Climate Change Is Breaking the West

A river in Colorado flows through hillsides burned in the Cameron Peak Fire. The trees are stark and black, burnt, and the soil around them is beige and gray.

(Benjamin Rasmussen / The New York Times / Redux)

In the West, crisis is becoming routine. Extreme heat, out-of-control wildfires, droughts, floods—climate catastrophes are just part of the weather now. This is what climate change looks like, and it is here.

“Even describing climate-related events as unprecedented or unpredictable becomes less meaningful,” our California-based staff writer Ronald Brownstein points out. “Is an event that has never happened before really ‘unpredictable’ if such events are now happening virtually every year?”

This summer, the West experienced the unbearable. “In every direction, the consequences of climate change across the region have become more tangible, immediate, inescapable,” Ronald writes.
A California well fixer is raising alarms: The water is disappearing. “It’s shaken everything I believe in,” he says.
When wildfires rage, it’s not just humans inhaling the smoke. Cows, too, breathe that dangerous air. They may produce less milk because of it.
The personal costs of climate change are rising. “Defensible space” laws require those living in wildfire zones to clear vegetation near their home. My colleague Morgan Ome shares her mom’s attempts to comply.