Help Protect Our Winters

Do you love sledding, ice skating, skiing, snowboarding, building a snowman or having a snowball fight? That may be the highlights of winter for many of us, but winter means so much more. According to NASA, the Earth's atmosphere has warmed 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution (around the year 1900). While that might not seem like a lot, the changes have been dramatic and seem to be accelerating. This week, the Weather Channel reported that the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains could experience "snowless winters" as soon as the late 2040s. That's scary. Also this week, record high temperatures were shattered across the western U.S. and Canada. Where I live in the Rocky Mountains, the temperature reached 60F almost every day this week, more than 20F warmer than normal.

The warming has caused winters to become shorter and drier in the western U.S. With less ground water from snow melt, rivers that provide drinking water to tens of millions of Americans are drying up. Evergreen trees are dying at an alarming rate of pine beetle infestation. The pine beetle cannot survive extreme cold. Historically, temperatures in the high mountains would drop to -20F or -30F, but that is happening far less frequently. So the beetle survives longer and spreads farther, destroying larger areas of mountain forests. In the years to come, this will only make fire season worse.

According to climate.gov, by 2100 the Earth is projected to warm between 2 and 9.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Is there any hope, you might ask? Yes there is. But only if we are all willing to act fast. So, what can we do? Here's a list of suggestions:

• Vote for leaders (local, state, and national) who take climate change seriously and promise to do something about it.

• If you're too young to vote, join the environmental club at your school...and if your school doesn't have one, start one.

• Take public transportation or ride your bike when you can.

• Plant trees.

• Call your utility company and sign up for a program that gets electricity from renewable sources.

Environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, recently said, "I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic...and act as if your house is on fire. Because it is." I think we have to remain hopeful, as hope can inspire us, but hope has to go hand-in-hand with action.