Why climate change must be part of the Colorado River conversation

Brad Udall also makes the case that stakeholders in the basin can work together to solve this “really sticky, difficult issue”

Brad Udall was on a panel on June 5 at the annual Colorado River conference hosted by the Getches-Wilkinson Center at the University of Colorado-Boulder’s School of Law.

In his brief slot on the panel, Udall was first a cheerleader for Colorado River problem solving but reminding listeners that climate change was the elephant in the room, as several speakers later in the conference acknowledged.

Following are his remarks, lightly edited:

Given the policy expertise on this panel, I’m going to constrain my remarks to what’s going on in the climate space. I want to make the following two points and end with a heartfelt plea.

Within this basin, we can and have worked together to deal with a really sticky, difficult issue like climate change, to inform decision-making given the right partners, including the federal government at the table. Point two is our current climate trajectory is beyond awful, and that makes our challenge even worse.

So let me get to point one. We can, in fact, work together on a really difficult issue. In late 2006 Terry Fulp (then regional director of the Lower Colorado Basin Region for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation), pulled together six different sciences to consider how a changing climate would impact runoff, to inform the 2007 Interim Guidelines EIS. That effort became Appendix U.

Interestingly, it was the first time climate science was incorporated into a major EIS. It was not particularly controversial, and it was done during a Republican administration. It set the stage for future (Bureau of) Reclamation climate change efforts, efforts that have continued to this day.

But put an asterisk next to that.

The next year (2008), the Water Utility Climate Alliance was formed by eight major national water providers, and four of those were actually in our basin: the San Diego County Water Authority, Denver Water, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and Southern Nevada Water Authority.

Members have led the way in figuring out how to adapt to climate change, including hiring certain staff to deal with this. And a hat tip for this to both Jim (Lochhead, former CEO of Denver Water) and Bill Hasencamp (Colorado River resources manager for Metropolitan).

Let me mention Reclamation again, because in 2009 Mike Connor, as a congressional staffer, wrote the SECURE Water Act, which made Reclamation perform a series of continuing climate change studies that are important to this day.

The lesson here is that when faced with such a daunting and unknown challenge, we actually can come together to discover scientific truths, but we need both federal and basic leadership to make this happen. Unfortunately, right now, one leg of this is seriously threatened, hence my asterisk.

My second point is about our awful moment, our global climate change trajectory. Hold on to your seats, because I’m going to make you uncomfortable. The world is on track for 3 degrees Celsius warming by 2100. This far exceeds anything agreed to by the 2015 Paris Climate Accords. And frankly, terrifies scientists. Three Celsius is a projected average global warming, but over land, that’s 5 Celsius. Converted into Fahrenheit, it’s nine Fahrenheit. Imagine every day, 9 Fahrenheit warmer. Highs, 9 Fahrenheit warmer. Lows, 9 Fahrenheit warmer. That’s a world unlike anything we currently know, and it’s going to challenge us all on every front.

And what’s worse about this, and not particularly appreciated, is that to get to 3 Celsius, we need large global greenhouse emissions to continue through this century to 2100. So, it will continue to warm significantly beyond 2100. Nine Fahrenheit is not where we end up. It’s kind of where we start.

This 3 Celsius outcome has been has been obvious for at least five years, as climate policy progress has stalled and even gone backwards. You know, post-Paris in 2015 there were all kinds of great net-zero by 2050 pledges by government and industry, including the fossil fuel industry.

But since then, the fossil fuel industry is trying to have it both ways. They love to tout these goals while at the same time talking to the shareholders about how they’re going to expand production in ways that are completely incompatible with 2 Celsius. And there are about 25 large, mostly national oil companies that are living this lie. Each one thinks they’re going to be the last one standing, selling a product that’s fundamentally incompatible with a stable climate.

If you think we’ve got plenty of time to solve this, like 75 years, normally, I’d agree with you. But think about what’s happened over the past 35 years. Emissions have gone up 60% and continue to rise. With these bad actors and with banks willing to finance this and governments willing to subsidize it, what we’re witnessing is a monumental failure of both capitalism and governance.

Now, if this weren’t all bad enough for you, we now have an anti-knowledge president and his vile enablers systematically attacking all forms of knowledge using illegal and unconstitutional tactics. Nowhere has this been more true than in this climate science space, where they’re going after anything and everything that has the word climate on it, every federal agency.

I’ll mention three here in our basin that are really critical: NOAA, the USGS and Reclamation. All of that climate work is in the sights of these vile enablers and the administration. Hence that nasty asterisk again. This administration aims to stop all work at preventing future greenhouse gas emissions as well as our ability to adapt to coming changes.

And 95% of what I can say on this panel about this is not suitable for this room, but let’s call it what it is: it’s insanity what they’re doing.

There are also recent, strong signs that climate warming is speeding up. So 2023 and 2024 were 1.5 Celsius above a pre-Industrial average. And there, those two years have a trend line that’s twice what we’re used to seeing, and it has climate scientists flummoxed about the reasons behind it.

So why talk about global climate issues in a conference about the Colorado River? Well, it should be obvious. There is no way this makes for a better world in which we live, a better world in which the Colorado River flows, and if you live in that world, tell me how to join in la-la land, because I’d love to be there.

I’m now convinced that we need to plan for the worst possible climate future, and that’s somewhere around 10 million acre-feet runoff. But what it also means is taking a hard look at every existing agreement in the river. It either breaks them or substantially modifies them.

Let me get to my plea. These facts should be a call to action to everybody. Not only are we in a really deep climate hole, we’re continuing to dig. Absolutely the last thing we need is the federal government undercutting our efforts to meet the water supply challenges in this basin. There’s a term called the pessimism aversion trap. I’m going to urge you not to fall on that. And it’s the tendency to look the other way when confronted with dark realities. We still control our destiny, even if the solutions seem daunting.

So I’m going to ask for two things. One, obviously, fight back against all these harmful cutbacks to all aspects of our national climate effort, including the abandonment of science and scientists. Our federal allies are critical partners in this fight, and lasting damage has been done.

Second, some of you think that your job description doesn’t include worrying about reducing greenhouse gas emissions or what might happen at 2100 or beyond. I disagree. I plead with you to get serious about figuring out how to reduce the emissions of your organization and even your own personal emissions. I agree that individual actions aren’t going to solve this, but they send a really strong signal to everyone around us.

Finally, I need to apologize to and beg forgiveness our next speaker who deserves to follow someone far nicer than I am.