It Doesn't Rain in Chihuahua Anymore

Maybe with enough stories like these, the paid deniers in Congress and the corporate mass media will become embarrassed enough to give up, but do not count on it. The British Independent tells us that it doesn't rain in the Mexican state of Chihuahua any more. Americans think that Chihuahua is a just a vast desert south of the border full of scorpions, illegal immigrants, and narco-traffikers. Wrong again, buddy! Chihuahua is covered with vast pine forests and scrub savannah with enough rainfall to traditionally pasture livestock and grow beans, corn and some wheat [photo]. For the seven decades prior to this one the average annual precipitation was 39cms (15.3ins). In 2011 it only rained 26cms, and this year not at all. An atmospheric physicist at Mexico City's UNAM university says that Chihuahua is in a state of permanent drought.  In other words, global climate change has permanently altered Chihuahua's climate which will turn the region into a non-arable desert. The state's farmers are facing economic ruin. In a normal year Chihuahua's farmers produce 100,000 metric tons of corn; in 2011 that was down to only 500 tons. The bean harvest was also severely impacted, down to a sixth of a normal year's production. Indigenous Raramuri, who follow a traditional lifestyle of subsistence, are starving in the drought. Some of their communities have been classified by the UN as poorer than Niger, the world's poorest nation. The death toll is climbing not just from starvation, but stress-related violence and suicides. Pumping irrigation water from underground aquifers is not a long term solution. Pumped water gets more expensive the deeper the wells are drilled, and soon the underground water simply runs out. When that happens, people migrate.

Mexico, an oil producer, is only the second state in the world to vote for legally binding carbon emissions targets. Chihuahuans are dealing with the devastating effects of global warming right now. The residents of Colorado Springs who are staring at the charred remains of their expensive mountainside homes[video] burnt by the earliest and most destructive wildfire in Colorado's history should talk to their conservative politicians*. They still don't seem to get the point.
*Colorado's temperatures for June were 6.4 degrees above average making it the warmest June recorded in the state. NOAA says the last twelve months in the US have been the hottest since records began in 1895. The chance of that happening randomly is 1 in 1,594,323.