Climate Change and the Berkshires

My book series, The Steep Climes Quartet, focuses on one little spot in this big world, and that spot the Berkshires, in Massachusetts. The story across the series spans nearly three decades and climate change consequences locally are projected across this timeline.

We hear more and more news about the effects of climate change. This past year alone, in this country alone, we saw a town in Hawaii wiped out by fire, with somewhere between a hundred and two hundred people dead. In the Northeast and Midwest and even as far south as the Mid-Atlantic states, there were many days of sun-occluding and (literally) breath-taking smoke from wildfires in Quebec and other parts of eastern provinces. There’s been serious droughts in many areas and there have been widespread and long-lasting heatwaves, where, in just Maricopa County, Arizona, 469 people were reported to have died of heat-associated illness this year, with more than 150 deaths still under investigation. Heavy and more frequent deluges of rain flooding NYC and various other places in the Northeast, and in Florida, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Arizona, California, Kentucky, and other states—it may be easier to list the dangerous flood-free places for 2023

Scenic view from Monument Mountain in the Berkshires Massachusetts

But if our own feet here in the Berkshires have remained dry, or nary a heat stroke observed, well, as Alfred E. Neuman says, “What me worry?”

Well, worry. It is just a matter of time.

Heavy downpours are a real thing and will be a more and more frequent occurrence in the years ahead. The mechanism for this is simple enough: warmer temperatures mean higher levels of moisture held in the air, which means that there is more moisture—in the form of rain or snow or hail or sleet—that gets wrung out of the atmosphere when a colder weather front hits the sodden air.

The forecasting of weather is an inexact science, and the projection of climate change progression is that much more challenging, but the science of rain is understood: more moisture in the air means that there’s more moisture to fall out of the air.  We’ve had a couple of recent examples of this phenomenon, and we can expect heavy rain incidents to become more common as the mean temperature of the planet continues its slow climb as the world moves too slowly to curb enough greenhouse gases to begin to reverse global warming. There is no question of whether we can avoid global warming effects, although how bad these effects may be and how fast and how frequently we’ll experience such negative effects as heavy rain deluges is the only unknown.

One big problem is that our infrastructure is not designed to handle what were once extremely rare rain volumes, so run-off and absorption structures, storm sewers, sewer systems, and wastewater treatment plants will increasingly get overwhelmed. Flood control systems designed for what was once normal conditions will prove inadequate to handle high volume rainfall. Bridge abutments and spans and roads will be under many more assaults. Houses built on or near flood plains that have never been a problem will be damaged by water more frequently. Even houses and buildings that may be far away from rivers and streams can still face significant destruction because the properties and the structures simply can’t handle all the increased water, and so face flooded basements and streets turned into temporary canals.

You can expect your house insurance premiums to keep rising, and if you are a renter, stiffer premiums will mean higher rents. Already, in Florida, the flood insurers are in retreat and there are Federal policies proposals regarding flood insurance being required by many properties previously thought to have not needed such coverage. Cities and towns will face pressure to upgrade and expand storm drainage infrastructure and to come up with ways to protect water supply and waste treatment and there is nothing cheap about such projects, unless in comparison to the cost of the greater damage that threatens each and every citizen if no planning or infrastructure improvement is put in place. And any significant damage due to sea rise and storm surges in other areas of our state and region will create economic pressure that affects us all because our economy is a complex set of connected interdependencies. We already complain about Massachusetts not helping our western part of the state nearly enough, but you can easily imagine the further stresses on budgets and taxes if, say, the Statehouse decides to build protection against the Atlantic Ocean to keep Boston Harbor from encroaching into the metro area. And you think that we don’t get our fair share now?

Weather systems change with the warming of the planet, including, simply enough, increasing numbers of days with higher temperatures. This is far more than a matter of having more dog days of August. Agriculture takes a hit. Power demand loads rise because air conditioning, which has long been optional in New England, becomes a necessity. The number of days will grow when outside work is curtailed and losing several extra days because of the extra heat—or a dozen or two-dozen days—of construction, farm, and tourism productivity adds up to big income losses. The vaulted outdoor experiences of the Berkshires such as hiking and biking, outdoor dining, Tanglewood and the other cultural institutions, and even those simple and lovely days by the lake are threatened by high heat, which will mean fewer visitors to our region and lost income. And when the temperature is fine, will wildfire smoke choke businesses for some matter of days?

We’ve all seen these consequences of global warming already, but in the years ahead, we’ll experience these much more frequently, and this will hit us where it hurts: our pocketbooks. More expensive insurance, higher food costs, bigger power utility and fuel prices, lost workdays and lost business and personal income, and added repair and renovation costs recovering from such consequences as storm damage. We need to face the growing pressure to invest in energy efficiency, and we need to support every bit of climate change reduction efforts we can.

And, yes, this will cost us. Even with rebates and tax credits, such investments in the electrification of our business and home heating and cooling systems and more energy-efficient structures will cost us.

Do you know what is more costly? Not doing such things as replacing an oil or gas furnace with heat pumps or bringing better insulation and air-sealing to your home. Bringing down the levels of greenhouse gases requires that we shift from our fossil fuel-based economy to one where renewable energy and energy efficiency drives the economy.

Let’s imagine Berkshires 2030.

Chances are there will be many pleasant days, although should your business involve winter sports, your year won’t be so pleasant with far less snow, even while the occasional massive snow dump takes place and the more frequent polar expresses could counter the larger number of winter days above freezing, but at the cost of shutting everything down. Should your business involve nature tourism, those happy hikers may become farther and fewer between, with tick-borne disease vectors and other warm temperature diseases on the rise or stay inside on those extra four or five too hot days in addition to the several we already experience today. Tanglewood will be closed more often and your motel or restaurant or retail store will be empty. Should you be involved in agriculture, good luck finding people to work through more extra hot days or keep crops healthy under the temperature onslaught. If you run a business, you now face the significant cost of adding air conditioning to your building or rental units or home and will pay more for the power to run it. Prices will be up for all sorts of things, mainly because power demand will be up because of many cost-related factors in transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables.

In 2030, life in the Berkshires will be harder for many, and toughest—as usual—for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, and there just may be more gathering at that end.

There’s good news, too. Probably.

2030 will likely still be pouring money from the Inflation Reduction Act bucket and, one can hope, there will be other new buckets of money bandied about for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects, big and small. There is the reasonable hope that jobs will be plentiful with renewable energy projects and infrastructure build out, so maybe the lower end of the economic spectrum will be pushed toward the center, fingers crossed.

The choice is simple, even if the implementation will be clumsy, difficult, and expensive up front. If you allow your government and communities to go slow in replacing fossil fuels with renewables, you will reap a much costlier bill down the road in the form of widespread destruction of your community’s structures and economics and public welfare, not to mention any chance for a reasonable future for our children and our children’s children.

We need to put on our big boy pants and get on with fixing the problem of heating up our world. The thing to keep in mind is that the growing destructive consequences of climate change aren’t down the road, but here today, and evermore tomorrow and ever more costly.

In Kill Well, the first book of The Steep Climes Quartet and published in September last year, the time is 2026, and in the second book, Dear Josephine, which will come out in the Spring 2024, takes place in 2029. The Berkshires, for the characters, doesn’t seem all that different from today, but then again, characters who are written to seem like regular people won’t be fixated on climate change, like most actual regular people. Climate events near and far will get attention in person or in the news, and then fade behind the endlessly cycling moments of day-to-day lives. But climate change is there, slowly—and increasingly—affecting daily lives in both subtle and acute ways, as an existential threat will do.

 

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