Life won’t be as convenient for our children on a climate-damaged planet

A photo taken in June 2021 of a former wetland near Tulelake, California showing the effects of a multiyear drought caused by climate change. Every year for the past 20 years has produced damning studies of our global systems and how they’re leading us to environmental disaster. This is an existential crisis. And yet we do nothing. Still. — AP

In headlines this week was news of tightening water usage restrictions in Southern California. The US state is facing its third year of severe drought and, understandably, water reserves are drying out.

Why is this happening? Climate change. California has already had a temperature increase of about 3° Fahrenheit. “We are experiencing climate change whiplash in real time, with extreme swings between wet and dry conditions,” Karla Nemeth, from the California Department of Water Resources, wrote in a statement.