We’ve just received word that How the West Was Warmed is a finlist for the 2010 Eric Hoffer Award!

From the website: “The Eric Hoffer Award for short prose and books was established at the start of the 21st century as a means of opening a door to writing of significant merit. It honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. The winning stories and essays are published in Best New Writing, and the book awards are covered in the US Review of Books.” We’re honored to be considered for the award. Stay tuned!

Eric Kuhn is the general manager of the Colorado River Water Conservation District. The River District is the largest and oldest of Colorado’s four conservation districts. It was chartered by the Colorado general assembly in 1937 to “preserve and conserve for Colorado, its Colorado River compact entitlement.” The district covers the Colorado River basin except for the San Juan and lower Dolores river basins. Kuhn began his employment with the district in 1981 and became manager in 1996.

Excerpt:

The prospect of climate-change–induced flow variations adds additional
uncertainty. While there is a wide range of results in the different published
studies, all suggest a future Colorado River with less streamflow. In a 2007
report, the National Research Council of the National Academies concluded
that “the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that warmer future
temperatures will reduce future Colorado River streamflow and water supplies.”
In late 2008, the Colorado Water Conservation Board issued a synthesis
report on climate change specifically targeted toward water managers.
This report warns that “climate change will affect Colorado’s use and
distribution of water. Water managers and planners currently face specific
challenges that may be further exacerbated by projected climate changes.”
The study concludes that “all recent hydrologic projections show a decline
in runoff for most of Colorado’s rivers.”

Given the current demands on Colorado River water resources, even
a small change in the mean natural flow at Lee’s Ferry will cause serious
problems. Among the most optimistic of the climate-impact studies published
is the 2006 paper by Niklas Christensen and Dennis Lettenmaier.
This study suggested modest reductions in the mean flow at Lee’s Ferry in
the range of 6 to 10 percent. Most recently, a project by the Western Water
Assessment to narrow the results of the various studies suggests the floor for
the estimated flow reduction is about 10 percent.

Three credible studies that model the current operation of the Colorado
River with a sustained 10 percent reduction on natural flow at Lee’s Ferry?
The recent environmental impact statement (EIS) on the lower basin shortage
criteria included an alternative hydrology appendix that used estimated
flows at Lee’s Ferry published by Connie A. Woodhouse, David M. Meko,
and Stephen T. Gray in 2006. The paleohydrology-based trace for the period
from 1620 to 1674 is illustrative. This period has an estimated mean flow
at Lee’s Ferry of approximately 13.5 maf per year. The model output shows
a number of unacceptable and shocking results. For example, the Central
Arizona Project (CAP) would experience forty-seven straight years of shortages,
including a number of individual years when the project would divert
no water at all. Lake Mead would drop below and stay below the minimum
level for the Las Vegas Valley Water District to pump water to its customers
(1000’msl) for a period of close to twenty years. California, which has the
most senior of the prior perfected rights in the lower basin, would experience
occasional large shortages.

In the upper basin, Lake Powell would operate below the minimum
storage level necessary to produce hydroelectric power over 60 percent of
the fifty-year period, and there were two periods, one of five years and one
of twelve years, when Lake Powell would be empty and the upper-division
states would have been unable to meet their obligations to the lower basin
under the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

The lesson is that without major changes in how we currently manage
the Colorado River, even a modest decrease in system streamflows on the
order of 10 percent could cause significant unacceptable impacts throughout
the basin.

Salt Lake City writer and photographer Stephen Trimble has published more than 20 books on Western wildlands and native peoples including: Bargaining for Eden: the Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America; Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography; and The People: Indians of the American Southwest.  His website is www.stephentrimble.net

This essay was adapted from one originally written for Portland Magazine.

Excerpt:

… New professions, new skills supersede Old Western wisdoms. Men and
women no longer need to know where to cut a ditch to bring runoff to alfalfa
fields, when it’s worth following a vein of ore into a mountain, or how to fell a
200-foot western red cedar. Now, it’s more important to have a flair for cooking perfect omelets at the SkyRidge Bed and Breakfast. Or a knack for teaching freshly retired baby boomers to fly-fish the Rogue River. Or a gift for pairing ranchette properties with the dreams of refugees from the San Fernando Valley.

The professionals around the log table at that bed-and-breakfast wear
cell phones in their holsters. They ride sport-utility vehicles with bumper
stickers that say New York, Paris, Aspen, Moab. The regional economy
depends more on the Dow Jones average than on the price for beef calves at
the autumn auction in the county seat.

Newcomers start here, on their first giddy encounter with the West. Later,
they may come to understand the deeper souls of these places. They may even
learn enough to move comfortably to the dry plains of eastern Montana or
the moonscape Dakota badlands, to sagebrush valleys in Nevada filled with
silence, or to slickrock alcoves of Zen simplicity on the Colorado Plateau.
When they reach these rural corners of the West, they encounter places
that skipped the twentieth century, where the twenty-first century overlays
the nineteenth century. In the language of geologists, the New West lies
unconformably over bedrock—the mythic Old West and the arid land itself.
The New blankets the Old—with a gap, a disruption of continuity.
This is the future, where dissonant, unconforming western identities
begin to blur and blend, where New Westerners energized by espresso join
with ranchers and Indian people to create new stories—twenty-first-century
stories. And where everyone learns that they depend, ultimately, on spring
snowpack in the local watershed.

Change has become our political mantra. In the West, change is more
than a slogan. Drought tempers our dreams of booming growth. We can no
longer take the land for granted. As the climate warms, as forests move up
mountainsides, alpine ecosystems and species move with them—pushed off
the summits, with nowhere to go.

Tim Sullivan is director of conservation initiatives and acting state director for The
Nature Conservancy in Colorado, based in Boulder. His academic background is
in wildlife conservation biology, and he has worked on international, national,
and state-level conservation policy initiatives for the past twenty-five years.

“In the ponderosa pine forests of Colorado and the Rocky Mountain
West, the conservation imperative is to improve the condition of the forests,
to sustain biodiversity, and to build resilience to increased likelihood
of uncharacteristic, catastrophic wildfires. Ponderosa pine forests are the
most rich in biodiversity of Colorado’s major forest systems. Because they
occur at lower elevations and mainly along the Front Range, they are also
the most heavily populated by humans. Ponderosa pine forests, particularly
in lower elevations of the Rocky Mountains, developed in the presence of
fire. Low-intensity, frequent fires killed younger trees and helped maintain
an open canopy and a rich understory of grasses and forbs. The past century,
with a combination of intensive logging, followed by grazing, followed
by decades of fire suppression, has left much of the ponderosa pine forests
densely stocked with trees. These forests are much more susceptible to
intense crown fires that can kill all trees and damage forest soils to the point
that recovery can take decades, even centuries. The risk to both the biodiversity
of these forests and the people who live in them from catastrophic
wildfires is greatly elevated from our past lack of stewardship.

With climate change, the risk to these forests and human communities
is even greater. With just the trend in warmer and mostly drier conditions
in forests across the western United States documented in the past two
decades, the frequency, intensity, and size of wildfires has already increased
significantly. In Colorado, the Hayman fire erupted in the unusually hot,
dry summer of 2002, and caused nearly $40 million in damage, burned
133 homes, and forced the evacuation of 5,340 persons. Because conditions
were so dry and the forest so dense, more than 138,000 acres of ponderosa
pine forest were completely lost. Unlike with the fires these forests evolved
with, recovery from the Hayman fire will take centuries. The combination
of unhealthy forest conditions and the kind of climate conditions we face in
the coming years has already taken a toll on Colorado’s Front Range forests
that will be felt for many generations. How many more fires like Hayman
can Colorado endure?”

Jocelyn Hittle is the director of planning solutions for PlaceMatters, a nonprofit
organization that promotes environmental, economic, and social sustainability
in decision-making processes. She focuses on holistic planning processes,
including linking land-use planning to ecosystem science. Until recently, she
also was the editor of Planning & Technology Today, the publication of the American
Planning Association Technology Division. She is a graduate of Princeton
University and Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
Ken Snyder is president and chief executive officer of PlaceMatters. He is a nationally
recognized expert on a broad range of technical and nontechnical tools for
community design and decision making. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and
Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

Several studies have determined that residents of more compact, diverse
areas drive between 25 and 30 percent less than those in more sprawling
areas. For example, residents in King County, Washington, who live in more
walkable neighborhoods drive 26 percent fewer miles per day.  A meta-analysis
of many of these types of studies shows that people living in places
with twice the average density, diversity of uses, accessible destinations, and
interconnected streets drive about 30 percent fewer miles, even when socioeconomic
status and other factors are taken into account.  This reduction
in VMT [Vehicles Miles Traveled] suggests that emissions reductions of 7 to 10 percent from current levels could be achieved by 2050 through land-use changes alone.  By shifting
60 percent of new growth into more compact development patterns, estimates
indicate that up to 79 million metric tons of carbon dioxide could be
saved each year by 2030. This savings is equal to a 28 percent increase in
federal fuel-efficiency standards and one-half of the cumulative savings of the
new thirty-five miles per gallon corporate average fuel economy standards.
Areas that feature the right combination… include many
existing older neighborhoods, as well as newer mixed-use developments,
transit-oriented development, or traditional neighborhood development.
Increasingly, these types of development are given priority by municipalities
because of high livability and corresponding benefits such as public health
and reduction in obesity, and the developments’ improved ability to fund
regional amenities such as parks and transit.

…In a fortunate confluence of the private market and public benefit, communities
that offer choices in terms of housing, those that offer mixed-use
living, and those with shorter commute times to employment are ever more
appealing to consumers. Studies conducted by real estate researchers and
universities have found that about one-third of all homebuyers prefer “smart
growth–style” communities. For the first time, prices of attached units are
higher than detached single-family dwellings. The Brookings Institution
also has discovered that because demand outstrips supply, the price premiums
on homes in mixed-use developments are 40 to 100 percent.

If two-thirds of the 2050-built environment has yet to be built, and if people
are eager to buy or rent the type of homes, offices, and industrial properties
that help reduce VMT and greenhouse gas emissions, we face a tremendous
opportunity to design this new growth with climate change in mind.

In 2004, it was possible to count the number of major cities with staffed
and funded sustainability initiatives at the executive level on two hands. By
2006, the number of funded programs had grown to include dozens of cities
nationally. And by 2007, the trend had reached a fever pitch, with over 500
mayors signed on to the US Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, committing
to the spirit if not the letter of the Kyoto accords—a document that only
a few short years earlier was not seen as safe political material by many. That
number exceeded 900 in 2009.

What changed? How did cities, which lie at the bottom of the federal/
state/local regulatory chain, come to lead a national trend in green government?
And looking back, what has the green-city movement accomplished?
Is this a genuine change of direction or just a passing trend? What makes a
green-city program successful?

My Experience in Denver
My experience with these questions is firsthand. As a special assistant to
Denver mayor John Hickenlooper from 2003 to 2004, I helped the mayor
develop policy positions on issues related to parks, planning, public works,
and water. In late 2004 and 2005, inspired by a conversation with Portland’s
sustainability chief Susan Anderson, I worked with Mayor Hickenlooper and
Chief of Staff Michael Bennet to design and develop the mayor’s Greenprint
Denver program. I begged, borrowed, and stole ideas from a close group of
peers in other cities across the country, all developing fledgling programs
at a time when there was a collective sense of great new potential, as well
as fierce competition driven by new national-city rankings by groups like
SustainLane and The Green Guide. From 2005 to 2007, I built Greenprint
Denver into a citywide program and worked with city staff, scientists, and a
high-level community advisory group to develop a climate action plan that
aims to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent of 2005
levels by the year 2020.

Greenprint Denver is now among the largest initiatives in the mayor’s
office, with a permanent and borrowed staff of nine city employees and a
combined annual budget of millions (in grants of state and federal dollars
primarily). Solar America City grants, as well as stimulus funds, including
new Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants (EECBG) created by
the Barack Obama administration, have helped fuel a new generation of
related programs at the city level at a time when they are badly needed.

Jackson Perrin is a science educator who enjoys the challenges of living sustainably. He lives with his wife and daughter in their straw-bale house powered by
the sun and watered by the rain in Paonia, Colorado.
Dev Carey is a one-man educational think tank who has taught at all levels, from tots to graduate students, in subjects ranging from hitchhiking to botany. More of his writings and projects can be found at www.highdesertcenter.org.

Sustainable living can seem straightforward: buy a hybrid. Install some solar
panels. Shop locally. Travel less. And don’t forget the organic cotton sheets.
All those actions are worthy, but, of course, they’re just the beginning. How
do you live green without busting your personal budget? How do you design
a career that’s rewarding, but still allows you the time to live your values by,
say, biking to work? How do you find—and live responsibly within—a community
that helps, rather than hinders, your efforts to live more lightly? We
wanted to get our students thinking about these questions; we wanted their
quest for answers to be our next big adventure.
We had some experience with living lightly. When we first moved to
the small town of Paonia, Colorado, to teach at an independent community
school, we were in our late twenties—a couple of idealistic bachelors. Our
tiny paychecks inspired us to make a game out of living on less than $150 a
month. We biked everywhere, year-round; traded work on a local elk ranch
for our rent; picked apples; and socialized at potlucks instead of restaurants.
After a few years, we teamed up with three families to buy a piece of land
and built a six-sided house out of scavenged materials for less than $900.
(It’s still in use today.)
People often assumed we were either miserably uncomfortable or supported
by a family trust fund, but the truth was neither: we were supporting
ourselves and having a great time doing it. In fact, our lives were a lot like
one of our wilderness trips. We helped each other take risks, learned from
one another, and enjoyed the satisfaction of reaching our goals together.
With those experiences in mind, we founded the High Desert Center
for Sustainable Studies on our land in 2005.

Marc Waage currently manages Denver Water’s long-term water planning. For nearly twenty years, he managed the operation of Denver Water’s extensive water-collection system. Waage also worked briefly for the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Indian Affairs on agricultural irrigation projects. He has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in civil engineering from Colorado State University and is a professional engineer. One of Waage’s favorite activities is recreating in Denver’s high-altitude watersheds.

Excerpt:

“What’s past is prologue.”
—From The Tempest by William Shakespeare
The Colorado Rocky Mountain region is already warming. The big wild card is
whether it will get wetter or drier. A wetter climate would be welcome news for
water utilities struggling to meet the water-supply needs of the region’s booming
population growth, whereas drier weather would bring serious new watersupply
problems. Water utilities, challenged with planning for future water
needs, are concerned about the uncertainties surrounding climate change. But
there is hope. Although climate change presents a variety of threats to water
utilities, there are promising new planning methods for reducing those threats.
Our region’s water systems have turned our highly variable and often
scarce amount of precipitation into a reliable water supply for millions of
people, their industries, businesses, and farms, while preserving much of the
environmental and recreational amenities that make the area such a great place
in which to live. Doing so required water utilities to develop vast networks of
water systems throughout the region. Typically, utilities planned these water
systems to provide reliable water delivery through the worst drought conditions
that had been recorded, going back fifty to 100 years, and usually added
a small safety factor to deal with unexpected or changing conditions.
In essence, most water systems in the Colorado Rocky Mountain region
were planned with the expectation that weather and supply conditions in
the future would not be much different than those experienced in the past.
Climate change now is threatening this fundamental planning assumption,
and we are a long way from knowing what will happen to our region’s water
supplies. What types of shortages could be created, and what can we do
now to lessen the impacts? How will we continue to provide water for our
booming population, and how will we maintain the environmental and recreational
amenities of our rivers?

Peter Heller is a contributing editor at National Geographic Adventure, Outside, and Men’s Journal. He is the author of The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet’s Largest Mammals and Hell or High Water: Surviving Tibet’s Tsangpo River. His forthcoming book Kook, A Memoir will be published in the spring of 2010. He lives in Denver.

Excerpt:

In a drought year, by late June or early July the creek is already showing
its bones. Fallen trees, which usually sift a swift current, lie resting out
of water, propped up on dry rocks. Gravel bars split the bends. The rapids
channel, exposing wastes of rounded stones. The current slows and warms.
The mullein is crumbly dry, the willows slack. I wade in ankle-deep riffles
and it’s easier and sadder to fish, because the trout are concentrated into the
few deep pools and are hungry. They must be stressed by the rising temperature
as well. They don’t fight with the vigor or confidence of the ice-water
evenings when the canyon was pumping. They give up.

I notice more elk and deer tracks in the silt along water’s edge—they
must be stressed too, having to drop down farther to drink. The wind still
stirs downstream after dusk and still carries the pungent scent of the forest,
but it is a warmer fragrance, dryer, not fresh, and I miss the scent of cold
stone. It’s as if the country is gasping for a deluge. In those seasons, I put up
my rod earlier and pray most of the fish will make it and hope for fall rain.

The scientists say that these summers, and ones like the drought of
1988, will become more frequent and more severe. The climate models for
the West in the coming decades are not sanguine. I think how the high
snowpack is the heart of this country, how it fills and pumps the networks
of rivers and creeks that cascade out of the hills and nourish everything.
How one doesn’t really need models and statistics; it’s clear that the warmer
winters and earlier springs don’t bode well. I can hardly bear the thought of
the watersheds drying up.