Changin' places

Encouraged by my travel-writer son, I opted to skip Wordless Wednesday this week [did anyone miss it?] and join Blog Action Day, whose theme for today is climate change. When deciding what to write about, I got to thinking about places I've enjoyed visiting and wondering how they might be affected by climate change.

So when my grandchildren [should any be produced] visit these places as adults, will they be able to enjoy them as I have?

Of course not, even without the specter of rising sea levels and radically shifting weather patterns. Places change. They always have. The planet evolves. It always has. This is the argument some folks advance for not worrying about climate change. But I don't accept it as an reason for continuing business as usual.

And I can't help wondering about its negative effects on some of these sentimental places....

• Glacier National Park (see photo above). Might have to be re-named by mid-century.
• Galveston Island. There are places at worse risk for disappearing under the waves as sea levels rise, but this is a special place in my family's history; plus they've recently had a taste of a possible disastrous future. Shoot, my adolescent hometown of Houston might lose some real estate as well.
• Perú. Valleys like the Moche, on the right, depend almost completely on meltwater from Andean snows for their moisture. What will these people do when there's not enough snow left to melt for them? [Aforementioned son's Blog Action Day post discusses this problem, which involves more than just Perú, in more heartbreaking detail and much more professionally than I can]
• London. I'm not worried about it slipping beneath the sea or drying up. But it might freeze up if the Gulf Stream shifts significantly due to massive inflows of fresh water from melting ice caps.
• Colorado. The view outside of my dream retirement residence might be a lot different by the time I'm able to enjoy it. Warmer winters are allowing the pine beetle to flourish and vistas like the one in this article might become more common. Personally, I prefer something like this:

I'm basically an optimistic person. Plus, I've had firsthand experience both at work and at home with young people who inspire confidence in a hopeful future. So I feel that challenges can be dealt with, solutions can be found. (Even if it's too late to stave off some of the negative impacts I've listed here.) But we need to work together to find them. And we need to accept scientific fact as scientific fact.