By: Hugh B. Price
President
National Urban League
Here in the Northeast, as March has been proclaiming its intention in recent days to go out like a lion, the blustery winds, chilly temperatures and occasional bursts of snow have probably made some forget that this past winter was one of the warmest, driest, sunniest and weirdest ever.
In fact the temperatures were so balmy that I even played tennis outdoors all winter.
Many of us have even better reasons to appreciate this winter's relative warmth: our reduced heating bills.
So, it's easy to be seduced by the unseasonably warm weather-until you start thinking about the consequences.
For one thing, there's been so little rain and snow that reservoirs throughout the Northeast stand at record lows, forcing towns to impose stiff fines on residents for washing their cars, and in some places even for using your dishwasher.
Granted, that this winter's climate could be just an unusual turn; and granted that it's easy to throw cold water on scientists' warnings of environmental disasters from the rise in global warming that may not come to pass for decades-if ever.
But before dismissing those warnings completely, we'd all better look out down below, toward Antarctica where a gigantic ice shelf-the size of the entire state of Rhode Island-disintegrated completely over the last month because of warming temperatures in its region.
Mind you, this ice shelf, called Larsen B, was a relic of the last Ice Age, having been formed about 12,000 years ago, according to scientists. It had an area of 1,260 square miles and was 650 feet thick. In little more than a month after scientists noticed the beginnings of its breakup, it was completely gone.
The ice from it could have filled 29 trillion five-pound bags, a report in the Washington Post noted dryly.
Even glaciologists, the scientists who study these things, were stunned at Larsen B's swift collapse. Their comments-"The speed of it is staggering," one told the New York Times-made it seem to them the Antarctic equivalent of dew melting on a summer morn.
If an Antarctic ice shelf that existed for at least 12,000 years and was the size of the state of Rhode Island melts within the space of a month, will the world outside the scientific community notice?
It isn't conclusively clear that the ice shelf's disintegration resulted from the effect of global warming, which is caused by carbon dioxide and other "greenhouse" gases heating up earth's atmosphere.
Scientists say the climate trends in that region of the Antarctic, nearest to southern Argentina and Chile, are more complex than that. Some glaciers there are thickening while others are thinning.
But it is true that summer air temperatures in the region have risen 4.5 degrees during the last five decades, which is considered a significant change.
Given all the violent, earth-shaking problems the world's population is now beset by-war and the prospect of war over here; famine and the prospect of famine over there, and so on-it might seem convenient to dismiss, at least for the moment, the disappearance of Larsen B.
But, as I was pondering that, I came across another news article about a seemingly very different environmental issue from the one in the fabled frigid regions at the bottom of the earth.
This one had to do with the effort of environmentalists, conservationists and the U.S. Park Service to limit the use of those buggy-like all-terrain vehicles in wilderness areas, and the equally fervent resistance of hunters and day-trippers who use them, and the industry which makes them.
The Times' story focused on the clash over the vehicles' use in the 729,000-acre Big Cypress National Preserve in Florida. There, off-road vehicles have already created 22,000 miles of deep ruts, which the Parks Service says is significantly harming plant and animal life in the region.
It struck me that the larger issue behind these and many other environmental clashes that might seem "local," is finding the right balance between human beings' use of the ecological environment we all share for our own enjoyment and prosperity and our need to leave it in suitable-that is, livable-shape for the human beings, and the animals, and the plants that will come after us.
This isn't a matter of Pollyannas looking for a tree to hug. It's a fact that the earth is heating up at a faster rate than ever. Those rising temperatures could produce sudden drastic changes in weather-severe droughts in some places, severe flooding in others-that would likely provoke an almost unimaginable floodtide of refugees, and worldwide political instability.
Environmentalists say the world had better accelerate the war against carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
I'm no expert, so I won't presume to suggest a solution.
But this much I do know:
The crack of the Larsen B ice shelf in Antarctica means we'd better get cracking on finding ways to help Mother Earth chill out.
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