Climate change and the hydraulic-industrial complex in the American Southwest

This post has much to do with an upcoming visitor to the Colorado College. In September, our so-called block 1 at the college, we'll have William (Bill) deBuys on campus, to discuss his latest book "A Great Aridness" (2011, Oxford U Press). The point of the book, as I read it and re-read it this summer, is to survey how different parts of the larger region we call the Southwest will cope under forecasted (or actually-occurring) climate changes. Surface water, forest fires, endangered species, are all grist for the mill in A Great Aridness, as Bill travels parts of the Southwest and talks to scientists working closely on these topics.

The relevance in the first two classes I'll teach this year, Political Ecology of the Southwest (block 1), and Introduction to Global Climate Change (block 2), is fairly obvious. The first block, the political ecology class, is really a thematically-rotating focused seminar on various regional issues. Apart from a core text on political ecology, I also use a regional illustrative work as a kind of academic 'field guide' for the rotating theme. For example, past themes have included forests in northern New Mexico (2008), the impacts of the nuclear industry in the Southwest (2010), and this time we'll be concentrating on the political (fire) ecologies of the Southwest. Given the 2012 firestorm season, it's no accident, it should provide for rich discussion. We'll draw on the 2002 Hayman fire, and the most recent 2012 Waldo Canyon fire, as ways to use political ecology as a lens to understand these seemingly-natural incidents. We will be using Bill's book in both classes - in the first case, to focus on how fire, climate, and mismanaged forests have all contributed to create the situation we are in. Or, rather, the situation that we as humans have produced.

The second course is more directly related to the overall theme of the book, the impacts of climate change, and is a first-year experience course. I thought it would be useful, as we discuss the science behind climate change and global change overall, to have a regional illustration case that reviews how climate change will be first experienced as a regional or local problem, even if the overall climate forcings are global in nature over the long-term. I mention all this because, as a water blogger, it never fails to amaze what policy-makers think will be the solutions to climate change. As settlement negotiations between feds, states, and the Indian tribes fail, flounder, or barely squeak, one of the inevitable consequences in the package of negotiated solutions is always more hydraulic infrastructure: more dams, more pipes, more complicated water networks. In some settings, yes, it's understandable. It would be hard to gravity-feed surface water from the San Juan River in Colorado, for example, all the way to the Navajo reservation.

Is this really climate change mitigation? Can we build our way out of the climate issue? Will more of the same (hydraulic-industrial complex) really be what we think of as 'adaptation' much less 'mitigation' of climate change in the Southwest? Given that Southwestern states (AZ, NM, TX) are all behind the times in terms of planning for (or around) climate change, I worry more about the 22nd century residents than those in this century. The places, large and small, in the Southwest most vulnerable to climate change are facing these challenges already, and invariably are choosing to 'scale up' in their water solutions. By scaling up, I mean hooking into larger county, or regional water systems if they can, basically deferring to the experts to solve local water shortages. That's not necessarily a bad idea for some, but it does make you wonder if the actual means to adaptation is getting punted up every administrative level available. If you give up on "local," that means someone else will decide, and then complaining about the experts may not be a defensible strategy. Here in Colorado, we're guilty of the same logic, as even our progressive Governor has mentioned that more dams may be needed (again, scaling up). If the water governence is displaced from local to regional, to state, to federal, will this mean (wet) water dispossession?