Published as an OpEd in the Salt Lake City Deseret News, 3/16/2017

Mexico City and Salt Lake City share many similarities. Both are high-altitude urban areas that sit on ancient lakes; increasing temperatures plague both; and over-pumping of groundwater has lowered both water tables. In addition, each has a spiraling population. Salt Lake residents, then, should be concerned about the recent news that Mexico City is sinking (“Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis,” New York Times, Feb 18).

Desperate attempts have been made to bring water to Mexico City’s 21 million residents by pumping groundwater. This has depleted this water source and caused the sinking of the city. As pore-filling water is removed, the pores collapse, and the land sinks. Mexico City is now exporting wastewater and importing fresh water to its high-elevation location through canals. But even the canals are failing to flow properly because of the sinking land. The cost of moving water to and from the city is becoming unsustainable

Consider Salt Lake City with its growing population, expected to nearly double by mid-century. We live in a desert and must face the fact that the only water available to us comes from the sky in the form of rain and snow. Precipitation either runs off into the Great Salt Lake (becomes salty and no longer useable), evaporates, or soaks into the ground. The vast majority of our water for domestic, agricultural, industrial use and for watering our lawns is pumped out of the ground. The more we build and pave over the surface of our earth, the greater the runoff and the less soaks in. And with the increasing temperatures and drought conditions in Utah, we have less water coming down to replenish the groundwater.

Let me compare groundwater to an ore body. When the cost of extracting the commodity in the ore body gets higher than the price it can command, the mining town becomes a ghost town. When groundwater is being mined, wells must be drilled deeper to reach it. Someday the cost of extracting groundwater and the collateral costs of importing surface water may exceed what a growing community is willing to pay. Major desert cities will eventually become ghost towns. Is that Salt Lake City’s future?

We have already experienced land sinking in Utah (Utah Geological Survey). If we continue to pump groundwater here, will subsidence become an issue? Additionally, the depletion of our groundwater is affected by our warming Earth, resulting in increased evaporation. The average annual temperature in Utah has continually increased since 1895; the last few years have set records as the warmest, not only in Utah but nationwide.

Utah leaders are already moving water around and considering other major projects in order to bring water to growing cities (Bear River to Salt Lake Valley, Lake Powell pipeline to St. George). The collateral consequences of the Utah projects include drying of the Great Salt Lake, resulting in toxic dust and loss of habitat and depletion of the already overtaxed Colorado River.

For we who choose to live in desert cities, these concerns must be considered for long-term viability. The experience of Mexico City (and other major cities worldwide) should be carefully studied and public policies developed with their consequences kept in mind. Utah and Salt Lake Valley are desirable places to live. But, as with Mexico City, we may damage our environment beyond livability by wanting more than our desert location can supply. Let’s learn from Mexico City. Demand that our local and federal leaders create policy that preserves a healthy and safe community for our families!

Dr. L. Cameron Mosher is a geology instructor and author at Salt Lake Community College and member of the Citizens Climate Lobby.

As an earth scientist, I am increasingly concerned about Trump and his cabinet people.  As a business CEO himself, Trump has filled his cabinet with CEOs of major corporations.  The job of CEOs of major corporations is to evaluate risks, examine models, make decisions, and deal with their consequences, all to the benefit of their stockholders. But now their “stockholders” are all of the citizens of the United States, indeed the world, not just their companies or their minority base.  As a business CEO, Pruitt, now head of the EPA, should be skilled at looking at consequences of decisions that are predicted by models based on real data.  Yet he diminishes the role of Carbon Dioxide in climate damage.  Climate science predicts specific recognizable consequences of climate damage based on peer reviewed models.  These consequences can already be seen.  Does Pruitt see them or not?  How about Trump’s other CEOs?

Citizen’s Climate Lobby and other science-based messengers continue to emphasize this message.  Pruitt (and his boss Trump) must either kill the messenger, ignore the message in the face of the evidence, or come to recognize the obvious.  The consequences won’t go away because Trump and his cabinet ignore them or deny them!  We citizens hope Trump and his associates won’t ignore these consequences until we have crossed some irreversible threshold.  Things like permafrost melting and other positive feedback mechanisms are not in the public view but are potentially devastating as we and the climate progress toward as yet poorly understood thresholds beyond which we have lost control!  Science is working to understand such thresholds.  This research must be funded!  We must demand that the administration pay attention to all citizens, not just their base!

To ignore or deny climate change and its consequences is pandering to Trump’s beloved “uneducated” base.  To all the rest of us, I address this appeal!

When the subjects of Climate Change and Global Warming come up as something we humans are exacerbating, a frequent objection to doing something is that it will cost jobs.  Let’s just look at history.

Around the turn of the 20^th Century as the automobile was coming on-stream, an entire industry basically went out of business and significant numbers of once vibrant occupations were lost.  Wagon makers, wheelwrights, liverymen, and blacksmiths watched the demand for their trades shrivel as technology advanced.  They either learned new trades or went out of business.  When science and technology give us progress and new information, those affected either adapt or are left behind.

Over the last few decades, a growing scientific awareness has warned of dramatic changes in our climate that are already causing destruction and loss of lives, and in the not distant future will render now populated regions uninhabitable.  Nearly all climate scientists concur that the atmosphere is warming, the oceans are increasing in acidity, polar ice is melting, sea level is rising, low island nations are being drowned, and human civilization is being affected.  Many powerful policy makers deny this is happening and human consumption of fossil fuels is accelerating the pace of this process.  During the campaign, President-elect Trump called it a hoax fomented by the Chinese and promises to dismantle our progress regarding Climate Change.

Various solutions include research and development of alternative sources of energy and the infrastructure and machines to utilize these sources.  Will this eliminate some classes of jobs?  No doubt.  Will it spawn whole new industries with whole new classes of jobs?  Absolutely!  It is time to envision a healthier environment and get to work!

I sympathize with those who fear losing their jobs, but we march on with scientific and technological information.  Don’t let yourself be left behind.  And don’t be part of the deniers who, by their denial and obstruction, may well condemn humanity to a future of climatic and environmental disaster for our posterity.  We can still do some things to control the future, but our window of opportunity is fast closing.

Energy companies who produce coal and petroleum as fuels need to decide what business they are in.  Are they in coal and oil?  Or are they in ENERGY?  If the latter, they should be at the forefront of research and job training to create positive solutions for a sustainable future.  If the former, they and their jobs will gradually be phased out as earth’s changing environment forces humanity itself to either adapt or go extinct.  Science says this is no hoax.  This is no illusion.  It is real!  And the companies who move into that future will have the jobs and the market!

If you want to be part of the solution, communicate with Congress and the President about the climate, encourage research and development for a sustainable future, and support public and higher education in subjects relevant to science and technology and jobs in a future with sustainable energy sources.  Join an organization like Citizens Climate Lobby that promotes solutions at the state and national level.  Let’s ensure that our future is determined by a government by, for, and of the people!

L. Cameron Mosher, Ph.D.

Geologist and instructor at Salt Lake Community College