Back to the Future: What we can learn from California about dealing with drought
This article was originally published in German. The English version is an automatic translation and may contain errors. The German original is authoritative.
My namesake Andy, the cross-breed of Golden Retriever and Poodle (a "Goldendoodle"), gets completely beside himself when we arrive. Not out of joy because we've been apart for a long time, but because he's afraid, especially of men, as his owner Charlotte assures me. He gallops wildly around us and barks so much that we can't admire the magnificent mansion at all, in which we (my girlfriend Nina, her mother and I) are accommodated for the next few nights. After a while, he dares to dart forward and lick my hand briefly, only to take cover again immediately. The more he calms down, the more I too manage to slowly arrive after the long journey.
201 g per kilometre and head, that's how much CO₂ is consumed during a flight. As a clever physicist, I can calculate that for the flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco (distance: 9136.15 km) I consumed 1836 kg of carbon dioxide. Or in another unit: nearly 2 tonnes! And that's just for one leg. Not to mention the absurd amount of plastic waste that accumulated from eating the airline's food. Of course, it's hypocritical to write a critical article about the consequences and handling of climate change in California with this mortgage. But I'm doing it anyway. Why? Because the vegetation there now looks roughly like it will look with us in 20 years – if we continue as we have been. Recently there was an article on Deutschlandfunk Kultur (1) that dealt specifically with climate change in Lower Franconia. Among other things, JMU Professor Heiko Paeth had his say, who found that "[…] Lower Franconia has warmed significantly more in the last 70 to 80 years than the globe on average". Many tree species, as well as maize and rapeseed, are in danger of disappearing because it will become too hot and too dry for them. On the other hand, the heated climate enables, for example, the cultivation of kiwis. In this respect, global warming, despite all the justified doomsday scenarios, does offer some advantages here and there. But an argument along the lines of "It's great if it gets warmer here, then you don't have to go to Spain to lie in the sun!" must not hold. Because the drought (for example, there were 105 summer days and 36 tropical days in Würzburg in 2018) increases the risk of forest fires. And California has had experience with that for quite some time. The last devastating fire occurred in November 2018 near – the name of the place couldn't be more cynical – Paradise. The fire had trapped the residents; there was only one road in: over 80 people died.
Not far from Paradise lies Nevada City, a former gold rush town in north-eastern California. This is where Charlotte lives, who, just like my girlfriend's mother, emigrated from China in the late 1980s. But instead of going to Germany, she ended up in the USA, where she married an American (now deceased) and built a profitable business with him. Nevada City (nearby but not part of the state of Nevada) is surrounded by forest. In the centre there is a historic old town that looks like it's from the Wild West. In the former saloons there are now clothes shops or alternative cafés. Outside the centre stand beautiful, typically American houses, like Charlotte's. The trees hang deep over the streets. If you drive further into the mountains, nature increasingly takes over.
During my trip, I set myself the task of talking to Americans about the political situation in the USA, particularly about climate change and its consequences. A good opportunity presents itself on the third evening: The couple Joan and Lance Goddard, friends of our hostess Charlotte, are hosting a house concert. To reach their property, you have to drive up a long driveway through their own woodland, past a clearing where a pond rests. It's an idyll that the Goddards have built here. They used to work in Silicon Valley and would drive out every weekend. Today they are retired and live here permanently. Many of their friends who came to the concert have a similar story: There's Rick, also retired, who tells me that the water reservoir in Northern California depends on the annual snowmelt – which decreases year after year because there's less snow in the mountains in winter. Therefore, another dam is to be built. The issue of drinking water is a major problem from multiple perspectives. In the surrounding area there are many old mine shafts dating from the gold rush era. To extract gold, the washing of river sand with mercury was often used, which caused heavy metals such as arsenic to enter the soil. Moreover, many mines were later used as landfills and are thus additionally contaminated. The seals on these mines threaten to break open in many places. Something like this happened a few months before our trip, when a broken mine contaminated the South Yuba River. On the one hand, water is scarce; on the other hand, the danger of forest fires lurks. Lance tells me that insurance companies no longer want to cover costs for damage caused by forest fires. Or you have to take out expensive additional insurance, which deters many people from buying a house.
Real estate is also nearly unaffordably expensive in the Bay Area. Here, in Fremont, one of the many cities that are part of San Francisco's commuter belt, lives Xiaohong. Her younger of two daughters recently moved away to study, so she's alone in a large house. Well-maintained front gardens line up next to well-maintained front gardens, the grass shines in rich green from regular watering. Only the uninhabited hills in the distance are greyish-brown because it hasn't rained for months. Her neighbourhood is a bit reminiscent of the series "Desperate Housewives". But Xiaohong is a kind-hearted person. And an example that the remote diagnosis of German political satire programmes – Democrats good and Republicans bad – is too simplistic. So she tells me that when she (also from China) came to the USA, she was warmly integrated in her first job and all her colleagues voted Republican. Later she moved to the liberal West Coast with the same experience, only all her colleagues were supporters of the Democrats. Another example would of course be the former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has advocated avoiding lengthy showers and replacing watered lawns in front gardens with artificial grass, cacti and stones. And recently lent his private electric car to activist Greta Thunberg for her USA trip.
Back once more to the house concert at the Goddards', because at the end the (rather conservative) audience surprised us with something: In conversation with retiree Hindi Greenberg, it turns out that she not only knows Würzburg but actually lived there for two years a long time ago! She tells me that she came to Germany in her early twenties and worked for the US Army, around 1960. For her, Hubland North was still an American military base, whilst everything else of the Hubland Campus didn't exist yet. She worked as a kind of contact person for the soldiers. "My job was to watch out for the boys." As a Jew, she had great fear of going to Germany before her posting, but came to appreciate the country over time. When asked what she thinks of Trump, she whispers to me: "I hate this man!" Then louder: "People who deny global warming are confirmed by him. There is no consent in reducing carbon dioxide. I really hope he won't be reelected." A hope that she probably shares with everyone who wishes for the USA to take a leading role in climate policy.
Andreas Jäger