The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Tucson 2032.
The north pole is history, seas are rising and snowmelt is on my mind. Hasn’t snowed on the Colorado Rockies for the last three years. Not a flake. Happened before. In 2026. Tier 5 water cutbacks in place. Lake Mead resembles a 9-mile wide shallow lunar crater. The Colorado River is a trickle. 100th rainless day in a row.
Beautiful sunset. Crimson and gold. Caused by wildfire smoke and a rolling haboob west of here.
Bought a vintage Tesla truck with carbon coins.
I’m the senior hydrologist who assigned Lake Mead “Dead pool” status in the ‘20s. Then the CAP went dry. Then Phoenix lost the sources of their Salt River water to climate change. They dipped into their paltry underground water bank and kept growing.
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The Borman Space Port at DMAFB stays busy. Home for the 22nd Sky Seeding Wing, seeding the stratosphere with reflective material over lethal hot zones to lower the temps on the ground. A lot of geoengineers, climatologists and oceanographers from the University of Arizona work on the front lines of mitigating the catastrophic impacts of climate change and on carbon sequestration technologies.
While the world wasted time resisting reducing carbon, our city planners were planning for this challenging future.
Geoengineers from the UA are in Antarctica, part of an international effort to stop glaciers the size of Everest from slip sliding into the sea by drilling down and extracting the melting water lubricating their slide into earth’s warming, rising ocean. There are a million Hoover Dam-scaled rigs pumping in the dark at the bottom of the world.
The teams of young Tucsonans working there are the Greatest Generation. They have no choice.
Everything we used to quibble over has been outshined by the broiling glare of global warming. In the mid-’20s, villages and towns were hit with lethal levels of high heat and high humidity, locked in by high pressure after historic droughts. Hundreds of thousands died. Chicago, Berlin, New Delhi, Amman, Phoenix. DMAFB’s mission got expanded and assigned to Climate Change Refugee Resettlement.
The North Pole may be gone forever but we are saving the Antarctic while the World Bank is considering adopting the carbon coin to slow the second recession amid our fourth pandemic.
And snowmelt is on my mind.
Long retired, I watch too much news.
“Eco-terrorists target ‘fossil fuel profiteers’ for nanobot assassination.”
“Coal plants across the globe shut down by ‘Pro-Earth’ hackers.”
“Tucson water judged most delectable on planet.”
I’ll take credit for that. That was always my goal. Sure, our water bill’s insane. As it should be. Finest recycled wastewater-aquifer blend on the planet.
The fleet of hydrogen airships moored here at Tucson International is magnificent. I love watching the giant zeppelins glide silently over the valley dragging their mile-long shadows up and over the blue-green Catalinas.
The drought-fire-pest-resistant, genetically-modified seedlings planted in the early ‘20s are thriving, restoring green carbon sponging forests to the Catalinas.
Insurance companies are going belly up. No more capital to gamble against extreme weather and rising seas. The economy is in chaos.
Water tanks are fine. I just replaced our gutters and water tanks.
When I was working I never wanted to alarm the public. I always put a sunny spin on water. The promise of one hundred year’s worth of groundwater fueled insane growth in the ‘20s. In a desert.
In Tucson, we took water seriously. We’re smart as saguaros. We banked it like misers. We knew groundwater out west was essentially finite because eventually it would cost more than diamonds to extract as we continued to guzzle it. Once the CAP became an empty 336-mile skate park covered with solar panels, groundwater soared in price. Leap frog developments became post-modern ghost towns.
When our politicians invited the growth I knew we could not sustain, I spoke up and I paid for it. “You’re killing capitalism!”
A system based on infinite consumption will not meet the challenges of the ‘30s.
112 degrees tonight. 120th cloudless day in a row.
If I didn’t know our water was desalinated water from the Sea of Cortez blended with recycled waste water, maybe I’d like it as much as I loved the old cocktail: Colorado River snowmelt mixed with delicious water from Tucson’s ancient aquifers. The salt dunes produced by the saltwater conversion plant are a tourist attraction. Hundreds and hundreds of eerie glistening mountains of salt.
We do all right every endless summer, working nights and sleeping days, a small price to pay compared to those poor souls living on the chaotic coasts’ coastal flood zones or wildfire zones.
The faint hum of the carbon sequestration towers is reassuring. Fainter than the hum of the bees sampling my agave flowers or the cactus wrens chattering in the distance.
