a couple acres.) All of this is in the contiguous United States. There are another 454 wildfires still burning in Alaska, which is actually below their annual average.

Hotter, drier, less water, and more fires. Are we winning yet?

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