That late evening sometime between May 15 and June 15, when your roommate heard the first hints of hail pounding on the roof and kicked you out the screen door and you were torn between throwing blankets over the tomato plants or getting the least-bad car from the curb into the safety of the garage, which you should have done at 4 p.m. but forgot, that’s when you became a true Coloradan.
That scramble has long been a late-spring/early-summer ritual on the Front Range, which is regularly pummeled by hundred million-dollar damage hail storms that almost make you feel sorry for new car dealers and their acreage of vulnerable car tops.
But with each insurance renewal, the hail rituals become a reminder of the proximity of climate change. Perhaps your mountain condo HOA’s insurance premiums doubled, or worse. Maybe you’re paying $300 more per car each year as auto insurers try to keep up with damage payments. It’s possible you’ve been canceled from any insurance offers if you live in a wildland-urban interface increasingly exposed to droughts and wildfires.
We’re here to hear your complaints, your fears and your details. We’re getting ready to host a panel with some top insurance experts who will face your challenging questions about how climate change is hitting consumers hard in the form of premiums. It’s one of the first areas of the economy where everyday consumers are feeling the true impact of the planet’s warming. We’ve got the state insurance commissioner, the state trade group’s chief, and a national consumer voice. Join us for the live airing of the panel July 9.
In the meantime, send us your ideas, questions@ColoradoSun.com, and your premium invoices, and we’ll put them in front of the experts.
On to the news — thanks for joining us.
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
CLIMATE
Boulder residents giving up single-occupancy car trips, but not fast enough
It’s taken a long, slow drumbeat to convince Boulder residents to give up their American birthright of single-occupancy car trips, in favor of buses or bicycles. The challenge is documented in thousands of diary entries across more than 30 years, as Boulder leaders seek evidence that their climate change goals are achievable.
So what secrets are revealed in this year’s diary unveilings?
The city continues to make good progress slowing the use of one person/one car. Single-occupancy trips are down to about 35% of all travel, from 44% in 1990 when the diary collections began. Nearly 18% of trips are now on bikes, scooters or e-bikes, double from 9% in 1990.
But it’s not enough, by Boulder’s own standards.
Reaching the city’s climate and clean energy goals means getting to only 20% of local trips by people driving alone in cars in 2030, and a few factors are complicating things. The pandemic hugely disrupted public transit services across the country, and ridership hasn’t recovered in Boulder or much of anywhere else.
Transit agencies had to cut back on the number of routes and their frequency; fewer employers are paying for EcoPasses for employees; and teleworking is still high. In fact, the portion of residents now teleworking on the day they were assigned to fill out a diary is up to nearly 25%, from only 8% in 2009.
Teleworking is good for the climate goals, right? Fewer single commuters on the road. Except that those homebound workers are still jumping in their cars for errands. Daily vehicle miles traveled for the 1,000-odd diary writers last year did not change from the year before.
Because 1,000 people have been filling out the detailed diaries for decades now, they also serve as an anthropologist’s dream database on modern culture. One out of five respondents received a home package delivery on the day they were assigned to make an entry, and 38% of those said the delivery replaced their own trip in a vehicle.
Those numbers may be helping hold down more rapid growth of vehicle miles traveled. In theory, home deliveries can be better for the environment if they employ a computer-programmed, efficient route using the battery-powered vans that Amazon and other companies are fast acquiring.
Boulder says the diary entries point city leaders toward a redoubling of work to reduce single-occupancy driving. That includes more ways to support restoring public transit to pre-COVID levels, working with large employers on progressive options, and further smoothing the way for so-called “micro-mobility,” like those bikes and scooters.
Stay tuned. The secrets of the Boulder diaries won’t stop.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
MORE CLIMATE NEWS
WATER
Is climate change robbing mountain groundwater, too?
25%
Groundwater contribution to streams in the East River Basin in Colorado
In 2021, Upper Basin states, including Colorado, saw 80% of their normal snowpack. But once spring runoff started, they only saw 30% of the average flows in their streams and rivers. What gives?
It’s a central question for scientists around the overstressed Colorado River Basin, where streams and rivers provide water for 40 million people. They’re looking at precipitation, evaporation, thirsty soils, warming temperatures and more. Rosemary Carroll, a research professor of hydrology at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada, decided to look below the surface.
“One of the areas that was really not well understood is groundwater in these mountain systems — how important is it?” said Carroll, the lead researcher on a groundwater study published May 23 in the academic journal, Nature Water.
Groundwater is stored in the cracks in rock and spaces between soil and sand, forming aquifers. Some of that water can eventually reach the surface and join streams and rivers. From there, it can eventually reach reservoirs or flow through tunnels, canals, ditches and pipes to supply homes, farms and businesses.
In mountainous areas, most of the water in streams comes from snowmelt. Without a lot of data, it’s been assumed that groundwater is not really a huge player.
That’s not the case, Carroll said.
The research team looked at the East River Basin northeast of Crested Butte and found that on average, 25% of the streamflow in the basin comes from groundwater. It acts like a buffer in dry years, she said. Without it, late summer and winter flows would fall and streams would go dry.
Then Carroll cranked up the temperature. By modeling future warming, the scientists found that groundwater storage would fall to the lowest known levels after the first extremely dry year and fail to recover even after multiple wet periods. That would impact water supplies on the surface, Carroll said.
Scientists need to account for groundwater in their research on the Colorado River Basin, Carroll said. Otherwise, their results will always be rosier than reality. Stay tuned for more at ColoradoSun.com about the role of groundwater in a warming river basin.
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Shannon Mullane | Water Reporter
HEALTH NEWS
CHART OF THE WEEK
When people despair about controlling the growth of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere anytime soon, China is often their worry-prompt. To continue its massive, rapid industrialization and urbanization, China is constantly adding new fossil fuel sources for energy, from coal-fired power plants to diesel trucks and buses. Right?
Energy analyst Lauri Myllyvrta, writing for Carbon Brief, has been watching for the chance to offer a different take. And last month, they found it: a one-month drop in China’s carbon output, after a long stretch of growth. Those cheap solar panels China is dumping on the West are also making a big change at home, with new energy now generated more by far from solar, wind and clean sources than new fossil fuel burners.
It might not be the final turnaround, Myllyvrta says, but it’s the sign of things to come. And a bit of hope.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
Thanks for joining us for commuting, water and other vital news this week. Remember the upside of the Avs’ and Nuggets’ early playoff exits: You can stay outside in the late sunshine and ignore what look like Panthers and Celtics finals sweeps. See you next week!
— Michael & John
Corrections & Clarifications
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