Comment pubs.acs.org/est
The U.S. Drought of 2012
T
he U.S. drought of 2012 has been costly. Nationwide, it was the worst drought (in some ways) since recordkeeping began in 1895 rivaling the Great Depression Dustbowl year of 1936. Is this the “new normal” that we are facing due to climate change? Let us examine some repercussions. 1. The month of July 2012 was the warmest ever recorded: −0.2 °F higher than July 1936 (NOAA, 2012). 2. Twenty-four percent of the contiguous U.S. is in extreme or exceptional drought as I write this editorial (U.S. Drought Monitor, August 17, 2012). 3. Crop losses alone are estimated to be $18 billion (Washington Post, August 15, 2012). 4. Fortunately, most farmers have crop insurance. The crop insurance program, in which the federal government pays 60%, will cost billions to taxpayers this year (NBC News, June 18, 2012). It is difficult to justify such subsidies to the public. Remember Wall Street bankers who privatize the profits and make public the risks? 5. Crop prices rose to near record levels with corn and wheat at $8 per bushel and soybeans at $17 per bushel. High commodity prices cause food prices to rise, especially for meat, milk, eggs (and biofuels). Such high food prices are perhaps the biggest impact of the drought on consumers and on businesses that use grain to produce animal products. 6. Corn harvest will be down about 27% this year. Many have called upon EPA to lower the biofuel mandate for corn-to-ethanol because biofuels contribute to rising corn prices. Last year, 40% of the corn crop was used to make corn ethanol. Considering the record low supplies of corn, Billy Cyr, CEO of Sunny Delight said, “We’re in the middle of the worst drought in 50 years right now, and we have a very weak economy. Get rid of the ethanol mandate, at least for the short term. That would bring down the price of corn that consumers have to pay,” Cyr said (CNBC, August 15, 2012). 7. Drought feeds wildfires and it has been a particularly active season. Forests are ignited by high temperatures, fanned by hot, dry winds, and fueled by the build-up of materials on the forest floor from insect infestation and years of western drought. 8. The big drought has gravely disrupted water resources. More than one-quarter of the nation’s rivers flow at less than 10% of normal discharge, and fish kills have been rampant caused by low water volume, low dissolved oxygen and high water temperatures. Water levels are too low for barge transportation on the Mississippi River and too short to cool some power plants. Was the Drought of 2012 caused directly by human-induced climate change? No one can say for sure. The only thing that we know with certainty is that it will be a warmer planet in the future. Extremes in temperature and precipitation are likely to become more frequent based on the increasing variability seen over the past 30 years (Hansen et al., PNAS, 2012, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1205276109; Dai, Nature Climate Change, 2012, © 2012 American Chemical Society
DOI: 10.1038/nclimate1633). If fossil fuel emissions continue unabated, the planet will grow continuously much warmer for decades and centuries to come. But humans can reverse climate change by acting now. The U.S. can be part of a global action network to constrain GHGs by 2020 and achieve steep cuts by 2050. We can join a “Coalition of the Willing” to build a new green economy from wind energy and solar power and biomass resources (ES&T). Surprisingly, without an energy plan and only market forces, the U.S. has managed to decrease its greenhouse gas emissions from about 6 billion metric tons as CO2 in 2007 to 5.2 projected for 2012, a decline of more than 13%almost equivalent to its emissions in the year 1990 (USA Today, August 16, 2012). The U.S. Energy Information Agency says it was accomplished primarily by switching from coal to natural gas, thanks to hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling technologies. It is a teachable moment. The tendency by some to dismiss the current drought as just another manifestation of variable weather is unfortunate. It fails to acknowledge the clear and present danger of accumulating greenhouse gases and the changing climate it will cause long into the foreseeable future. Yes, the drought of 2012 was costly. But the lesson from the drought is that we must act now to avoid dangerous interference in our climate future.
Jerald L. Schnoor, Editor-in-Chief
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
[email protected]. Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS. The authors declare no competing financial interest.
Published: September 13, 2012 10480
dx.doi.org/10.1021/es303416z | Environ. Sci. Technol. 2012, 46, 10480−10480
