California is working on solutions to worsening climate change. Will they be enough?
Sci-fi writers have long conceived worlds in which extreme weather events upend the lives of its inhabitants, but with every passing, warming year, their scenarios feel more prophetic. Last September, record-shattering temperatures nearly broke the state’s power grid, and according to a Times investigation, extreme heat waves are killing more Californians than official records show. In the winter, after the driest three-year period on record that dried up wells and forced farmers to fallow fields, atmospheric river storms pummeled the state. Farms flooded. Levees failed. For decades, scientists have warned us that human-caused climate change will produce a growing number of weather catastrophes. But as the impact of global warming unfolds across the world, events once expected to happen decades from now are already here.
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