A weekly reckoning with life in a warming world—and the fight to save it |
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Lake Seeley, Montana Patti McConville/Alamy |
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Labor Day remains the last big summer vacation weekend in the United States. As we head into the long weekend, I’d like to point you to a great new piece from Keely Larson about a growing crisis in many of the waterfront communities vacationers frequent in the summer: aging septic systems. Keely spoke to residents of Seeley Lake, Montana, which has been embroiled for years in a bitter battle over the town’s plumbing. There’s increasing evidence that the community’s septic systems are destroying the lake that local residents love and that the town depends on for tourism. The best solution, some say, is a new sewer system. But that’s easier said than done. “The extra cost to locals in taxes,” Keely wrote, “would be about $150 a month; in a town where the average salary is just over $40,000 a year, many cannot afford that. Plus, only 650 people—those drawn into the sewer district—would be responsible for the costs.”
This may sound rather pedestrian, but, as Keely points out, “Seeley Lake’s crisis is just one example of a national problem.” Towns in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, have also struggled with this issue, as have the Florida Keys. Aging septic systems don’t just contaminate local waters directly; they also create conditions for toxic algal blooms, which Emily Atkin and Ben Depp explored in more detail in The New Republic back in 2019.
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“By and large,” Keely writes, “wastewater solutions are hard to implement because the problem is often invisible. It involves pipes and tanks underneath the surface that people want to think about maybe once and never again.” There’s some good news here: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which passed last year, puts more money toward the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, which loans money for municipal wastewater projects. That can’t come fast enough for many towns. Keep that in mind if you find yourself at a cookout by the water this weekend. The tourist economy in many lakeside and seaside towns is fragile and doesn’t always provide an easy source of funds for municipal improvements. And without those improvements, Keely writes, a problem that starts out as a few outdated septic tanks “quickly becomes existential.” —Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor |
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{{#if }} Our writers and editors are bringing you vital reporting, explanation, and analysis to understand the current climate crisis—but they need your help.
Here’s a special offer to subscribe to The New Republic. |
—Heather Souvaine Horn, deputy editor |
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The National Association of Evangelicals has outlined the “biblical basis” for environmentalism in a new report intended to encourage climate action. |
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The water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, remains dire, with CNN reporting that residents waited in lines for two hours on Tuesday “for just one case of bottled water.” The city has been under a boil-water notice since July, but heavy rains last week exacerbated the problem, and on Monday Jackson’s main water treatment facility stopped working. |
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That’s how much Greenland’s melting ice sheet is now predicted to raise sea levels—much more than previously forecast. |
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Elsewhere in the Ecosystem |
Yessenia Funes has a vital feature in Atmos magazine looking at how climate change will increase migrant deaths along America’s southern border. It’s a horrifying and important read. |
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While researchers have been investigating the way climate change will influence migration patterns for years, they have largely ignored the way climate change will affect the migration journeys themselves. Temperatures in the southwestern desert can already occasionally soar past 125 degrees Fahrenheit in peak summer months. By 2050, climate models project the state’s temperatures will leave much of the desert region uninhabitable.… Now, for the first time, scientists have measured the impact a temperature rise from climate change will have on the bodies of people who walk through the Southwest. In a study published in Science in December, a multidisciplinary team of researchers found that global heating will likely result in more migrants dying along the U.S.-Mexico border. Atmos worked with the study authors to visualize their unique data set.
The study authors didn’t quantify how many more people will die. Instead, they looked at the way increased heat in this rough terrain will affect the physiological health of migrants, including pregnant women and children. To be more precise, they measured how much more water, on average, different demographics will need as the landscape takes its toll on their bodies. Dehydration is, ultimately, what kills many folks. As their bodies expel sweat to stay cool, they’re unable to replenish the lost water. The adult human is up to 60% water. Without it, the body ceases to function.
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What Subscribers Are Reading |
The rise of Timber Unity offers a worrying case study of how successful rural organizing can be when it’s bankrolled by the GOP. |
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the latest Republican to claim woke capitalists are discriminating against fossil fuels. |
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