The northern Mexican state of Chihuahua has been hit hard by drought over the past two years, leaving farmers at a loss for what to do next, Reuters reported.
What's happening?
While Chihuahua is normally a dry or semi-dry region, the last two years of drought have seen little rainfall at all. As a result, the Las Lajas dam is almost empty, and farmers have been unable to irrigate their crops.
"The levels of our farming wells are dwindling," said local farmer Angel Rueda Solorio. "We are no longer able to sow our crops due to the lack of water. We have already had several years, two consecutive years without rain."
The drought has also affected the local beekeeping industry, as bees have been unable to find flowers to pollinate, driving them into crop fields where they are killed by herbicides.
"There is almost no vegetation in the landscape right now, due to the drought," local beekeeper Adan Rascon Ramos told Reuters.
Why are droughts important?
Droughts do occur naturally in places like Chihuahua, but the burning of dirty energy results in large volumes of planet-warming pollution entering our atmosphere, overheating the planet at an accelerated rate and supercharging extreme weather like this drought.
"The situation is bleak," said Rogelio Pacheco Flores, the municipal president of Buenaventura, a town in the region. "This dam is practically without water. We see total devastation, the truth is that nature is punishing us."
According to the World Health Organization: "Rising temperatures caused by climate change are making already dry regions drier and wet regions wetter. In dry regions, this means that when temperatures rise, water evaporates more quickly, and thus increases the risk of drought or prolongs periods of drought."
Around 55 million people worldwide are affected by droughts every year, and that number is expected to rise, the WHO reported.
What's being done about droughts?
Scientists are hard at work genetically engineering crops that can withstand more extreme weather conditions — but this is ultimately a Band-Aid solution to the real issue, which is that climates are becoming more inhospitable to the crops that have long been grown there.
To stop these droughts from getting even worse and more widespread, we must stop dirty energy from wreaking havoc on our environment, including by switching to clean, low-cost energy sources like wind and solar.
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