By Suzanne York. ‘Day Zero’ – it’s a term so applicable to our times of environmental overreach. If you aren’t familiar with the term, it came into vogue a couple of years ago when Cape Town, South Africa, was facing a water crisis of fairly epic proportions.  Day Zero was the city’s term for the
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By Suzanne York. The allegory couldn’t be more fitting – humanity burying our collective heads in the sand, as the planet heats up and water scarcity becomes more of a reality in many places around the globe. For the past week or so, there have been numerous headlines on the water tap running dry in
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By Suzanne York. In what is sadly a sign of things to come for many places, Bolivia has declared a state of emergency, as it endures its worst drought in 25 years. The Andean glaciers that for centuries have supplied water to La Paz and its sprawling neighbor El Alto – one of the poorest
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org. It’s still a month until summer begins, and the drought in the western U.S. continues to be headline news.  Just wait until August. A couple of news items from the past week perfectly highlight the scope of the drought that is impacting the western U.S., and the role of human hubris
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org In the U.S., almost all the weather news seems to be fixated on the snow storms back East.  Yet despite the cold and snow, more records for heat have been broken than for cold.  The winter of 2014-15 has been so warm across much of the West that more than 20
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org Most Americans are probably aware that California and much of the U.S. Southwest is in the grips of a major drought.  And it’s likely that people know at least something about conserving water.  Take shorter showers, don’t wash your car, water your lawn at risk of $500 fines, etc. But a
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org It’s certainly not unusual for temperatures to be hot this time of year, as summer is in full swing in the Northern Hemisphere.  But things are getting really, really hot across the globe. Last month the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) reported that the period March-May was the hottest in more than 120
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org All one really needs to take away from the 800-page National Climate Assessment (NCA), mandated every four years by the U.S. Congress, is this: Human-induced climate change is projected to continue, and it will accelerate significantly if emissions of heat-trapping gases continue to increase. As published in the NCA, “The magnitude of climate
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org The governor of California has declared that the state is experiencing a drought emergency and is urging water rationing.  Governor Jerry Brown called it “perhaps the worst drought that California has ever seen since records (began) about 100 years ago.” This came shortly after the release of a MIT study this
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By Suzanne York, www.howmany.org We are well into summer 2013, and in the West temperatures are high, wildfires are raging, and droughts are in effect in many states. One state that has been hit particularly hard is New Mexico.  Nearly 90 percent of the state is experiencing extreme to exceptional drought conditions, and the Rio
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