Concerns About Tucson's Future (Liam Ingold)

Throughout my life, I have been interested in science. When I was a child, math and science were the only subjects I enjoyed studying. However, my fascination with STEM topics also meant I learned about the inherent dangers of the universe at a young age. For about a year, I was terrified of the inevitable expansion of the sun; it kept me awake at night. As I grew older I realized worrying about an event five billion years into the future was silly. The fear did not go away though; it transferred to issues we face now in our generation, the most dire being climate change.

Over the course of the last few decades, global warming has become one of, if not the greatest, threat to human wellbeing. The increase in heat globally has meant flooding and other dramatic weather events threaten millions of people’s lives and livelihoods. Global warming’s effects also have more noticeable effects on the people living in Southern Arizona. As a very dry region already, Tucson is threatened with increased energy costs, health risks, and maintenance issues more than the average United States city. Tucson needs to start mitigating climate change in an effort to curb these harmful effects on our communities.

Nine years ago I moved from Upstate New York to Arizona. Unlike in Arizona, where the lack of water is always an issue, the opposite was true in New York. Two floods that occurred not far apart were said to be so extreme they were only supposed to happen once within a hundred years. The intense weather points to climate change influencing where I lived. In recent years, it would be a difficult task to find a country or region that has not been affected by pollution, global warming, and climate change.

For Tucsonans, air conditioning is not a luxury, but a necessity. As temperatures rise from global warming, so too does the need for adequate cooling and the cost of electricity. Adding to this is the fact that Arizona’s energy comes mainly from fossil fuels which means that solving the immediate problem of cooling our indoor environment is self perpetuating worse climate change effects that will make our environments hotter. The solution to this issue would be to rely less on fossil fuels and more on green energy such as solar. If the trend of increasing temperatures continues there will eventually be no way to supply enough energy to our cities, towns, and homes.

Heat and the effects thereof, such as drought and violent weather, has increased in the nine years I have lived here, and is only a trend from a much longer history. For a long time I immensely enjoyed playing outside at parks and swimming at local pools. The increase in heat, however, has made me stay inside more frequently in the past few years. Even pools, which have a cooling effect, can be made negative if sunscreen is not properly applied. The monsoon seasons that are supposed to cool things down have shown a clear trend in producing quicker and more violent storms rather than longer, peaceful rains.

The changes in our local and global environments beg the question then, how should we respond to the issue on a personal level? Rising temperatures in Southern Arizona present a harsh and difficult situation for residents moving forward. Would it be better to move somewhere else entirely? Speaking personally, the danger to my health and happiness from living in Tucson during the worsening effects of climate change is less than ideal. I do not want to spend the rest of my life continuously worrying about the next big heat wave melting the tires of cars or causing a power usage spike from an increase in cooling needs.

At the center of the issue is uncertainty. Climate change is one of if not the most dangerous threat to humans. However, it wasn’t always like this. Only since the industrial revolution has climate change been an issue beyond the ice ages every hundred thousand years. The question remains, however: why hasn’t anyone fixed climate change in the decades since it has been known about, and what could be done?