Change from climate gloom possible

It has rained all of three times this month, for almost an inch as measured at the WSU weather station on Memorial Highway. The days have been generally blue sky sunny. Two thirds of the way through June, total rainfall measures 55 percent of the 20-year monthly average.

June gloom? The school district discord is worrisome, a difficultly. That has been the primary thing making June gloomy around here. On the weather front, the general attitude seems to be “great, summer started early.”

What are frogs’ high five equivalents, when they are croaking comfortably from a pot of water that will slowly boil them?

With this weather, having June gloom, choosing to blow rain clouds on the good ship Status Quo, is something only a person concerned about the disastrous long-term effects of our changing climate does.

Or, you can organize and host an afternoon of appetizers, followed by dinner, with in-between a full course of educational presentations on the significant, generational efforts, 30-year horizon solutions that will get our country and this world to a carbon neutral condition.

That is what Charlotte Underwood organized and co-hosted with Allan Olson Saturday: a climate change call-to-action educational fundraiser. They want us to know about people and organizations out there promoting solutions for immediate significant greenhouse gas reductions.

Saturday’s heroes were Pachamama Alliance, Project Drawdown and the Climate Reality Project. The starting point is simple: we are 30 years late in acting. International goals and programs are not sufficient. Agreements that call for starting to reduce CO2 in 10 years fail us. Glaciers will be gone and fires more severe. Our warmer planet will be a different place, not as friendly with a new normal of sea level heights, weather patterns and climate refugees.

Paul Hawkins, committed to drawing down the level of CO2 in the atmosphere, is focusing on solutions. He has chosen to be hopeful. Folks remember him as co-owner of Smith Hawkins. He is also an economic environmentalist and author. Now involved with Project Drawdown, he advocates embracing and enacting 80 solutions, scientifically peer reviewed and making use of existing technologies.

Eight of the top 20 are food related. They are straight forward but challenge social norms and Skagit Valley ways.

Composting and reducing food waste reduces CO2 emissions. So will a primarily plant based diet. That is probably the last thing specific farmers want to hear. Still, there are WSU agriculturists studying and promoting the successes regenerative agriculture and conservation agriculture bring.

Alternative agriculture buzzwords might have multi-generational Skagit Valley farmers scratching their heads. Others could proudly show-off a practice or two or ten they have long put in place.

But it is not a matter of individual farmers or diets. A compost pile in every backyard in the Skagit and a fully electric vehicle in every driveway between here and Canada are not going to save our kids’ grandchildren.

Rail against the New Green Deal and send all the socialists back to Russia – where they would be jailed – but until the whackos insisting on collective action outlast the rest of us saying no, well, we are just going to get warmer and dryer and enjoy more blue skies for more of the year.

That’s a long-term weather forecast certain to make the anti-status quo folks gloomy.