I’m currently sitting in a coffee shop in Colchester, Vermont. The shop has a giant glass front that looks out over Mallet Bay on Lake Champlain. Colchester is just a few minutes north of Burlington. I’m up here today because Dawn had to do a work thing at St. Michael’s College, and since B-town is about a two hour drive from our little village, and she didn’t want to do the drive alone, and she found me a coffee shop with free Wi-Fi, I came along with her.
So I’m sitting here, what?, a week or so before Christmas, and I’m looking around me in this beautiful place in northern Vermont, and what do I see? I’ll tell you what I don’t see. I don’t see any ice on the lake. I don’t see any snow on the ground. And I don’t see anyone wearing a damn heavy coat. Here it is, a week or so before Christmas — James Taylor is telling me to have a Merry Little Christmas and to make the yultetide gay, for fuck’s sake! — and there’s not a goddamn thing around me that makes me say, “Yes, this is winter. Watch out for Jack Frost.”
What the fuck? I mean, I know climates change naturally and all that, but I’m not an old person. I’ve only been on the planet for 29 frickin’ years, and yet, I can remember a time when winter actually arrived before February. I can remember the real possibility of a white Christmas. It usually didn’t come. We usually got rain or something instead. But still, it was a real possibility. Not this year. This year, the most we can hope for, even up here in “cold” Vermont, is a strong breeze on Christmas.
I walk around and I see people with shining happy faces staring up in reverence at the blue sky and shining happy sun. I see people — people who call themselves environmental activists, no less — walking around in shorts and T-shirts and saying, “Isn’t this great? What a glorious day!” Are you fucking kidding me? A glorious day? IT’S DECEMBER! It’s not supposed to be glorious. It’s supposed to be cold and the wind is supposed to biting our faces off. Our bodies are supposed to be hurting from walking everywhere with hunched backs and clenched jaws. People are supposed to walk inside doors and say, “Whoo! It sure is cold out there,” and then they’re supposed to blow into their hands and stomp their boots, and swing their scarves off their shoulders, and say, “You got hot cocoa?” Glorious days in December? Fuck that.
I know the science isn’t perfect — in some sense, that’s what makes it science — but c’mon people, doesn’t the reality of 49º on December 15, and not just 49º, but 49º in northern Vermont!, doesn’t the reality of that unsettle you a little bit? I mean, between 1961 and 1990, the normal daily mean temperature for Burlington in the month of December was 23º, and the 1990’s were the warmest decade on record. Over at Save Your Vermont, there’s a report on Global Warming in Vermont (PDF) that says:
- According to the Environmental Protection Agency the climate of Vermont could be like that of Richmond, Virginia, or even Atlanta, Georgia by 2100.
- Snowfall has decreased 15% since the 1950’s. Precipitation is projected to increase as much as 30% in winter (mostly in the form of rain).
- Winter in Vermont has already shortened by more than two weeks over the last 50 years. Warmer temperatures could erase most winter recreation in Vermont.
That sucks and stinks and stinks and sucks. Seriously. These sunny days are not glorious. They suck and stink and stink and suck.
But don’t let my tirades fool you, folks. As the man said, “If you think I’m going to succumb to negativity, you’re wrong.”
Earlier this Fall, on Labor Day weekend, hundreds of people, led by the author, Bill McKibben, went on a five-day walk through the state of Vermont. They stopped at every towns they passed through, holding Community Conversations on the Green. They ended in Burlington at a political rally in Battery Park, where they got every major politician in the state to pledge their support for outgoing Senator Jim Jeffords’ last major bill in Congress, the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act. Plus, Senator Jeffords’ successor, Bernie Sanders (the Congress’ only socialist senator, by the way), has a 100% pro-environment rating.There’s also the fact that in Green Mountain College, Vermont has one of the few colleges in the country that has committed itself to developing an environmental ethic in every single student who passes through its gate.
Sure, these may seem like minor things, but they’re not nothing. This state has acknowledged that not having a White Christmas sucks and stinks, and it is doing everything in its (admittedly small) power to reverse the trend. Sure, the shining happy sun is out today, but maybe tomorrow it will be bitter cold. Maybe tomorrow winter will return to Vermont.
10 Comments
it’s 55 degrees over here… - in up upstate new york… - near canada… - like an hour away from canada… - you know… - canada… - the country that’s usually blowing its shredded ice cubes through an upstate window… - not today… - or any day before that this year… - nor… - according to the weather forecast… - not any day this week…
i have my door open… - i’m not wearing a coat… - and… - it’s almost january…
but… - whatever… - the real war is against the terrorists… - not our industrial sized everything…
I’m pissed off too, man. I actually took my garbage out in the nude this morning. It was so warm I just stood on the sidewalk, sipping my iced tea and lemon and I just smiled at the cars driving by. I had to wipe the sweat off my forehead because I was waving so hard.
Seriously though I was working outside in just a shirt the other day. A lot of the people I work with are crazy liberals too, and our big joke is “Man, what a nice day. Thank god for global warming” or “I’m sure glad winter is over” or “Hey Leigh, take your pants off”.
all the negativity in this blog sucks..and it stinks and it sucks.
If you think Jack Frost is just going to walk through that door over there, well, your wrong..and if he did, he’d be old and gray….
shorts and flip-flops, WE think they are FANTASTIC
Kyle your nuts. Do you remember just two years ago when the temp did not get above 0 for like a week straight and it was the two coldest winters on record. Shit last year at this time in burlington the high was like 15 degrees. Or how about 7 years ago when we got like 2 feet of snow on April 1st.
The point is winter in this part of the country varies from year to year. There are way to mane variables for anyone to judge what winter will be like in 2100. They can’t even tell if it is going to rain or not three days from now.
Stop crying.
The grass was still green when I left Hanover, NH on Dec 7th. The weather down there was literally making me sick to my stomache. Luckily I am back in AK where it is currently 7F in Anchorage…Although we have had some crazy warming trends up here as well within the past few years.
Ah. All of you weather-warmsters… it is currently in the low teens and the past three days it has been flooding rain, there are shredded trees all over the streets, the electricity went out for over 24 hours, in some places it is almost out, all the old ladies here living on machines and oxgen tanks to survive (which aren’t plugged in at the mo’) are givin you the mutherfuckin middle finger.
Move back to Alaska. You can take my place, Mantha needs a snuggle bunny (or two).
I just finished watching ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. After seeing the movie I would argue that there are not too many variables to judge what winter will be like in 2100. It seems like the scientific world at large agrees that the leading cause of global warming is Co2 emissions.
It appears that average temperatures compared to previous years is increasing drastically. That doesn’t mean it can’t snow two feet in April (we’re not talking about a twenty degree difference). What it does mean is parts of the world are seeing record breaking high temperatures. So high marine life that hasn’t changed in for ever is changing right before our eyes. We can also document unbelievably large glaciers disappearing from mountain tops or falling, in Rhode Island size chunks, into the sea.
Any body arguing the point that historically the Earths temperature has changed at an excessive rate (i.e. the ice age in Europe that came about in ten years) is on the right track. But it is interesting to find out why that happened and how the same circumstances created by man could effect our future.
I strongly urge anybody who hasn’t watched ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ to do so.
I am not saying we are not changing the environment by producing stupid amounts of gas, or that this place is not warming up. My main point is that with the amount of different things (water temp., air temp, changing deep sea water currents, sand storms in Africa, ect) that can change it is really hard to predict what will happen. If the “day after tomorrow” scenario happens then we will be in a semi-ice age. So the range of what this place could be like in 2100, according to different experts, can vary from really warm to us being in the early stages of an ice age.
I understand that whatever the outcome it won’t be good.
I hear ya dude. Actually I totally agree with your earlier statement “They can’t even tell if it is going to rain or not three days from now”
I was just totally pumped after watching that movie. It’s not a super-hippy-leftist-crap show. It’s actually nicely paced and very informative. Using graphs and history to prove points that are smeared in the news and on TV.
Seriously this movie would make a good holiday gift…
http://www.climatecrisis.net
Kyle, I’m with you: local action on climate change is the best way forward…the interesting thing about stuff that Vermont and other local/state governments are doing is that all kinds of economic benefits can be achieved while also reducing emissions. For example, UNH is doing all kinds of things, and as a result will save around $25 MILLION over the next couple decades (while also reducing emissions by 40-50%). In fact, we could save even more, but there’s all kinds of political obstacles in the way…like power companies using their lobbying power to force us to keep buying their electricity. The point is that reducing emissions (and stopping climate change) doesn’t mean we need to sacrifice economically.
Just like Al Gore pointed out, “We’ve got everything we need to fix this problem, except for political will.”