Population Matters-USA – Page 2 – working for a sustainable world

There isn’t a shortage of water so much as a longage of people

Paraphrasing Garrett Hardin

This morning I cut down a little piñon tree. It had died during the winter, and was unsightly this spring with dead needles clinging to its branches. It had looked stressed last summer so I had watered it 2 or 3 times, as in previous summers. I guess it was given too little water, too late. This little tree was victim of our megadrought.

There was media coverage when a scientific paper on North American drought was published. Regrettably, the media lost interest in the subject which will affect so many lives. The paper’s title wasn’t prepossessing: “Large contribution from anthropogenic warming to an emerging North American megadrought”. Its two main points were correct, unfortunately. The North American megadrought has emerged. A megadrought is defined by its duration—it must last 20 years or longer. When the paper was written, the drought wasn’t quite that old. An update was published two years later, confirming the concerns of the original paper.

The megadrought started at the turn of millennium, and is still with us as of June, 2024. All of La Plata County, Colorado, is experiencing moderate drought.

The second key point of the paper is that “anthropogenic warming” is a major cause of our drought. Yes, we humans are responsible for almost half of the dryness. These two papers calculate that more than 40% of our megadrought is human caused, due to global heating.

Both articles used tree-ring data to estimate prehistoric rainfall. Since trees grow faster when there is adequate precipitation, this is a valid method to use before records were kept. There are tree-ring data for SW North America that go back 1200 years. The second paper states that the current megadrought is the worst in that whole 1200-year stretch!

Drought isn’t confined to the USA. Mexican farmers faced crop failures caused by a heat dome affecting most of the country. Canada is also suffering. There are areas of extreme drought in the Canadian west where terrible wildfires are burning.

The drought can cause a positive feedback loop with harmful results. Drying of bodies of water, such as the Great Salt Lake, exposes dry earth. Spring winds blow the dark dust onto white snow, causing it to melt sooner. This can cause deluges of early snowmelt and produce flooding—too much water at the wrong time—that doesn’t contribute to groundwater.

How serious is this megadrought? We will see more communities like Rio Verde Foothills, Arizona, where residents have practically no water source. In 2022 Severance, Colorado, realized that its water was already serving the maximum number of people and had to stop issuing building permits. Using foresight, last year Arizona stopped issuing building permits in some areas around Phoenix due to lack of water.

What can we do about the megadrought? Of course, most important is being careful with the water we have. In addition, we need to limit our carbon emissions, because our use of fossil fuels is what is causing the increase in drought. To quote the first megadrought paper: “The magnitude of future droughts in North America and elsewhere will depend greatly on future rates of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions globally.”

One of the goals of the local organization, 4CORE (Four Corners Office for Resource Efficiency), is to reduce local carbon emissions. Their programs include making homes more energy efficient, encouraging use of rain barrels to harvest precipitation, and electrification of homes and transportation. Most of all, we must recognize that arid land cannot support many people.

©Richard Grossman MD, 2024

There are many mysteries in medicine. One of the mysteries that has plagued me for years may now have a solution.

When I was in medical school I learned about Stein-Leventhal syndrome. Women with this condition tend to be overweight and have excess body hair. Their ovaries have lots of little cysts, and don’t seem to function normally because the women have irregular periods, or no bleeding at all. Although this may seem to be just an annoyance, it is really more serious. Lack of periods may lead to endometrial cancer. Often the best treatment for this syndrome is oral contraception, because the hormones help regulate periods and reduce the risk of developing this cancer. However, often the reason a woman with this syndrome will seek medical care is because of infertility, and The Pill won’t help with that!

Through the years the name changed to “sclero-cystic ovary syndrome” and now it goes by “Poly-Cystic Ovary Syndrome” (PCOS). I used to think that the cause of PCOS was obesity; indeed, some women who are obese will have symptoms similar to women with PCOS, but their ovaries are normal. In the past experts said that PCOS was caused by an increase in the level of Luteinizing Hormone. LH is made by the pituitary gland; this hormone helps control ovarian function. Usually it spikes before ovulation, but people with PCOS have relatively constant, high levels. What causes the LH to be elevated? No one seemed to know. This seemed to be more of a finding than a solution to the mystery.

Now there appears to be a solution to the mystery of PCOS’s cause, and I should have guessed it years ago. I first became interested in endocrine disrupting chemicals when I had a chance discussion with a professor of chemistry over 20 years ago. These chemicals are everywhere, and in essentially every person’s body who has been tested. The latest ones to grab media attention are the omnipresent “forever chemicals”, PFAS. They have been found in drinking water supplies all over the USA in miniscule amounts. You might be thankful that they are not more concentrated, but the reality is that many endocrine disruptors are more troublesome when very dilute. A tiny pinch of an endocrine disruptor in an Olympic-sized swimming pool can be enough to cause serious problems!

Many modern chemicals are endocrine disruptors—they interfere with our hormonal systems. Bisphenyl A (BPA) is added to plastics to make them flexible; it was one of the first chemicals to be recognized as harmful. Perhaps you have a water bottle that claims it is “BPA free”. Don’t celebrate too much, because the chemicals that replace BPA, such as BPF, are often equally harmful.

More than 90% of people in the USA carry BPA in our bodies, and women with PCOS have higher levels of BPA than women without PCOS. This strongly suggests that BPA causes some cases of PCOS. As a result of this endocrine disruption, many also have increased levels of male hormones, and thus their increased body hair.

As bad as BPA and other endocrine disruptors are on adults, their effect on a developing fetus may be both worse and more insidious. Fetal exposure to BPA may be associated with several problems affecting both females and males—but it is too early to know with certainty.

My goal is for people to be able to have control over their own fertility. Dangerous chemicals such as BPA may reduce fertility involuntarily. I look forward to more testing of chemicals that may affect endocrine systems, and better regulation should they be found dangerous.