Climate Change a One-Stop Story Shop for TV and Film Writers
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RealtoReel Climate Change A one-stop story shop for TV and film writers In Terra Bella, Water Only Flows as Tears At first they called Fred Lujan a gentle- man farmer. The retired barber washed his tractor every night and parked it in the garage, a source of gentle amusement to the veteran growers around him. He called his pistachio trees his babies, his girls, and gave them names. “Come on, Suzanne,” he’d say to his wife in the evenings. “Let’s have a glass of wine and sit outside and watch our girls grow.” Katharine Hayhoe’s work is inspired Back when he was still learning to take by her faith, which puts a strong corners while tilling, he sliced one of the emphasis on caring for the weak. saplings. The other farmers told him to “That gives us even more reason to care about climate change,” she says, pull it out, the tree wouldn’t make it. But “because it is disproportionately he wrapped the trunk in mud and water affecting the poor and vulnerable.” and tape the way his grandfather, born on an Indian reservation, had taught him. He named the tree Survivor. Ashley Rodgers Eight years later, Survivor and the other trees were ready to give their first mature A Climate Evangelist Puts Her Faith in Science crop. In February, the 10-acre orchard was limate scientist Katharine Hayhoe, an evangelical Christian, has had Terra Bella, continued on page 2 quite the run lately. A few weeks back, she was featured in the first Cepisode of the Showtime series Years of Living Dangerously, meeting with ‘Titanic’ and the Fate actor Don Cheadle in her home state of Texas to explain to him why faith and a of a Doomed Island warming planet aren’t in conflict. (You can watch that episode for free; Hayhoe It was a slow Sunday morning in January, was a science adviser for the show.) Time magazine named her one of the 100 Papua New Guinea’s rainy season, and the most influential people of 2014; Cheadle wrote the entry. “There’s something sun was making a rare appearance, light- fascinating about a smart person who defies stereotype,” Cheadle observed. ing up the green and gold island where I Why is Hayhoe in the spotlight? Simply put, millions of Americans are was staying. I decided to walk its perim- evangelical Christians, and their belief in the science of global warming is well eter, but found it difficult: Large sections Hayhoe, continued on page 4 of the trail around the island were missing, the land fallen into the waves. Beneath a washed-out bank, on a sandy point with colliding currents, I waded into Family Wins $3 Million in Retired Officers Urge the water to look for shells. A large, brown First Fracking Judgment Military to Step Up Plans bone washed against my calf. At first I When the Parr family started having The military must do more to prepare for thought it belonged to some sort of marine serious health problems late in 2008, the impacts of a changing climate, includ- mammal, maybe a dugong, and picked it they had no idea it was associated with ing updating war plans and building more up. But then I saw what was clearly a hu- what they call “a multitude” of drilling ships to operate in the Arctic, a group of man jaw, five teeth still embedded in the operations that popped up near their 40- retired military officers recommended in a bone, in the water next to me. I stared at acre ranch in Decatur, 60 miles northwest report. the bone in my hand, shocked to realize of Dallas. The report by CNA Corp., a nonprofit that I was gripping a person’s femur. Once At first, Lisa Parr dismissed her research group that frequently does work I started to see them, it seemed there migraine headaches, nausea and dizziness for the Navy, says the military must be were bones everywhere. as the flu, but when her symptoms more aggressive as it prepares to deal I stood in the wash of bones, numb persistently got worse, she knew with everything from increased numbers of and confused, then finally gathered what something more serious was involved. natural disasters in the Pacific to expanded Island, continued on page 2 Judgment, continued on page 3 Report, continued on page 3 RealtoReel [page 2] [email protected] | (800) 283-0676 | www.usc.edu/hhs Terra Bella, continued Island, continued sprouting spring leaves. I could and wandered ashore without a Then a man from the irrigation district plan. That’s when I came across the grave- came and sealed off Lujan’s water meter. yard — part of it a small, neat plot with A green tag read “No Irrigation Water Is gardens of fake flowers still on the graves, Available This Year.” There was a $10,000 the other a half tumbling down the erod- fine for breaking the seal. ing shoreline and into the ocean. For the first time in the more than half What remains of the island of Kulenus a century that the federal government is a tiny, narrow strip of trees and hous- had been diverting Sierra Nevada water es — you can see straight through to the to farmers, there would be no deliveries water on the other side — that rises just to most Central Valley irrigation districts. enough above the sea to meet the mini- In the third year of drought, there wasn’t mum criteria for an island. enough water to go around. Most of the 6,000 people who live That wasn’t the case the night before, It was a blow to the entire region, but a in Terra Bella and whose children during high tide. In the darkness, the sea attend school here are immigrant possible death knell to Terra Bella, whose farmworkers. rose to new heights, and swept through a pistachio and citrus groves are watered number of nearby low-lying villages. On only by rain and the government’s canals. Kulenus, the water covered every bit of “How am I supposed to just sit here and Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times land. watch everything turn brown and die?” As the water began to rise, residents asked Lujan, 68. wouldn’t be enough. They downsized to brought their possessions inside their Sean Geivet had known the news was the small house in Terra Bella and invested stilted homes, woven of bamboo and sago going to be bad. It had been the driest in pistachios. Lujan had several cancer palm, to wait out the sea. Soon, in the 13-month period in more than 100 years operations, and this year he had heart lower houses and those closest to shore, on the winter day the U.S. Bureau of Recla- surgery. Their retirement savings dwindled, the water followed them in. They moved mation announced water allocations. The but the orchard was their safety net. their belongings out of the way, then Terra Bella Irrigation District manager ran Survivor died in June. moved them again when the tide kept ris- through options in his head. Not having water during the first heat ing. They stayed awake, sleeping only once If the feds said a 25% allocation, most spell was too much stress for the injured the water finally began to recede. of the area’s 700 citrus growers could still tree. Lujan took it hard. Lately, a Kulenus elder named Ramis bring in a crop. If it was 10%, that was Driving to town, he noticed Setton Thomas told me, this has been happening enough to at least keep the trees alive and Farms, which had a pistachio-processing every few months. He heard on the radio try again next year. plant in Terra Bella, had planted new that the high tides are the result of rising Growers began dropping off checks with trees—about all the way to Bakersfield, it seas, and that rising seas are the result of Geivet, authorizing him to buy emergency seemed to Lujan. mountains of ice melting into distant wa- water, from wherever he could, for up to Back when Lujan still had his barber ters. But Kulenus is remote and just a few $1,200 an acre foot, six times the usual shop, one of his clients was a lifelong degrees south of the equator. Ice — avail- price. farmer, Mike Smith. He had always liked able from the store an hour and a half It rained in March — barely. Smith because he had a big laugh and a away if you can get a ride on a boat with “It smelled so good. It sounded so hard handshake. a motor — is a correspondingly difficult pretty,” Lujan said. Three years ago, Smith started a job concept. It’s the last time he saw rain. as liaison between growers and Setton But Kulenus does have a generator, Two weeks after irrigation water was Farms. Lujan decided to talk to him. which the 70 or so residents sometimes cut, domestic water was rationed. Most of Smith delivered Lujan’s plea, and Set- use to watch movies. Thomas thinks of the 6,000 people who live in Terra Bella ton Farms agreed to advance the Lujans one in particular when he tries to imagine and whose children attend school here are 10 acre-feet of the emergency water the those melting mountains: “I just remem- immigrant farmworkers. They would have company had bought, and let them pay for ber a movie about a ship that crashed drinking water—about half the amount it after harvest.