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4 OUR YUCAIPA | JULY 2015 By Courtney Fox Taylor "Everyone always talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it." That's one of my favorite quotes that many mistakenly attribute to Mark Twain. Charles Dudley Warner, an editor at the Hartford Courant and friend of Twain's, is actually the correct source. No matter, it's still a great quote. Notice the next time you talk to someone who you have to talk to but with whom you don't have much to say (which is pretty much everyone for me) how long it takes until you're talking about the weather. Me: "What's new?" Them: "Well, it looked like it might rain this morning." Me: "Really? Did it rain?" Them: "Not yet. We sure do need it though." Me: "It would be nice, that's for sure." Them: "How's your weather?" Me: "Oh, warm. It's windier than normal in the afternoon." Them: "That's odd. I wonder why that is." Me: "I have no idea." At this point in the conversation, I look around for something to electrocute myself with to politely end the conversation. Me: "Excuse me, I have to go. I just stuck a fork in the toaster and the arm I need to hold the phone is on fire…" Them: "Too bad it's not raining." Okay, so let's agree that there is nothing we can do about the weather. Let's also agree that talking about rain is not advancing our cause toward ending the drought. And everyone is talking about the drought. I have a friend who said she keeps a five gallon bucket in the shower to catch water as it warms. Then she lugs the bucket out to her backyard and waters her plants. She's in her 80s. After hearing that and picturing this woman, who was using a walker after a back injury a few years ago, carrying water to her plants, I thought maybe I should be doing something. I'm not going to lug a bucket of shower water to my yard, though… that's too much like exercise. I did, however, realize that when I rinse my coffee pot I could take the 10 ounces of water to the planter on my front porch and dump it there. Am I a hero? I think that's a strong word. But I am doing my part. It seems the real problem here is our expectations are too high. Climate is changing because it always changes. Ever since Earth was born, about 4.6 billion years ago, it has gone through drastic climate changes. In fact, the surface of our lovely lush little planet was a sea of molten magma for 700 million years. The first ice age was 2.4 billion years ago. We've had five major ice ages in all, the second and most severe was 850 million years ago. Glacial sheets actually reached the equator and scientists dubbed our planet Snowball Earth. Awwww… that's kind of cute. And it's gotten warm, of course. Remember the dinosaurs? During the late Jurassic and Cretaceous periods carbon dioxide was about five times current levels, a true global warming catastrophe. According to the Christian Science Monitor, this was caused in part by the dinosaurs themselves. "Dinosaurs' gassy guts may have contributed to global warming tens of millions of years ago, according to a new study that finds a group of plant-eating dinosaurs could have produced about as much methane as all of today's natural and man-made sources of the greenhouse gas." They went on to point the finger at today's cows: "Such emissions from modern-day cattle are considered a major source of the greenhouse gas, adding up to roughly 55 million to 110 million tons per year. Though carbon dioxide is more abundant in the atmosphere, methane is more than 20 times as effective at trapping heat, according to the Environmental Protection Agency." But who is going to give up their In 'n Out? 2014 was called "The Hottest Year Ever Measured." Really? Hotter than the 700 million years when everything was lava? Oh - records only go back to 1880. Well… An increase in CO 2 isn't all Bessie's fault. Man is burning an alarming amount of fossil fuel all over the world. America can regulate and restrict output and sell magic carbon offset beans all it wants but if the rest of the world doesn't play ball, our efforts won't make much difference. The industrial age is about 200 years young. If we step back and look at the bigger picture, we see that we're making rapid advances in clean energy and, within a century, will likely have a much cleaner source of energy that has yet to be invented. (John Galt's motor runs on static electricity in the air. Can someone please hurry up and invent that?) Plus, Earth warms and cools on her own, with or without our help. One of my favorite quotes from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park sums up Man versus Earth: "You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity. Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away — all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years. Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the Earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the Earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the Earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive glass, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on Earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on Earth took care of itself. In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the Earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the Earth will not miss us." The way I see it, humans must adjust. If it's raining, we use an umbrella. Conversely, we save water during a drought. But saving water isn't going to make a whit of difference to the Earth. What we're saving, in the end, is us… and whatever it is trying to grow in that pot on my porch. Maybe I should just plant a cactus. I'm no expert, but that has never stopped me before

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