Season 4, Episode 1: Jonathan Overpeck: Aridification and a Drier Future for the Mississippi River Basin
Jonathan Overpeck
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In this episode, John Sabo speaks with Jonathan Overpeck, a renowned climate scientist and Dean for the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Peck discusses his role in defining critical climate change terms such as “tipping point” and “mega-drought, how climate change is exacerbating drought conditions in the Western U.S. and spreading aridification across the Midwest, and strategies for adaptation, including changes in agricultural practices and the management of water resources.
“The aridification is spreading through North America… certainly the West out to the Mississippi River and probably a little further east than that.”
Key Topics
Megadroughts and Climate Change: Overpeck explains the historical context and modern drivers behind megadroughts, focusing on how temperature increases are accelerating aridification across North America.
The Role of Temperature: A detailed discussion on how warming contributes to reduced water availability, with studies showing that temperature increases are responsible for up to half of the observed megadrought conditions in the Colorado River basin.
Adaptation through Science: Innovative approaches to climate adaptation are discussed, including changing crop types and planting practices to cope with drier conditions, as well as the critical role of groundwater banking and improved water management.
Justice and Equity in Adaptation: Overpeck emphasizes the need to include marginalized communities in climate adaptation efforts, ensuring that solutions are just and equitable.
Links to Relevant Studies and Resources:
Jonathan Overpeck’s bio and research: University of Michigan - Jonathan Overpeck
Megadroughts in North America: Read more from Overpeck on megadroughts and climate change
Aridification of the Western U.S.: Read his commentary on climate change and the aridification of North America.
Colorado River Flow Decline: Research showing that temperature increases are responsible for significant reductions in Colorado River flow: Read more about declining Colorado River flows
Read more from the EPA on Climate and Equity
Listen to the Audacious Water episode John references with John Fleck from the University of New Mexico: Season 1, Episode 3: Busting Water Myths & Apocalyptic Water Narratives
Further Reading:
Explore Overpeck’s work on water management and climate adaptation: Research Publications on Google Scholar
“Temperature warming has been dramatic in the upper basin of the Colorado… and that seems to be explaining about half of the megadrought.”
Transcript
START (AUDACIOUS WATER EPISODE 1, SEASON 4)
[MUSIC]
JOHN SABO: Welcome to Audacious Water, the podcast about how to create a world of water abundance for everyone. I'm John Sabo, Director of the ByWater Institute at Tulane University. On today's show, the first transformation: the deserts in the west are moving eastward. Everything is getting drier and we're focused on what that means for the Mississippi River basin, especially agriculture. My guest is Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist and the Samuel A. Graham Dean of the School of the Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan. Coming up we'll talk about the worsening drought in the Southwest, how rising temperatures are affecting water availability, and what it means for the future of agriculture and urban planning. Peck, welcome to the show.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Hey, it's great to be here, John, thanks.
JOHN SABO: Let's start with an easy one. Tell me about "Peck," about your name. Who do you credit with that nickname and when did it start? And I'll give you some background on why I like this question.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Well, I don't know really when it started but it's a family name, since my last name is "Overpeck." There's been one "Peck" in every other generation. So my grandfather was "Peck," and I don't know if there was another "Peck" before him. But when I was a little kid everyone called me "Peck" - started calling me "Peck" except my grandma, who was married to the original "Peck." [LAUGHTER]
JOHN SABO: I got it. Yeah, I’m the fourth John on my dad's side, and my mom calls me "Johnny." That's how they tell the two apart. But most people call me "Sabo," to be honest with you, so I get "Peck." It was interesting that it skips a generation. Well, cool. Well, to start with I wonder what it's like to be credited with being part of the studies that define the terms "tipping point" and "megadrought." Those are both in the common lexicon now. Obviously there are others now. Tell me about that.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Yeah, I didn't really know who defined them originally; I probably cited some original papers way back when. But certainly I've been heavily involved a long time in popularizing and bringing public attention, and scientific attention, to these two concepts. And people often say things about, you know, "You're one of the first to start talking about megadrought," and it was really Connie Woodhouse, who was a post-doc of mine when I was at the University of Colorado, and she's the one who got me into thinking about megadrought as I tried to learn the climate of the West, which is megadrought country. And a megadrought is just a drought that's unusually long, in North America two or more decades. We call it "multi-decadal droughts," another fancy word for that. But, you know, the drought that's going on there now, the first time we've seen a megadrought in North America since Europeans came to North America started in '99 and has been going on to the present day. So we're getting a pretty good taste of it. And that's when we coined another term, or adopted another term, which was "aridification." It's really becoming clear that it's not just a drought like our grandparents would've experienced, where you just wait for it to end. In this case it's an aggressive drying out of the West, and particularly the Southwest, due to human-caused climate change.
JOHN SABO: Super important topic, and I hope we come back to it later in the interview, especially with reference to the Midwest, which I think is seeing some of that as well. Before we go there, just wanted to say these aren't really happy ideas. How do you communicate that in a way that gets people interested?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Well, you know, climate change has been politicized in the United States I think by a very sophisticated efforts by some of the incumbent industries, such as oil and gas and coal. We don't want to change their business, even though they're causing these global catastrophes. So I think it's often really helpful to talk about what people can relate to on the street, and drought is one of those things. People know a drought, feel a drought, understand a drought when it happens, and it gives you a way to build a common bond around talking about something that is really important to talk about. So I think talking - it's not a happy thought, but it's a very part-of-life thought that a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum are able to talk about and discuss. Because it really affects livelihoods and lives.
JOHN SABO: Yes, of course. And just to make a link back to really early podcasts, really early episode of this podcast, had a great chat with John Fleck, who you may know from the University of New Mexico, journalist from Albuquerque, and he calls this "if it bleeds, it leads." We had a great discussion about the press and how newspaper articles make it past an editor to begin with, one. And two, the conversation we had was really about how do we move from communicating a disaster, which we're seeing, to solutions? And is there a place in the press for that? And, you know, the resounding answer was, well, the way that newspapers are driven is by crisis. So probably not in the newspaper. What do you think about solutions, especially from your new vantage point, and how we can communicate that part?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Well, you know, I think it's a great way to talk about crises like climate change is to start talking about what are the particular impacts as they affect normal people? And it depends on who you're talking to, but out West one group that I worked a lot with that were - tended on the conservative side, were ranchers. And in New Mexico in particular, but Arizona as well. And they were pretty sure when I was talking to them about El Niño and how you could predict what's going to happen to the rainfall the next winter. Very valuable information if you have to decide how to stock, and de-stock, and manage your land. They highlighted that, "Hey, precipitation is going down, isn't it? It's getting drier." And, you know, these were ranchers who didn't have meteorological stations yet on their ranch; a lot of them do now. And we looked at the data, thought that was an interesting observation. My father-in-law had a lot of cattle and I noted that he often knew more about the environment than I did as a climate scientist. So we looked at the data and we found out, lo and behold, precipitation wasn't going down. What was happening instead is it was getting warmer. And because it was getting warmer it was manifesting, as far as the ranchers were concerned, is drier range--you know, dried-up vegetation, not enough food for the cattle, things like that. So we showed them that, you know, and it's an ah-ha moment. Basically we're respecting their views, their data, and building a bond of trust through investigating something on their land. And in the end, you know, we're talking about climate change. We're talking about solutions for climate change. It's a much more wide-open conversation where the politics have sort of faded. And it's about science, it's about, you know, managing cattle, and making a living.
JOHN SABO: That's super interesting, and interesting that you got to kind of walk through the scientific process with those stakeholders on terms that make sense to them. I think that is important in our field, for sure.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Absolutely.
JOHN SABO: So most of your career was in the West. We're talking about West right now. Spent a lot of time at U of A, at CU Boulder working on western water, western climate. Tell me about what we can take from, you know, lessons that folks have learned in the west and apply it to the Mississippi River basin, where if we look at that basin, you know, over half of it is in the western U.S. How can we - one, what are some of the similarities in terms of climate processes that are happening, and two, what do you think we can learn from the West, who's been dealing with aridification and megadroughts for much longer?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Yeah, I think, you know, the West is certainly a harbinger for much of the United States, particularly the Great Plains out here to the Midwest. So it helps to sort of go and look and see exactly what's happening in the West and how that's unfolded. Because it's a harbinger the situation has gotten a lot worse and more easy to see and feel. One of the things that we, early on, started to realize is that the flows of the Colorado weren't staying as high as they were back in the 20th Century. And so there was a lot of sort of a scientific scramble to figure out what's going on and what it means for the future. A lot of papers were written. All those papers in the scientific literature were saying, "Flows are going down, and they're going to continue to go down." But there was a lot of disagreement in how much they would go down. Some papers I remember were, like, "It'll decline by 1% of flows." And other papers were, "It's much more than that, 30% or 40%." So a group - what we did is we got a whole pile of scientists. You know, we like to compete and argue and everything; it's part of science.
JOHN SABO: For sure.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: But in this case we all came together and said, "Let's figure out what's the real story here?" And we all came at it with different tools, different models, different observations, different ideas. "Let's discuss all of this." And we got some funding from I think NOAA, and we used that money to find a consensus, you know, to really figure out what's something we all feel more confident in? And when we did that one of the things that popped out that was really interesting--it was the same time I was talking to those ranchers basically--is that temperature, warming, has been dramatic in the upper basin of the Colorado, the headwaters where all the water comes from. And that seems to be explaining about half of the megadrought. You know, because we fast-forward while we're doing this--the Colorado flows have gone down 20%. And about half of that we concluded, or more, is due to the temperature alone, its effect on snow, its effect on evapotranspiration, or the transfer of water out of the soil and vegetation in the atmosphere, which goes up as climate goes warms because the atmosphere can hold more moisture in a very predictable way. And so we wrote some papers. One was written by a post-doc--one of my colleagues up the University - then at Washington, Dennis Lettenmaier, and her name was Julie Vano--that really summarized all the work that had been done up to that point and came to this consensus. And then Brad Udall and I took that, because all the managers of the water were, like, "What does this mean for the future?" [LAUGHTER] And so we took the state-of-the-art climate models and we used that understanding that we as a community came up with to predict that the flows will continue to go down as long as we continue to warm the planet, and that means as long as we put up greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Because we know that as long as we do that it will keep warming. We know that with certainty basically. And that was a big moment that - to realize that it isn't just precipitation change that can have a big hydrologic impact or a big impact on vegetation and wildfire, it's temperature. And of course fast-forward to now we understand that temperatures are still the - in my mind, the dominant reason why we're drying things out. But we're also getting a shift in precipitation further northward and that's also contributing to the megadrought and to the drying of the West. And the other thing that's going on throughout this whole period is going back to, you know, even earlier in my career when we were talking about megadrought with Connie Woodhouse, and we were thinking about what do we know and what don't we know? We now know much more and we know that it is solidly in megadrought country. So when you have a drought with this dependence of sort of the drying (on) temperature, means that even if precipitation goes up, which it's not, but even if it did during a drought or a megadrought, one lasting decades, you'd feel the full effect of the temperature, and it'd be devastating.
JOHN SABO: And that's super interesting. I love that history, too. What does that mean for states a little bit further east, those that are kind of at the headwaters of the Mississippi? So, like, you know, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota? Can you put megadrought in that context?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Sure. If you look at the megadrought that we've had since 1999, every year is different. Some years are not all that dry; some years are really dry. Right now we're kind of in an intermediate state of dryness. But what's interesting is the megadrought, which we kind of were focused on the Southwest as sort of the locus of it, or the bullseye, at times it went deep into Mexico and up into Canada. And right now it's in Mexico all the way into Canada, and it's spreading all the way across the United States to the Appalachian Mountains.
JOHN SABO: Whoa.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: That entire region is in drought right now. And the question is, what does that mean? What does it mean about the future? And I think it's safe to say that, you know, we've had a lot of warming now, and warming is contributing to the drought all the way across the United States now. And that means certainly in the High Plains, or Great Plains of the United States, the breadbasket states of the United States, that is another one of these areas that is (aridifying), it's drying out. And so we'll see a gradual drying in terms of average conditions, but just like the Southwest superimposed on that, we'll see some exceptionally dry droughts. And they'll become more frequent, more severe when they occur, because it's warmer, and longer because it's warmer. So I think it's very common-sense to say that's what happening is the aridification is spreading through North America. And we even wrote a paper about that several years ago, that the whole continent is (aridifying). And of course that doesn't mean everywhere. But certainly the West out to the Mississippi River, and probably a little further east than that, seems to be (aridifying). And out west it's a winter kind of phenomenon, when the snow falls, that's when we're really losing a lot of the water in the atmosphere, when that melts in the spring. I thin kin the Midwest it's more of a summer phenomenon. It really appears to be - summer is when it's hottest and when it's really drying things out. And the only other thing I want to mention that I think is really interesting--and I was thinking about this when I got ready for this podcast with you--is that like the Southwest, the Great Plains of North America, (you're in) megadrought country. And you know how you know that--a few people have written about this, scientists and probably some popular press--a lot of people who live out in the Great Plains know you dig into that soil under your farm, what do you find? You find sand. And it turns out from Texas all the way north through Nebraska there's an amazing array of these gigantic sand dunes. And we're pretty sure that these sand dunes were active, probably multiple times, in the last couple-thousand years. So literally the Great Plains, breadbasket of the United States of America, has at times been more or less a desert.
JOHN SABO: Whoa, that's impressive to think about. I mean, I know exactly those habitats that you're talking about from my background as an ecologist and thinking about birds and endangered birds in Nebraska, for example. Let's shift gears to adaptation to that. You and I have both spent significant time in Arizona, and an adaptation strategy in Arizona is to put water underground - surface water underground for later, right? It's to manage surface and groundwater supplies conjunctively, together. What do you think the strategy should be in the Midwest for this, I guess is the question I want to ask?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the groundwater situation. Because what happens when people run out of surface water? That's happening in parts of the Southwest now, it's happening on the Great Plains. Parts of western Kansas, for example, can no longer irrigate, and you can't grow crops without irrigation in these places. And you can't irrigate now because you've pumped all the water out of the ground. So we do know in Arizona, you're right, we tend to store water underground when we can. Increasingly people need that water, and they don't want to bank it, but when we can bank it--and there'll be times when the climate is wetter--we should bank it. And it doesn't need to go in a big reservoir. You don't have one handy you, can put it underground. But the problem on the High Plains is that we're now depleting the aquifers. There's some places still, like up in the Sandhills of Nebraska, where the water - you know, it's still - you've got springs that are still seeping out under the farm or natural area where all the birds are. But for the most part we're draining our aquifers. So what else can we do to adapt? It's a toughie, but you've got to change what you're trying to grow and how you grow it. And agriculture is a big enterprise, and of course a very important one because we need the food, and we really want to cherish the farmers who do that. But they do have to start adapting. And we have to help them through science come up with better solutions for what they can grow and still make money. And as you've probably seen when you drive out on the Great Plains now, a lot of farms are also farming renewable energy [LAUGHTER]--putting up wind turbines and solar, agrivoltaics. It's a great way to sort of hedge and have an alternate source of income. But at the same time, by changing your crop, and when you plant early in the year, for example, and harvest earlier in the year, for example, you know, you can sort of still continue to make money on your farming.
JOHN SABO: That's a super-cool example, I like it a lot. It reminds me, like, I haven't seen that in Arizona--and maybe you have examples--but in California for sure I know one farmer in particular personally who swapped out his crops for solar when solar was selling at a reasonable rate, and also trades his water. So, you know, there's some fungibility in the West between the water, the electrons, and the food. I wonder how that would pan out in the Midwest. I think it's a super-interesting idea. I was thinking one step behind, which is could they bank water? Do you think in wet years, you know, farmers in Iowa could dedicate 10% of their field to recharge or something like that?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Yeah, they're going to have to figure that out. And I think, you know, being a farmer probably is better than an academic to figure that one out. Because you do have to balance sort of what you can make now versus what you can make later by saving your water. One of the things we don't do well in this country, and certainly down in Arizona - don't do it because of the conservative politics, is we don't really keep track of how much water's underground. And if we're going to start using water more wisely we really need to monitor things very carefully. And it's not just how much water's down there, it's how accessible and what quality the water is. Because some water, if you're down deep in some of these aquifers it's getting pretty nasty in terms of minerals, and saltiness, and salinity, and things like that. But also, if you go to Iowa, for example - I was born in Iowa, so I pay attention. But a bunch of farms are having trouble because they're putting so much nitrogen and fertilizer on their land, and it's getting down into their groundwater and making it hard to drink safely. So it's both a water-quality and quantity-management challenge that is central to adapting to climate change.
JOHN SABO: Very cool.
[MUSIC]
JOHN SABO: Up next, Peck and I explore why some areas are seeing more extreme summer droughts, and how we go about mitigating climate change in a just and equitable way.
JOHN SABO: I want to ask you a question about - I mean, you've talked already about sort of the interaction between trends and precipitation, and trends and heat in temperature, and how that combines to magnify draught and create megadrought. What are some other intersections? I'm particularly interested in kind of the highs and lows of precipitation in the context of the Midwest. What are you seeing? What do you think are the major challenges there?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that makes temperature really - and our understanding of the effects of temperature really powerful is that, as I said before, as long as we continue to put greenhouse gases into the atmosphere it'll get warmer and warmer. We have great confidence in that. When you compare that to precipitation or our ability to predict what's going to happen the uncertainty gets larger. And it appears now, though, the best understanding is that in the cool months, particularly in winter and spring, the upper Midwest especially, but most of the Midwest is getting wetter, and even parts of the West where it's still in serious drought. And then in summer it gets really warm, and that overwhelms the soil and the vegetation and you end up with more drought-like conditions. So it looks like in the Great Plains, in the Midwest, that's the story. As things get warmer the summer dry spell, or I guess you can call it the "summer drought"--sometimes you call it "flash drought" if it's really bad--will get worse, and more frequent, and just more severe when it occurs, and then during the winter hopefully will continue to get more abundant moisture. So that would give you moisture to bank, if managed well. The other thing to realize in the Midwest though and the Mississippi is that some of the water that's in those rivers that are way over, you know, in the middle of the country, some of that water comes from the mountains of the West. You know, think of the headwaters of the Missouri out near Yellowstone National Park, for example. That's drought country. It's been in bad drought now for a long time, just like the Southwest. So you've got to have an eye out for what's going on, you know, thousands of miles away if you want to manage your water supply well in the Midwest. And, you know, you're also getting water from further east. But, like, right now, you know, go to West Virginia is having a really bad drought. You know, the Ohio River and some of the other rivers that are draining into the Mississippi aren't doing too well from that direction either. So there's a little more uncertainty with precipitation and what the net effect will be in the High Plains. And it definitely seems to be drying out. Some people say it's becoming more desert-like. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but it's becoming (aridified) for sure. And "aridification" is one of those words that doesn't really have a pinheaded scientific definition. It's more like, if it looks drier, if it feels drier, it is drier kind of feeling, you know? And farmers know it when they see it faster than scientists. And it is getting that way. And that's why even in Michigan, with 20% of the global unfrozen surface freshwater in the Great Lakes, even in Michigan farmers are putting in irrigation now. Because that summer dry spell is getting nasty.
JOHN SABO: What's interesting to me about what you're saying is that there's a seasonal cycle that's going to get exacerbated by the combination of increased precipitation in the cool season and increased heat in the dry season that's going to kind of spread the range out every year, and that that's a challenge but also potentially an opportunity for banking I think is what you said earlier. But I have a questions about that. That's super important to point out. What do you think the interannual piece looks like? Like, that's where the variability is. Does that cancel that, or does it exacerbate it?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: It complicates it.
JOHN SABO: Yeah.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: You know, so we have these trends that are caused by human-caused global warming, by burning of fossil fuels mainly. And then superimposed on those trends we have what we used to call "natural variability," and we usually - scientists call it "natural variability." But it's the (inaudible) variations that are not really well-explained except by some phenomenon that's, like, you know, El Niños and things like that, what's going on out in the Pacific. What's interesting about the interannual variability is that sometimes it's going to reinforce a climate-change trend, and other times it's going to cancel it out. But we're also getting more extreme precipitation. So when we get the rainfall, when you're able to squeeze some moisture out of the atmosphere, a warmer atmosphere that has more moisture in it, you get more rain per house. And that's not all that good either, you know? So in Michigan, and I think other places across the Midwest, your farms are getting too wet in the spring because the precipitation on average has gone up a little. And then when it does rain in these early-season storms it's really waterlogging things and you can't get the tractor out there. Now you're getting bogged down, and you certainly can't plant things in that muck. So, you know, it's not all good to have more moisture if it's just too much, too fast. And that's something we're seeing the world over in terms of precipitation now. And then it's just the lack of predictability. And, you know, predictability is one of the greatest things that humans have figured out in the climate space, being able to tell farmers, and water-managers, and everyone else, you know, when's it going to rain? No, like, day-to-day, week-to-week, but season-to-season. It's getting harder because climate change is affecting precipitation in ways we don't fully understand yet. But I think we're starting to see for sure just drier summers and wetter cool season. And you know that the - everyone who's listening knows that this is affecting snow. And if you like snow you're not going to like what's going on here. But, you know, there's a lot of implications for snow, too, because that's a natural reservoir for water, whether you're in the Rocky Mountains or you're out on the High Plains. And that natural reservoir that sort of keeps the water around longer in the warmer, drier months, that's also going away as things warm up.
JOHN SABO: Yeah, I like the answer that it "complicates" it. And I think this perspective on sort of timing of rainfall, and intensity of rainfall, and how that connections to timing of key economic activities, like planting a crop, I think is an important upshot of this part of the conversation. Okay, kind of going to turn again and take us home to the finish line, if you will. So what are you working on right now that gives you hope?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Well, one reason I took this crazy job as a dean--never thought I'd be a dean--but I really enjoy working here at the University of Michigan; I have fantastic colleagues. And we're not just focused on trying to describe the problem and how bad it is. Of course we have to understand that, but the reason we have to understand it is to try and solve it. And that's what's really exciting about what we're doing at the University of Michigan is trying to figure out how to halt climate change and do it in a way that is just, so that everyone benefits--everyone in rural America, everyone in, you know, urban, and everyone in between. And it's really important to do that, but we also have to learn to adapt and become more resilient to the change we cannot halt. And I want to leave your listeners realizing that adaptation alone is essential, we need it, but alone it'll be overwhelmed by the climate change itself. It will be so bad that adapting will be difficult in many cases. For example, take New Orleans. You know, we project a meter or two--that's up to six feet--of sea-level rise by the end of the century. And the sea-level change will not stop at the end of the century magically; it will continue to go up. It's already that fastest sea-level rise on any of our coasts in America. And that could mean literally the end of New Orleans. Could be the end of a lot of our coastal cities. Could mean a lot fewer political - or congressional districts in Florida, because we're melting the great ice sheets of this planet, the polar ice sheets. That's one of these tipping points we started talking about at the very beginning, that we could be crossing a threshold already where these ice sheets will take centuries to melt, but they're going to melt a lot more than just a couple meters of sea-level equivalent.
JOHN SABO: Right, I think the AR6 Report says even if we don't overshoot 2040, even if we don't do that there'll still be sea-level rise I think for 1000 years. I think that was the projection with moderate certainty.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Yeah, even more, couple-thousand, yeah.
JOHN SABO: Right, yep. So talk to me more about the just part of adaptation. You have a focus on diversity in your post at the University of Michigan. Tell me how that translates into adaptation and what we're going to see in the future.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Well, there are a lot of things packed into that question. You know, we at the University of Michigan take diversity, inequity, and inclusion very seriously. In other words, we want everyone here, mainly in the - let's just say we want everyone in the public to be involved in finding the solution and benefitting from the solutions to climate change and other environmental and sustainability issues. That means we have to figure out how to work with everybody. And that's what we're doing on this campus, so that everyone with their different lived experience is part of finding those solutions. When you talk about justice it's the same thing. It's about everyone benefitting and not leaving some marginalized populations in a worse situation than they already are, and trying to improve everyone's situation. Another way to look at it is that if you can do that you can speed up the rate of fixing the problem. And a good example would be here in Michigan--or anywhere, for that matter--the renewable energy, we need a lot of it. You've got to stop burning fossil fuels. The only place we're going to find room for it is out in rural America. But we can't put it out there in ways that hurt our food supply or our water. Local communities have got to benefit, both for their families and their communities. This is a way to rebuild rural America. But if we can do that people will embrace the change rather than fight the change. And so justice as a way to move things faster and with more benefits for everybody. And the University of Michigan is just the first place to really take justice as an academic discipline and really grow it. And it happened at my school here at the University of Michigan, and I'm leaning into that because I really want to see us solve this problem, and solve it before it gets out of hand.
JOHN SABO: That's a really interesting perspective, and I’m glad that we got to talk about that piece. And one reason--and you'll connect with me on this I think--is when I was at Arizona State I remember everybody used to ask me from outside of Arizona, "Why is there a city the size of Phoenix in the desert where there's no water?" And now I live in New Orleans, and my Arizona colleagues ask me, "Why does New Orleans exist? Why don't people just move?" And the answer is justice, right? Those with resources can move, and those without can't. And in addition to that there are industries in New Orleans, the port and oil and gas, for example, like you mentioned before. And so it's not as easy as just magic wand, the city goes away. And one of those key issues that prevents that from happening I think is equity and justice, right? There's not equal opportunity for just raising that magic wand and going somewhere else.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: No. But in some cases there will have to be managed retreat. And I think that--crazy as this sounds--Phoenix will be there forever I think, whereas New Orleans will not. And sea-level rise is going to take out a lot of our coastal communities, and people will be forced to move in. And we're going to be faced with having to do that in a just way. And we haven't worked it out yet, and it's probably going to wait until it's, like, really a crisis, but that time will come if we don't stop climate change real quick.
JOHN SABO: Well, let's talk about that. I think somewhere I saw a comment from you that talked about a future without climate change. To you what does a 21st-Century economy free of climate change look like?
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Well, you know, I think this is where the word "sustainability" is a really key one. And I know some people don't like it, and some people do, and I get tired of debating about words. But the point is, is that the planet right now, we're using our resources faster than is sustainable. Which means that we're using them and our future generations won't have them. And we at the same time are developing the knowledge to have a more circular economy, meaning we reuse things. We use things in a way that leaves what's necessary for thriving generations from now, available generations from now. And I see that is what we're really doing here. Fighting climate change is just part of what we need to do. We need a world without climate change, but we need one where cities are much more livable, where our rural areas are thriving. And they're thriving probably because they're providing our food and they're also providing our energy. Instead of, you know, a few rich corporations getting richer with fossil-fuel energy, all of a sudden you have distributed energy, and everybody in every state is making money. Everyone in every country is making money. And they're not fighting over energy. We're not spending a big part of our military budget protecting the flows of oil and gas from one part of the world to the next. Instead we're all energy-independent. And, you know, you get out of fossil fuels, you also get cleaner air and water. You don't have that pollution that is literally killing millions a year. And you don't have the wildfires that you have now that are also turning into an amazing health problem. Because that smoke is not good for you, it causes everything from cardiovascular and pulmonary problems to, now we know, Alzheimer's and, you know, dementia. So it's a world that's a lot more healthy. It's a world where we thrive, and where everyone thrives. Not just, you know, the rich, or the urban, or the rural, but everybody. And it's also just as important that it's not just the United States, Europe, and China that are thriving, it's the whole planet--Africa, and Asia, and Latin America, too. Because they have the ability to generate their own clean energy, and they have the ability to be part of this global economy. And their cities aren't cities with lots of slums, but they're livable. You know, by 2050 70% of the people on this planet will live in cities. And we've got to figure out a way to do that where everybody thrives and we don't just make the planet worse off for it.
JOHN SABO: I think that's a good stopping point. I'm in agreement with you that "thrive" is the right word. And we don't need to debate words, like you said before, but it's a great framework for a future. So yeah, Peck, I really appreciate you being on the show. It's been really interesting conversation. Thank you so much.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: My pleasure. And hopefully we'll get to talk again sometime.
JOHN SABO: Agreed.
JONATHAN OVERPECK: Thanks for doing this.
[MUSIC]
JOHN SABO: Okay, that's a wrap. Megadroughts and tipping points in the West, aridification in the heartland, lions and tigers and bears, oh my. The take-home that I think is most relevant: climate change is complicated. Let's break that down a little bit. Drought, which underlies aridification and some of the tipping points between what we are used to and the new normal. This is one part how much it rains, and one part just plain warming. And the warming is paramount because it is constant and rain is not. When it rains it pours, but it still may dry out because heat will lead to greater evapotranspiration or ET. That heat is forcing farmers to look for water underground. Irrigation with groundwater has increased steadily over the past decade in western portions of the Mississippi River basin. More importantly, if rain comes in more intense but fleeting events, it may not be there when plants, commodities, need it. In some cases, the increasing intensity of rainfall may even bee a detriment to crops if it waterlogs the soil during critical growth stages. This is the second moment of climate change: variability. How do we adapt to aridification and increasing variability in rainfall? Tune in for my next episode to hear how work in the private sector is pivoting to help farmers in the heartland find solutions.
JOHN SABO: That's it for this episode of Audacious Water. If you like the show please rate and review us and tell your colleagues and friends. For more information about Audacious Water and to find in-depth show notes from this episode, visit our website at AudaciousWater.org. Until next time I'm John Sabo.
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END (AUDACIOUS WATER EPISODE 1, SEASON 4)