"We haven't had any rain since Thursday, and parts of the yard are still squishy," my stepmother told me over the phone in a tone of amused amazement this past Saturday.
Pools of standing water prevented my dad from working in the garden, and the dogs churned up patches of mud, which they happily dragged through my parent's house in El Cajon, Calif. a medium-sized city sitting in a desert valley on San Diego's eastern border.
Eleven year's worth of rain in just over a month, said my dad while I looked outside at a Seattle sky that seemed more like late summer with its unclouded expanse of blue than late winter.
A few days later this atmospheric role reversal between the Pacific Northwest and the Pacific Southwest flooded back into my brain after learning the Kyoto Protocol officially went into effect on Feb. 15.
An increasing, and impressive, body of scientific work suggests that the atypical weather we've been experiencing is inexorably linked to the staggering rise of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Recognizing that the Earth's atmosphere is the ultimate global commons, the Kyoto Protocol is taking the first small, global steps focused on moving humankind toward an ecologically balanced relationship with the planet.
Signed by 141 countries, the anti-global warming treaty took 13 years to negotiate. The United States played an important role in these talks as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gasses.
However, in one of his first foreign policy moves as president, Bush pulled our country out of the treaty. This lack of foresight, vision, and leadership pays absolutely no respect to the deep wells of innovative creativity Americans have to offer themselves and the world.
Just because Bush's oil-rich family and friends haughtily spurned the first international effort to reign in humankind's lethal polluting ways doesn't mean that our country's local governments are goose-stepping to the neo-conservative's fossil-fuel-based beat. Here in the Emerald City, the political leadership is looking at the Kyoto Protocol as a social and economic growth opportunity rather than an economic liability, as the White House talking heads want Americans to believe.
On the day Kyoto went into effect, Mayor Greg Nickels announced a plan to meet, and hopefully beat, Kyoto's community-wide goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent of 1990 levels.
According to the city's figures, Seattle's government has already slashed its emissions by more than 60 percent of 1990 greenhouse gas levels.
To help guide this effort, Nickels created the Green Ribbon Commission on Climate Protection. The group's purpose is to monitor the city's global-warming pollution reduction efforts and will include local business, environmental, government, community, and labor leaders.
This is a good thing, especially when considering it's chaired by Denis Hayes - the founder of Earth Day for god's sake - and Orin Smith, president and CEO of Starbucks.
"It's now clear that the effort to stop global warming in the United States will be led by cities and states, not the federal government," Hayes asserted after being appointed to help lead the city's efforts.
Hayes is right, and fortunately the mayor's environmental plan goes beyond committees and inter-governmental measures and appears to have some solid, Kyoto-minded tools available for Seattle's citizens to use.
First, Nickels and company are moving to make a community action guide that seeks to show Seattleites the various ways they can enact climate protection measures in their daily lives.
Second, the mayor's office is planning to use the inclusion of global-warming pollution reduction measures as a factor in awarding the ever popular neighborhood matching grants.
Extreme weather swings and inept federal leadership lacking the courage to inspire hope and cooperation for the good of humankind aside, motivating citizens on the household and neighborhood level to strive for ecological sanity is the right thing to do at a crucial time.
While Kyoto may not be perfect, at the very least it serves as a call to turn our creative and economic energy toward building a human society that works in respectful harmony with Earth's ancient rhythms. The Nickels administration isn't perfect either, but hopefully his actions will move the Emerald City toward becoming America's premier example of what it means to forge a modern, environmentally sustainable society.
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