region’s financially troubled power marketer, Bonneville Power
Administration, will not have that water available later in the summer,
when air conditioners spike demand. Increasingly, Bonneville will
have to buy its electricity on the open market. That means higher
power bills for households and businesses.
This earlier run-off surge will also hurt farmers. Even now, there
are pitched battles over water, sometimes between farmers themselves,
sometimes between farmers and fish advocates, occasionally between
farmers and cities. The bitter and massive showdown over water in
Oregon’s Klamath River basin sparked civil disobedience in 2002.
Parched farmers, upset that the amount of water they had become
accustomed to was reduced because of drought and endangered fish
protection, stormed the basin’s headgates and turned the water on
themselves.
That is unlikely to be the end of the conflict, or the fallout for con-
sumers. Because of earlier snowpack melting, farmers are now facing
increased irrigation water shortages in the late summer, which could
mean lower crop yields and higher prices for locally grown food.
More trouble is expected. Here are some future scenarios for the
Pacific Northwest, according to Patrick Mazza of Olympia-based
Climate Solutions, a project of the nonprofit Earth Island Institute:
droughts coming twice as frequently by 2020. Forests retreating from
the eastern Cascades in Oregon and Washington, replaced by grass-
lands. Ski seasons shortened. More frequent destructive floods and
mudslides. More hot days in summer.
Many scientists are concerned about these looming calamaties.
Some are even frustrated and speaking out—expressing thoughts
more forcefully than is usual from what is normally a reticent group of
experts. Frustration tinges the voice of Edward Miles, a University of
Washington marine studies professor and head of the Climate Impacts
Group, the consortium of scientists organized by the university and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“The country as a whole is in denial about this problem,” Miles
says of climate change. “In the meantime, nature’s adding up the bill.
The world is going to have to deal with this for the next 200 or 300
years. We have never faced this kind of problem before.”
154 Sally Deneen