Why are some people in town still watering their lawns, even under statewide level 2 or “significant drought” conditions? Is it some brochure-promised scene that ignores the reality that we all share a common finite resource under our homes?
Climate change has changed the paradigm of our weather, exaggerating our wet and dry periods. Wet periods flood, as we saw recently along Route 2 in Leominster. During droughts fire becomes a much bigger issue. Smoky the Bear’s fire status on Ayer Road is not an amusing decoration but a warning to all. Predictable rain is no longer an assumption we can make—and we’re surrounded by woods.
In his novel, “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway describes the two ways one goes bankrupt: gradually and then suddenly. We are at the “gradually” state of our water crisis; let’s not get to “suddenly” by wasting a precious resource.
Mario Cardenas
Oak Hill Road
Mario Cardenas is a member of the Harvard Climate Initiative Committee.
