But the climate crisis has more subtle and insidious effects, ones that tend to impact less industrialized countries, poor people, and people of color more acutely than anyone else. and Western Canada in the forms of mass die-offs, unprecedented conflagrations, and struggling farmers, and in Europe in the form of deadly flooding. into a tinderbox is forcing ranchers to shrink the size of their herds because there isn’t enough quality pasture land for animals to graze.Īdd to the mix the wildfires destroying vineyards in Napa Valley, cherries in Oregon cooked on the branch by (yet again) record breaking temperatures, a new-ish cycle of droughts and floods affecting broad stretches of farmland in the Midwest, among other disasters, and it’s clear that climate change isn’t some terrifying eventuality for future generations to deal with - it’s happening right now, and it will continue to happen without extreme intervention, including big changes to the global food system (for example, cutting way back on meat and dairy production) to cut greenhouse gas emissions.Īt the moment, climate disaster is most visible in the U.S. And the same drought that transformed the Western U.S. In Oregon, the Bootleg Fire, which has been burning since July 6, is in the process of incinerating 300,000 acres. #Heat marine wildlife masse seriesHundreds of thousands of acres in California are currently on fire, due to the confluence of an extremely dry winter and spring and a series of heatwaves. This year, there’s just not enough water left to keep the salmon cool, and instead they might all die.Īs the Chinook salmon swims toward the point of no return in northern California, much of the wildfire prone state is up in flames. Bureau of Reclamation would release water from Shasta Lake in order to keep the waters of the Sacramento cool enough for the young fish, but historic droughts in the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta have necessitated that large amounts of water be released to farmers instead. Chinook salmon are not able to survive in water temperatures above 56 degrees Fahrenheit. In California, the record high temperatures could result in the death of all juvenile Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River, nudging the endangered fish to the brink of extinction. If you want to see what climate disaster looks like in real time - the fires, the mass die-offs, the pathogens, the effect on our food system ( and our food system’s effect on it) and your plate - you don’t have to look any further than the Western U.S. Vibrio is naturally occurring in salt water environs, but it thrives at warm temperatures, and the low tides, combined with scorching hot days, created the perfect conditions for the bacteria to grow. According to Washington state’s department of public health, the state is experiencing an historic outbreak of vibriosis, which is caused by eating raw or undercooked shellfish and causes diarrhea, abdominal cramps, vomiting, headaches, and a host of other unpleasant symptoms. Where the heat wave didn’t kill oysters, it made the people who ate them sick. Oysters take anywhere from 12 to 18 months to reach maturity, so the die-offs will affect the business of oyster farmers - and what restaurants are able to offer diners - for years to come. One Washington state-based shellfish farmer told the Tacoma News Tribune that they lost 50,000 oysters and 10,000 clams, a quarter of their total stock, worth about $60,000 at market. According to researchers at the University of British Columbia, more than 1 billion marine animals died in the waters of the Salish Sea during the record-breaking heat wave. It wasn’t just mussels that died off en masse in the region: From the Puget Sound to Vancouver Island, countless other bivalves, including oysters and clams, and other assorted ocean dwellers boiled to death amidst the extreme heat. But those evolutionary tools, developed over literally millions of years, were no match for temperatures that climbed as high as 121 degrees Fahrenheit in British Columbia and coincided with low tides, leaving the mussels exceptionally exposed. What makes this bizarre and depressing moment even more difficult to grapple with is the fact that mussels have evolved to withstand high temperatures - they hold water inside their shells to prevent from drying out, and live in beds, or clusters, which ordinarily help to protect the collective against the heat. It is one of the most searing images yet of the ongoing climate crisis. The Canadian city’s beaches transformed into mass gravesites for the bivalves, their shells forced open by the extreme temperatures, innards dried out or picked over by hungry scavengers. Tens of thousands of dead mussels lay along the coastline in Vancouver, British Columbia, boiled alive by the extreme heat wave that swept across the Pacific Northwest late last month.
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