By Nick Buxton

At Cool Davis we focus on practical actions and solutions for how we as individuals and as a community can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, move to a low-carbon future, and improve everyone’s quality of life as a result.

We believe that Davis can model the change we need by the US and the international community and that we can also create a better community in the process.

However there are times when it is important to remind ourselves of the urgency and moral imperative to act. Two images were released this month that brought this home vividly.

The first (shown above) accompanied a release by NASA on July 24.

The comments by NASA noted: “On average in the summer, about half of the surface of Greenland’s ice sheet naturally melts. At high elevations, most of that melt water quickly refreezes in place. Near the coast, some of the melt water is retained by the ice sheet and the rest is lost to the ocean.

“But this year the extent of ice melting at or near the surface jumped dramatically. According to satellite data, an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface thawed at some point in mid-July.”

The second  came in a release from the US Department of Agriculture which announced that it had now designated 1,584 unduplicated counties across 32 states as disaster areas—1,452 due to drought—making all qualified farm operators in the areas eligible for low-interest emergency loans.

The U.S. Drought Monitor now says that 66 percent of the nation’s hay acreage is in an area experiencing drought, while approximately 73 percent of the nation’s cattle acreage is in an area experiencing drought.

Climate change is already affecting our climate more severely than we imagined. If this isn’t a wake-up call to act, what is?