How a Climate Disaster Is Also a Sign of Hope

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KQED

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Lake Powell, a 190-mile long reservoir in Utah that holds back the Colorado River, and which can hold 24 million acres of water, has dropped 140 feet since 2000 and 50 feet in the last year. But as the lake's surface recedes, leaving a bathtub-like ring marking its evaporation, Glen Canyon, a natural wonder which was partially flooded by the dam, has reemerged. As Elizabeth Kolbert writes, in that canyon, we are seeing the Colorado River restore itself in real time. Well talk to Kolbert about what it's like to celebrate "the effects of what, by most standards counts as a disaster" and the confounding feelings of finding silver linings in climate change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho LaPuerta, a health resort with 85 years of wellness experience, providing summer vacations centered on well-being. Special rates on three-and-four-night August vacations include sunrise hikes, water classes, yoga, and spa therapies, all set in a backdrop of a dreamy summer sky. A six-acre organic garden provides fresh fruits and vegetables daily.
0:24.0	Learn more at Ranchoer Tuerta.com.
0:26.5	Greetings, boomtown.
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0:42.8	From KQED.
0:43.8	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:57.8	Climate change has revealed new landscapes across the world.
1:00.9	Drought has withered plants, floods have scoured coastal cities.
1:04.3	Snowpack has melted.
1:05.9	But glittering among the disasters, the small new beauties of our changed world can be revealed.
1:11.2	In a New Yorker feature, Elizabeth Colbert tours one, the re-emerging Glen Canyon in Utah,
1:16.1	which had been drowned to form the reservoir known as Lake Powell.
1:19.7	So today on Forum, we'll talk climate, adapting to a new landscape,
1:23.3	and how we do, or more often don't, make choices about our struggling water infrastructure.
1:28.4	That's all next on Forum, after this news.
1:46.7	I'm Alexis Madrigal. Welcome to Forum.
	...

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