Signs of ancient life are scattered across the mesas above the Chama River as it winds along highway 84 in northern New Mexico. The ground here is strewn with pieces of black and white pottery, and bumps and divots in the soil reveal the lines of stone rooms and walls.
Rambling across these archaeological sites, it's not difficult to imagine the lives of those who lived here, crouching next to fires smelling of juniper and piñon, eating the plants they harvested, animals they hunted. The river's waters are too far away to hear. But the Chama runs nearby, offering life in the desert.
In the quiet that follows twilight, it's even possible to conceive how many things have remained the same since these sites were occupied centuries ago. Farmers still rely on the consistency of the seasons to plant and harvest crops; settlements still spring where waters remain nearby. Even the smell of piñon smoke rises from a campfire below the lip of the mesa.
Despite all the changes that conquest, modernization and urbanization have wrought, much has really remained the same-at least until recently. Few people on the planet are unaware of climate change-reducing one's carbon footprint has practically become a fashion statement. But behind the headlines and slogans, scientists are tracking the impacts global warming is already having-and projecting what is yet to come.
At the global level, the effects of climate change are becoming more and more apparent: During the 20th century, sea levels rose approximately six inches. Arctic sea ice is melting. Hurricanes have changed both in frequency and strength and, following the dramatic Midwestern flooding this summer, Reuters reported such floods will become increasingly common in that region. Glaciers worldwide are retreating and growing seasons are lengthening at the same time that water supplies in many regions are tightening. And in July, the San Francisco Chronicle declared the warming western United States as "ground zero" for wildfires.
Here in New Mexico, state officials are devising plans to cut the amount of greenhouse gas emissions New Mexicans contribute to the atmosphere, scientists are saying water resources must be managed differently and activists are urging the fossil fuel industry to change the way it does business.
"A lot of people are concerned about sea level rise in coastal areas, which is obviously a very serious and legitimate concern, but I think that the kinds of problems we're projecting here in New Mexico, in some ways are worse-and they are going to hit us faster," Jim Norton, director of the Environment Protection Division within the New Mexico Environment Department, says.
Norton points to scientists' projections that the southwestern United States will experience longer droughts. Longer droughts, combined with hotter temperatures, will cause greater evaporation-from soils and reservoirs-so the effects of the droughts will also be more severe. "You can argue," he says, "that we're going to get hit harder and faster than the coastal areas that get so much attention."
Hotter temperatures are already occurring in New Mexico, he says, and scientists have been predicting the likelihood of more extreme weather events. "Well, we've certainly seen that here in New Mexico in the last five years: droughts and floods," Norton says, adding that scientists warning of climate change have indeed been correct. "It's not anymore just a future worry," he says, "It's an issue that's right here in front of us."
Indeed, the effects of climate change are already visible in New Mexico: One need look no further than Santa Fe or the nearby Sangre de Cristo or Jemez Mountains to see evidence of a massive dieoff of piñon trees.
Between 2002 and 2004, millions of acres of piñon trees in the Four Corners region died. The trees, already weakened by severe drought, fell prey to an explosion in the population of bark beetles, encouraged by the warmer temperatures.
The drought and the bark beetle outbreak fall in line with some of the projections the state's Climate Change Advisory Group makes about how climate change will hit New Mexico (see box, page 20).
Around the same time the advisory group was established, Gov. Bill Richardson declared New Mexico would steadily reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2012, 10 percent below 2000 levels by 2020 and 75 percent below 2000 levels by 2050.
Right now, the state's Climate Change Implementation Team is making progress on more than 40 of the original 69 recommendations from the advisory group, according to Sandra Ely, environment and energy policy coordinator for the New Mexico Environment Department.
For example, New Mexico now requires polluting industries to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The state also adopted a "clear car standard" to enforce higher fuel economy standards for vehicles. (Although that rule is supposed to take effect in 2011, a number of lawsuits have been filed against the state, including from car dealerships. The US Environmental Protection Agency denied New Mexico and 12 other states the right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.)
What both Ely and Jim Norton seem most excited about, however, is the Western Climate Initiative. The organization was formed in 2007 in the absence of federal leadership on climate change; it has set regional goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and is exploring how market-based programs, such as cap and trade, might achieve those reduction goals. Cap-and-trade programs set limits on emissions. Then, polluting industries either cut their emissions accordingly or trade credits from "cleaner" companies at a market-based price.
"Cap-and-trade programs have worked for other pollutants, like sulfur dioxide-the Acid Rain program was very successful-and that's the basis for the Kyoto Protocol as well," Norton says. He adds that the WCI has set an emission reduction goal of 15 percent below 2005 levels for all its members. In September, he says, the final document will be released, and implementation of the program will begin soon after that.
"The program is not voluntary, it's mandatory," Ely says. "So, it's not just a good idea [to cut your company's emissions], it's required by law. And there will be enforcement mechanisms around this. [Companies] are obligated to comply, and if they don't, they'll have to pay the consequences."
Over the course of the past few decades-while an industry-funded public affairs campaign worked to stir up doubts over the issue of human-caused climate change-climate scientists and ecologists have continued amassing more and more data concerning the planet's future.
By their very nature, scientists are pretty low-key folks; communicating accurately about their data means speaking in terms of probabilities, likelihoods and trends. And it's precisely that commitment to their data that has allowed the public-and particularly, the media-to avoid taking climate change seriously.
But now, some scientists also speak of climate change as a moral issue. They are not only discussing their data, but also speaking of the urgent need for action.
The most outspoken scientist on the issue is probably NASA climate scientist James Hansen. In 1988, Hansen testified to Congress that the earth was warmer than at any other time in recorded history. Scientists could ascribe a cause and effect relationship between the planet's rise and temperatures and the greenhouse effect, he said, and computer simulations showed that global warming was already affecting the probability of events such as summer heat waves.
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