At the Mercy of Rain

Archeology Writer Warns of Drought With Climate Change By Grant Rhodes, Guest Writer, 2-05-08 Brian Fagan, a leading archaeological writer, said at a lecture at the University of Montana Tuesday night that one of the key ramifications of climate change will be its effect on the world’s water. “Many millions of people in the world today live at the mercy of the rain,” Fagan said. “And because of that, one of the great issues of climate change is our vulnerability.” As part of the 2008 Wilderness Institute’s Lecture Series, Fagan’s presentation was entitled, “The Great Warming Drought and the Flail of God: An Archaeologist Looks at Climate Change.” It focused on how, until recently, we knew little about ancient climate change. But now archaeologists are able to illustrate how civilizations survived and adapted to different warming and cooling periods hundreds of years ago. Fagan noted at the beginning of “The Little Ice Age,” which lasted from the Thirteenth to the Seventeenth Century, storms and rains destroyed crops, forcing people to adapt to the changing conditions. “It was a period of serious famine but also a period of agricultural innovation,” Fagan said. “In short, there was an agricultural revolution.” Fagan uses these historical examples as a lesson that climate change forces people to be innovative. “It is the social and cultural impact of climate change that makes all the difference.” Fagan warned that it is not just Africa and other under-developed regions that will suffer from a water shortage. Parts of the Southwest United States and Southern Rockies, along with parts of the Midwest along the Eastern slope of the Rockies, are considered arid or semi-arid regions. “In the next century, extreme drought will affect 30 percent of us on Earth, which will be up from 3 percent,” Fagan said. Moderate drought would affect half of all of us, he added. “These are reasonable forecasts for the future. We must learn from the lessons of climate change in the past.” So how do we deal with global warming and impending crisis of water shortage today? “The issue isn’t if we can stop global warming. The issue is how do we live with it,” Fagan said. It is important to not let the issue become the “silent elephant in the room,” Fagan warned. There is a need to address it on a personal level as well as on a governmental level. While trying to stay as apolitical as possible on the issue, Fagan did say, “We spend so much money on stupid wars, and we don’t spend it on our future.” Fagan assured the audience that despite an impending water shortage, life will go on. “Humans are adaptive, and capable of making changes, but at the expense of great suffering,” he said. While saying nobody knows what global temperatures will do—whether they will continue to increase or begin to go down—Fagan admitted to being scared at the possibilities. Not scared for himself, but for future generation, because they will be the ones that have to live with it. Speaking to a crowd of mostly students, Fagan warned, “We are playing a huge game of Russian Roulette, and you guys are right in the middle of it.”