Leaders and researchers look to address the cause and effects of climate change
This article was originally published by Aspen Public Radio, and is the first of a four-part series.
Eric Ringsby’s family goes back generations in the Roaring Fork Valley, with deep ranching roots.
And back in high school, he studied his surroundings under Castle Creek Valley icon Stuart Mace, a stalwart protector of the natural world and founding trustee of the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES).
“Before, ... I just loved being in nature, but I think with Stuart Mace I became aware of real environmental issues and the impacts of people on wildlife,” Ringsby said during a walk around ACES' Hallam Lake site this spring.
Ringsby’s an artist, and also an environmentalist who now helps raise funds for the Aspen-based Global Warming Mitigation Project. Several decades after that formative experience with Stuart Mace, Ringsby says the work to protect the environment feels more urgent than it used to.
“I feel that every year, there are more problems with fire, more problems with flooding, more problems with mudslides, more problems with drought,” Ringsby said. “And all of these problems are becoming more frequent. … A new reality is coming every day.”
It’s not just a feeling, either.
The latest Pitkin County Hazard Mitigation Plan factors climate change into all kinds of disasters that threaten the region.
Informed by reports from the Aspen Global Change Institute, the U.S. Global Change Research Program and other climate models, the plan says warmer weather could exacerbate the risks of flooding, dam failures, landslides, avalanches and ice jam releases.
Drought could become more frequent, severe and longer lasting, creating even drier conditions in a county that has already been in some level of drought 63% of the time between 2000 and 2022. The plan says climate change could also lead to more vigorous thunderstorms, and more lightning.
And in the warming climate of the Roaring Fork Valley, those factors could exacerbate wildfires where conditions are already risky, and where the landscape shows the impacts from the 2018 Lake Christine Fire in Basalt and the 2020 Grizzly Creek Fire in Glenwood Canyon.
“We're in increasingly precarious times,” said Tim Karfs, a climate and sustainability programs administrator for the city of Aspen.
Karfs helped present the climate component of the hazard mitigation plan to local stakeholders. And he says the impacts on snowpack, or average temperatures, for instance, are local symptoms of the bigger changes forecasted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC.
“The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report really told us that we're at a crossroads,” Karfs said. “There is a path forward for this resilient future that we're trying to create, but we really need to act now.”
The IPCC says temperatures are warming on a global scale, and human activities that produce greenhouse gas emissions are “unequivocally” the cause.
So, for Karfs and the city’s sustainability manager Tessa Schreiner, “acting now” means a couple of things.
“Adaptation is of course adjusting to the realities of a changing climate that are happening now and will continue to happen in the future,” Shreiner said. “And then how can we adjust to that, adapt to that and also reduce our emissions to mitigate intense climate change in years to come?”
On one hand, you might have a hazard mitigation plan, which lists dozens of different projects to respond to hazards like floods and wildfires. And on the other, you might have something like the Aspen Sustainability Action Plan to reduce the city’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Elise Osenga, the community science manager at the Aspen Global Change Institute, sees both sides of the coin too.
“If we are dealing with what they call a high-emissions scenario, where we don't change our behavior at all, there's going to be a lot more that you have to adapt to, and a lot more intensity to what you have to adapt to, than if you start making changes now,” Osenga said.
“That being said, the climate has already begun to change, we are already seeing warming, and so adaptation is also going to be important, particularly if you want to have a community that takes care of all of its members,” she added. “You can't just ignore what's already changing.”
Online, interactive maps from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Geological Survey and other partners show just how much emissions impact intensity.
Fiddle with a few variables and you can see the cool blues of average temperatures past turning to warmer yellows, oranges and reds in the present and future — with higher emissions translating to more severe changes in the landscape. That has implications for pretty much everything.
“It's easy sometimes to forget how closely our lives are tied to the surrounding landscape, but the answer is they are tied in, you know, from [the] air we breathe, if it's pure or not, to the water that comes out of your tap,” Osenga said.
Osenga also helped present that Hazard Mitigation Plan, providing scientific insight on a policy issue.
The Global Change Institute is a research institute, so they’re looking at data to help other people make informed decisions.
“When you're looking at something like climate, where you have such variation from year to year, sometimes it can be hard to see the overall direction things are heading in,” Osenga said. “And so having long-term research is absolutely essential, both to thinking about what are the actions we take to prevent additional climate change, because it can be a motivator. … and it also helps us think about, how do we adapt?”
Research indicates the climate is changing everywhere, which is why Osenga and other climate-minded people see a lot of opportunity in collaboration between communities.
Karfs, from the city, is an optimist on that front.
“The fact that we have so many great communities’ successes to draw from right now shows that we are doing a lot and we have a lot of opportunity to do more,” Karfs said. “But if we don't act now, we will have less options down the line.”
Ringsby is hopeful too, based on real-world examples of progress in climate action.
His work with the Global Warming Mitigation Project helps support the $50,000 Keeling Curve Prize to help advance innovation that mitigates human impacts on climate change. And he sees, perhaps more than the average person, the possibility that those innovations hold.
“I'm afraid the frequent storms and problems with fires and things of that nature, those things are not really going to go away,” Ringsby said. “However, I do feel, with positive solutions, we can mitigate the problem and keep it so it's more manageable, rather than have it completely take over and completely ruin our lives.”
It won’t be easy, he says, but it will be worth it.
In a new, four-part series called “Adaptation,” Aspen Public Radio is looking at the impacts of human-caused climate change in the Roaring Fork Valley and the community members dedicating their lives to mitigating the impacts. Stories will be released daily, July 4 through July 7, on Aspen Public Radio and aspenpublicradio.org.
“Adaptation: Responding to Climate Change in the Roaring Fork Valley” is supported by a grant from the Aspen Skiing Company’s Environment Foundation.