Remember a couple of weeks ago when the temperature hit the 40s? I excitedly moved my winter coats to the back of my closet. Sweater weather!
And then I woke up one day and looked out my window.
It was snowing, a lot.
So back to the front of my closet my puffy coats went. It’s a good thing they were still accessible; temperatures this past week plummeted again. And now this week we’re looking at projected temperatures in the 50s and 60s.
While I’m careful not to confuse weather with climate, I couldn’t help but think that this winter has been an unusual one and that our larger climate crisis might have some role to play.
That was certainly the message in a December piece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel titled, “Climate change could be driving record-breaking December temperatures, storms across Wisconsin,” which talked about this year’s record breaking high temperatures in Wisconsin coupled with thunderstorms, wind gusts, and Wisconsin's first December tornadoes since 1970. It all indicates that things were not normal.
Dec. 15 felt truly strange. That day it was 68 degrees out. The last time it got near that was in 2011, and even then only to 52 degrees.
While further research has yet to be done to determine how much December’s weather was influenced by climate change, things have been very weird to say the least. Weird enough where upon reflection, I feel a little guilty wanting the weather to warm up faster.
A recent report from the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts — a project of UW-Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Natural Resources — on the effects of climate change on Wisconsin in the last decade confirms that warming winter nights have altered weather patterns, wildlife habitats, industry conditions, and a myriad of cultural traditions across Wisconsin.
From things like worsening water quality, extreme rainfall and flooding to the reduction of snowpack and soil quality, the report paints a picture of just how much climate change threatens our state.
We see that the increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, a phenomenon that might often feel far above us, is in fact deeply intimate. Our warming planet is altering our way of life as Wisconsinites and not just by the inconvenience of unexpected weather — the impact on the water we drink, the crops we harvest, even the viruses we are exposed to, all indicate that climate change is as personal as can be.
Perhaps this intimacy will be ultimately our biggest push as a society to address our climate crisis appropriately. If the effects of climate change are visible in our daily life, it is much harder to be complacent or to cast them aside as political, partisan or presumptive.
Unfortunately, the time was really yesterday to get aggressive about climate change mitigation, and some indications are that we might be nearing the final hour. Even with Democrats in control in D.C, the sort of climate action we desperately need keeps stalling.
But there is one bright side.
A recent UW La Follette School of Public Affairs policy poll of Wisconsin residents found that climate change is a top concern heading into the 2022 midterms, followed by the federal budget deficit, income distribution and race relations.
In the poll, 87 percent of respondents said climate change was a problem, with 39 percent calling it an “extremely big problem.”
At least in the court of public opinion, Wisconsin is heading in the right direction.
Nada Elmikashfi is chief of staff to state Rep. Francesca Hong and a former candidate for state Senate.
