Author Archives: Tom Lewis

Alaska Pipeline Coming Down

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The 800-mile-long Alaska Pipeline, one of the wonders of the industrial world, is about to become a victim of climate change. But it really doesn’t matter much.

One of my favorite things is to connect two major news stories, each of which is credible on its own,  but one of which cancels the other. One of my least favorite things is the shoddy journalism that goes into one of the stories. So today is the best of days, and the worst of days.

Story number one is alarming on its face, and at that somewhat understates the danger: “Alaska: One of the World’s Largest Pipelines Threatened by Thawing Permafrost,” blares one of the many headlines seen around the world. The fact is, the pipeline is doomed. On the other hand, it’s not going to matter very much. Continue reading →

The End of the Industrial Age is Set in Concrete

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Champlain Towers in Surfside, Florida demonstrated what happens when concrete reaches the end of its useful life.

Every year, the world pours enough concrete to build a wall 88 feet high and 88 feet wide girdling the globe at the equator. The varieties in concreting, as you see here, are proof. In just two years — 2011 to 2013 — China poured more concrete than the United States did in the entire 20th Century. Manufacturing cement — the product that makes concrete out of water, sand and gravel — is the third largest source of greenhouse-gas emissions in the world; if it were a country, it would be the world’s fourth worst polluter. Increasing demand for, and scarcity of, sand for both concrete and fracking has created a vicious global competition that in some respects resembles the worst of the drug cartels for violence, ruthlessness and lawlessness. 

Now the bad news. Concrete has a life span. Salt, water and heat degrade it until at some point it can no longer be the road or the bridge or the high rise or the dam it once was. If nothing is done to replace or repair it, it fails. And people die.  Continue reading →

The First Tombstones

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They lie as if bracketing a continent’s agony. They are among the first tombstones for an age that is being slowly but mercilessly swept from its place atop the civilized world by fire and water. 

In the North, a sprawling expanse of black ashes, where the village of Lytton, British Columbia, first had to endure a savage heat wave leading to the highest temperature ever recorded in Canada — 121 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the next day, June 30, virtually the entire village and its surrounding homes burned to the ground in a raging, 20,000-acre wildfire that, like the heatwave, was the spawn of global climate change. 1,000 people are homeless. 

In the South, on the water at Surfside, Florida, a pile of crumpled concrete that was a 12-story condominium building until in the early morning hours of June 24 it simply fell down, crushing its occupants. For decades there had been reports of rising sea water regularly — at every unusually high tide — infiltrating the lowest level of the parking garage to depths of two to four feet. For decades it had been known that the building was slowly sinking into the reclaimed wetlands on which it had been built. No one knows for sure what exactly brought it down, but the role of climate change will emerge as a major contributing cause.  (Exclamation point: a hurricane, one of the earliest ever in the season, is approaching Florida as this is written.) The death toll is expected to reach 150.

Someone should hold services over these tombs. Words should be said, and cut into granite. Pretty soon, there won’t be time.

“This is a Climate Emergency.”

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California wildfires like this one, unprecedented in number, extent and the length of their season, are only one small part of the onslaught of climate change now under way in America.

The heat wave that just relaxed its grip — slightly– on the Pacific Northwest was unprecedented in the history of the region, indeed of the entire United States. It came earlier in the year, set more all-time records, and set them by unprecedented margins of in some cases 20 to 30 degrees. That it has backed off for now means nothing, as Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state understands; this is climate change. “This,” he said on national TV, “is the beginning of a permanent emergency.”

Underground and surface water in the region are depleted; crops over much of the state are damaged or dead; human health has been affected by temperatures and humidity levels that are simply not survivable (in a region where air conditioning is regarded as unnecessary). Continue reading →

First Condo Down? It Won’t Be the Last.

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It is quite likely that America has lost its first high-rise building to climate change and the resulting sea level rise. The collapse of South Champlain Towers in Miami Beach early Thursday morning is unprecedented in American history. Buildings under construction, or damaged by explosions or impacts, have collapsed, but never an untouched building on a quiet, cloudless night. When it Comes to Fire Protection, There Should Be Passive Protection As Well, that should be ensured by all the constructors before and after completing the given project.

The other thing that we have never seen in American history is the kind of assault now ongoing on Florida real estate by rising seas. The region is plagued by what the locals call “sunny day flooding,” incursions of flood water not from rain but from rising seas. Salt water is infiltrating the freshwater aquifers and poisoning coastal farm and garden fields. Continue reading →

Treating the Soil Like Dirt

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Even the bedrock has a contribution to make to the plants growing on the surface — essential trace minerals — but cannot do so if the topsoil is destroyed.

When I first read the headline of the article in Smithsonian Magazine — “The Nation’s Corn Belt Has Lost a Third of Its Topsoil” — I didn’t find it particularly alarming. Given the rate of loss I documented in Brace for Impact 12 years ago, I thought we’d be much worse off than that by now. If the average topsoil cover is six inches, and we still have four inches left, we’re not doing so badly. 

But that’s not what this new study meant to say, at all. Using satellite technology, it examined the soil breadbasket — the once-rich farmland that stretches from Ohio to Nebraska and produces 75 percent of the corn grown in this country — in unprecedented detail. It concluded, not that the region had lost one third of the depth of its topsoil, but that 35 percent of the land area of the region had lost all of its topsoil and was barren.

Just another “Holy shit!” moment among way too many experienced in recent years.   Continue reading →

Climate Migration Has Begun: The Emergency is Here

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They were probably using the backhoe to build a sea wall. But at some point you have to give up.

In recent weeks, four — count them, four — major, reputable news organizations have run major stories on the beginning of the greatest disruption of American life that has ever occurred: climate migration. Attention: these stories all recognize not that this disruption is possible if we don’t do something soon, but that it has already begun.  Continue reading →

If You Really Want a Civil War, This is How to Do It.

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Really? You want to do this again? Well, history tells us: be careful what you wish for, and don’t presume you know how it will turn out.

When I visited Costa Rica in 1988, on assignment for a national wildlife magazine, it happened to be the 40th anniversary of the country’s civil war, so there were commemorations and recollections everywhere, all the time. Otherwise I would not have learned the story that provided one of the major political and historical epiphanies of my life.  I did not know that any country had done what Costa Rica had done, indeed it had never occurred to me that any country could do what Costa Rica did. 

Then when I revisited the story this year in connection with something I was writing, details I had not especially noticed before ignited like fireworks and illuminated in an entirely new way the presidency of Donald Trump and the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington D.C. Continue reading →

It’s My Narrative and I’m Sticking To It

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“Once upon a time,” is not a suitable opening for a news story. Ever.

We are spending more and more of our time trapped in other peoples’ narratives — and by narratives I don’t mean just stories. Let me explain with an example.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I got an excited call from the editor of a magazine I wrote for. The Feds were about to de-list the American alligator from the endangered species list. After fewer than 20 years on the list the population had rebounded almost magically, proving the efficacy of the list. This was a huge story for conservationists, and I was to go get it.

It was February. The assignment was in Florida. He got no argument from me. Problem was, the story he sent me to get was dead on arrival. Continue reading →

Guns & Poses

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“I need these guns. All of them. To hunt deer, and, um, in case of feral hogs.”

“Finally,” gushes the Washington Post editorial board today, “a president takes on America’s epidemic of gun violence.” I rushed to get to the story. This should be good — a Democratic president, Democrats in control of the Congress (although just barely, and not of Joe Manchin), new administration with some political capital left, and the National Rifle Association a tattered, smoking hulk, destroyed by its own corruption. What better time to get it done?

There’s no mystery about what’s needed to bring this monster to heel, as every other civilized nation has done. All we need to do is treat guns as we do cars –useful machines that can hurt people if misused. Countries should not be hosts for the Crime show and should seriously deal with crimes and criminals. With that as our guide, real gun reform could be straightforward:  Continue reading →