Climate Breadcrumb: San Diego
San Diego sits right on the US Mexico border…the intersection of the global North and global South, more and less “developed”. Tensions over the environment add to all the mess over migration, trade, jobs, drugs between the two countries. The US claims that the Tijuana River carries raw sewage from Mexico into the US and…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Julian CA
These days California means wildfire. Every year we hear that they are getting fiercer, more deadly, larger, lasting longer. The region we rode through today was the scene of the second or third largest fire in CA history, at the time, the Cedar Fire in 2003, near Julian. It burned for two months, destroying about…
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Climate Breadcrumb: El Centro CA
Heat. Everywhere dust. Today not much wind. We pass a little to the South of the Salton Sea, CA’s largest lake, too far away to see. In a few decades it may not be there. It was created almost by accident in the early 20th century, when an irrigation channel was breached by the Colorado…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Blythe CA
Did you know it takes more than 800 gallons of water to grow the food you consume in ONE DAY? We just rode through Imperial County (El Centro to Blythe). It is very hot desert and looks barren. It rarely rains. Yet agriculture is a huge part of the local economy, and it supplies all…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Wickenburg AZ
On our way out of Blythe California en route to Wickenburg, Arizona, on Saturday, we crossed the Colorado River. Strong enough to carve the Grand Canyon, but no longer strong enough to reach the ocean. Its waters are diverted by thirsty agriculture (70 percent is a number I’ve seen), industry and households as it runs…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Maricopa County
Wickenburg is a small town (pop 7,500) on the very northern edge of Maricopa County, Arizona, the fourth largest county in the US, containing Phoenix. Maricopa County is therefore significant, e.g. for the wrong reasons, when it holds scurrilous “audits” of lost elections. Or for good reasons, like when it prepares a climate action plan.…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Cottonwood AZ
Just south of the Grand Canyon. Mountainous terrain with lovely pine forests, which are under threat. The Sierra Club offers one solution to forest management that embraces fire, rather than obsessive prevention. https://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/sce/grand-canyon-chapter/conservation/LT_ForestPlanBulletin.pdf “The environment of Arizona is typically associated with desert vistas and dramatic canyon views. Yet Arizona is home to the largest contiguous…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Winslow AZ
Winslow skirts the Navajo Nation. This article from Public Radio International tells the story of the impact of climate change on Navajo women. “The amount of surface water flowing in streams on the Navajo Nation has declined by about 98 percent over the 20th century,” says Dr. Margaret Redsteer, a scientist at the US Geological…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Socorro NM
The Elephant Butte Reservoir was established by a 1938 pact among three states (Colorado, New Mexico and Texas) to allocate water from the Rio Grande among those states. But it has progressively dwindled over the decades, and is now down to just 5.6 percent of its capacity. As water levels drop in Elephant Butte, Reclamation…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Ruidoso NM
Ruidoso is mountainous and forested… and the location of major forest fires. Solutions are local in part. But New Mexico makes the connection with climate change and has realized that regional and global initiatives are essential. In 2019, New Mexico issued a state climate action plan. It endorsed the Paris Accord. And it set state…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Amarillo
A brief encounter with TX. One of the chief climate deniers, no doubt influenced by Big Oil. But TX is actually on the forefront of wind and solar. Bad news for cyclists sometimes, but the wind blows strongly in Texas, especially the Panhandle where we are. Today it was our friend. And it definitely is…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Shamrock, TX
Texas suffers from most forms of climate change: coastal erosion, flooding (e,g, Houston in 2019), drought for many years in different parts of the state, the famous snow event in 2021. Most of the agriculture in the Panhandle is irrigated, using groundwater from the High Plains Aquifer System. The countryside looks dry, interspersed with large…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Oklahoma
Oklahoma has seen a dramatic increase over the past decade in oil and gas production by fracking (injecting fluids and chemicals into the earth’s crust under pressure). It has also seen an extraordinary increase in earthquakes, to a level far exceeding California’s. It disrupts people’s lives. There has been much debate about whether the fracking…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Arkansas
If I’d been able to keep up a daily trail of breadcrumbs while riding, they would probably have had a common theme: water. It it is notable that the issues that face Arkansas, despite its apparent greenness, are similar to those that affect the desert and semi-arid areas of the Western states: cycles of drought…
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Climate Breadcrumb: The Mississippi River
Into Mississippi state and across the Mississippi River. The river was docile the day we crossed. But it is not always so. The river floods. That is nature. But centuries of trying to contain nature, trying to control the flooding, to protect farmlands and homesteads, have resulted in immense levee systems. Yet still the river…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Greenville AL
Environmental racism is a big deal. Black communities frequently face environmental issues much more urgent for their own safety than climate change. We passed quite close to Uniontown AL. Here are some excertps from an article by the Equal Justice Initiative. “At the end of 2008, after coal ash spilled in a mostly white neighborhood…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Cordele GA
Georgia probably has above the national average of “climate deniers”, but in practice it is moving in the direction of renewable energy. Google “environment Crisp County, GA” where Cordele is, and you will find information about coal-fired power. Although local utilities stopped using coal several years ago, effects rumble on for many years. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/12/24/climate/how-electricity-generation-changed-in-your-state.html More…
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Climate Breadcrumb: Savannah
The ride is finished. The work of curing Alzheimer’s and other dementias continues, as does the perennial and global challenge of containing climate change. There were several climate breadcrumbs that went unwritten—so many issues everywhere, with so much intersection with other issues of social and economic justice. The most glaring omission as we rode across…
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A Climate Ride to Remember 