The New England winter, if you trust the calendar, is here. And it’s true, the days are shorter and, refreshingly, colder. But truth is, I’m not ready for it. I’m still trying to make sense of this past New England fall.
This was the fall that fell apart. Late, erratic, given to extremes. Mother Nature gone moody, if not slightly mad.
In the woods, fields and wetlands near my house, here in Wayland, the season arrived something like three weeks late, by my unscientific reckoning, only to be cut what seemed a month short when record snow fell on Oct. 29 – leaves covered freakishly white, branches groaning and breaking, bringing down power lines, two days before Halloween.
But the storm was a miscue. The mercury rose again, and November felt like September should.
Fall runs deep in the New England psyche, the season of Thoreau’s “Wild Apples” and “Autumnal Tints.” It’s at the core of our regional identity (and tourism industry). When it behaves oddly, off kilter – when there are 80-degree days in the second week of October and maples still green on Columbus Day – it’s disconcerting. We feel the season’s derangement on our pulses and in our bones.
Of course we know that no single season, in a single region, can tell us much about climate change. Only longer trends and global averages can do that – and, yes, they’re all pointing in one direction, to a dangerously, even unlivably, warmer world. Last year was the hottest since records began in 1850. At the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa – which concluded on Dec. 11 – the World Meteorological Organization announced that 2011 was the 10th warmest year on record and the warmest ever in which a La Nina occurred. Thirteen of the hottest years recorded have been in the past 15 years.
And as it turned out, our freakish New England fall weather coincided, and resonated, with a drumbeat of reports on climate and energy that offered plenty of scientific reasons to feel unsettled. To refresh:
In September, here in Massachusetts, the Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, with the help of an expert advisory council, released the state’s first Climate Change Adaptation Report, recommending state and local investments to prepare for near-certain climate impacts – from sea-level rise and inland flooding (that’s us, Wayland) to damaging storms and the public health effects of intensifying heat waves to the broad economic effects of warming on agriculture, fishing, tourism and much more.
Have Wayland’s selectmen read this report? Does Wayland, built in one of Greater Boston’s major flood zones, have a climate adaptation plan?
In early November, the U.S. Department of Energy reported – and the Global Carbon Project confirmed on Dec. 4 – that global greenhouse emissions jumped by record levels in 2010, exceeding even the worst-case scenarios. That was followed by the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2011, with its alarm-raising conclusion that unless a major shift to clean energy infrastructure begins in the next five years (yes, five), high-carbon infrastructure will be “locked in,” making irreversible climate change this century unavoidable.
On Nov. 18, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report on climate change and extreme weather events, with the cautious but sobering message that, yes, it’s reasonable to expect more and worsening extreme weather in coming decades. It was followed by Oxfam’s report that extreme weather has already contributed to pushing millions into “hunger and poverty,” offering a “grim foretaste” of what’s to come.
Anyone who’s not feeling a bit overwhelmed at this point – feeling it on your pulse and in your bones, you might say – isn’t paying attention. In Durban, the progress was snail-paced and highly contingent. In Washington, where the words climate change are rarely spoken, it’s not even that. Unless the political calculus changes, and soon, unless we find the political will to put a price and a cap on carbon, keep fossil fuels in the ground, invest massively in clean energy and efficiency, and make real global commitments on emissions and adaptation, it’s hard to see how this ends other than badly.
What will that kind of change require? What kind of catastrophe will it take before this country faces up to its challenge? What kind of politics?
President Obama’s decision last month to delay the Keystone XL pipeline showed that an inspiring grassroots climate movement is gaining strength. But we can’t rely on activists alone, however inspiring, to win this fight for us. We’re all in this together – right where we live. We’d better start acting like it. We’d all better start holding our leaders, at all levels, accountable.
It will be a tragic thing to live in a world where the storied New England fall is merely that – the stuff of stories. But if we fail to meet this challenge – and right now, we are failing – that loss will be the least of tragedies.
But I can’t bring myself to leave it at that. What the science tells us is true – we’re going to have to live through climate change, a lot more of it and a lot sooner than most people realize, right here in Wayland. Like others, as I’ve woken up to this reality, I’ve gone through a process of soul searching that has led me to a simple, but by no means easy, conclusion – that I have to take action, starting right here.
So, what would it mean to start here, right where I live? Start what? And how? And with whom?
I’m not going to “solve the climate crisis.” At this point, only decisive, urgent action by governments and corporations can have any global impact – and that means politics at the regional, national and international levels. So, yes, I can and must be politically engaged in the movement for climate action. But beyond that, what can I do right here, in Wayland, to prepare for what’s coming?
That’s where Transition Wayland (www.transitionwayland.org) comes in, a nascent grassroots initiative to begin moving beyond our dependence on fossil fuels and creating a truly resilient and sustainable local economy. It starts from the realization that climate change is upon us, that it’s going to get worse, and that we’re all in it together.
And so, first, it’s about building a stronger community, and facing our future together. It’s about neighbors helping neighbors. It’s about uniting this community around practical, meaningful efforts in areas like renewable energy and efficiency, local agriculture, transportation, infrastructure, land use, and disaster preparedness.
And who knows, maybe, just maybe, if more communities start thinking seriously about climate and resilience at the local level, it will help create the broader political shift that’s absolutely necessary in order for meaningful action to be taken on climate at the regional, national and global levels.
But one thing I do know: We can’t simply rely on “environmentalists” and “climate activists” to do this for us. We need everyone in this effort, contributing whatever it is they can best contribute. This is not about preaching a particular lifestyle. It’s not about guilt. And it’s not about feeling self-satisfied, virtuous and “green.”
It’s about neighbors helping neighbors build a sustainable and resilient community. It won’t be easy, but we have to try. Because we’re all in this together. And there’s much – so much – that we can do, if we do it together. Starting here. Please join us.
Two events in January will draw attention to climate change and its local impact. On Jan. 10, as part of the Great Presenters Series at the Wayland Library, Pablo Suarez of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre will speak on preparing for future flooding here in Wayland. On Jan. 19, the Walden Forum series at First Parish will welcome MIT’s Kerry Emanuel, one of the top climate scientists in the country, to speak on what we know about the great risks climate change presents for our children and grandchildren.
Wen Stephenson is a founding member of Transition Wayland (www.transitionwayland.org), a new initiative to begin building a more resilient and sustainable local economy and community beyond fossil fuels. A writer from Wayland, he is the former editor of The Boston Globe’s Ideas section on Sunday, and most recently was the senior producer of NPR’s “On Point” at WBUR. Follow him on Twitter (@wenstephenson).