CLIMATE CHANGE
Like many Granite Staters, I grew up playing pond hockey in New Hampshire. On many a winter afternoon, I would grab my hand-me-down skates and stick and tramp through the snow to a nearby pond. There, my friends and I would lace up our skates in a hurry, shovel away the fresh snow for a rink, and get to it! Rarely did we, or our parents back home, think about ice safety.
But there’s one thing missing these days: sturdy ice, and the steady winter cold on which it depends.
When I tried to take my kids skating in early February at a shallow spot in Nashua I was sure it would be secure after a string of cold nights, I broke through near the shore before putting on my skates.
A few weeks later, I tried to compensate for the lack of ice near home by taking the kids north into the White Mountains. We tried the outdoor rink in Lancaster, only to learn it had long since closed for the season on Feb. 5. In a forlorn social media post, the rink operator noted, “It is disconcerting that two seasons back to back have been disasters lasting less than 20 skateable days out of a possible 70 days.”
Driving out of town, we noticed the rope tow where I had learned to ski was in a similar bind. There were no cars in the lot, and its website bore the simple headline: “Due to the weather, we will not be opening this year.” Below it was last year’s headline, just as sad and even more succinct: “Closed for the 2022-2023 season.” A nearby pond still had ice but it was not the hard crisp kind I remember, making hockey impossible. The ice fishermen we encountered told us they were making their retreat that day, with more rain and mid-50-degree days in the forecast.
Instead, we settled for an indoor ice rink, whose electric bill must have been sky high with the AC cranking on account of the high temps. So much for winter, I thought.
Turns out, this little family anecdote is not so anecdotal. In early February, shortly after Punxsutawney Phil predicted another early spring, temperatures topped 60 degrees in parts of New Hampshire. It was not as high as the 77-degree February record set in 2018, but it fit a broader trend of rapidly warming winters across our state and region.
According to the latest data from local weather stations, average winter temperatures have shot up over 6 degrees since I was a kid in the 1980s, one of the fastest rates of warming in the U.S. at twice the national average. In fact, the 2023 data showed Concord, NH, ranks in the top five winter warming locations out of some 250 cities nationwide analyzed by the nonprofit Climate Central.
And it’s not just the heat that’s throwing New Hampshire winters, and our multibillion-dollar outdoor recreation industry, for a loop. Earlier this season, Granite Staters were greeted by near-record flooding, along with record temps, when 8 inches of rain fell over the White Mountains in a single day shortly before Christmas. The floods were part of a pronounced trend of increasingly intense rainstorms, with average hourly rainfall up over 20% since 1970. The warming weather is also driving unprecedented declines in snowpack of 10-20% per decade, according to a new Dartmouth study.
It was a costly, if fitting, end to the warmest year ever recorded on Earth, with global average temperatures up nearly 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels in the late 1800s, thanks to our ever-increasing consumption of fossil fuels. It has brought us perilously close to the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold set by the U.S. and other nations in 2015, above which our planet will face catastrophic climate damage.
But lest we think these problems are just “out there” in the environment consider the impacts of climate damage on human health and our economy.
As average winter temperatures cross the freezing threshold during the day, New Hampshire’s tick population has exploded. The NH Department of Environmental Services (DES) began tracking the tick-borne disease Lyme two decades ago, which can cause debilitating long-term effects in humans, and found a more than five-fold increase from 262 cases in 2002 to 1,563 cases in 2021. Tiny ticks, whose population balloons in mild winter conditions, are also the primary threat to our mighty moose: According to Fish & Game, around 70% of young moose in NH and 90% in Maine did not survive their first year on account of winter tick infestations.
Winter warming means that allergy season starts earlier and ends later each year, with 39 more freeze-free days compared to the 1970s. So far, pollen concentrations have increased more than 20% nationwide since 1990, and could rise another 250% this century, according to the National Academy of Sciences. That’s bad news for the 30-40% of people (like my wife) who now suffer from allergies.
Even worse for Granite Staters with respiratory conditions is the fine particle air pollution (PM 2.5) that comes from burning fossil fuels and from upwind forest fires like the massive Canadian wildfires last summer (cause and effect of global warming, respectively). According to the latest available estimates from DES in 2017, around 1,300 Granite Staters die prematurely each year from man-made PM 2.5 air pollution, and hundreds more are hospitalized with cardiac and respiratory conditions.
These tragic effects, combined with the estimated 518,676 acute respiratory symptoms and 67,175 lost work days annually in New Hampshire, added up to a staggering $5.1 billion public health cost in 2024 dollars. That was before last year’s wildfires brought some of the worst air quality in the world at that time, and the worst ever recorded locally, to Northeastern cities and also affected New Hampshire. In fact, the newly released 10th National Risk Assessment shows air quality in more populous parts of the state is projected to worsen in the coming decades due to the interaction between extreme heat and drought, wildfires and fossil fuels.
Combine this $5.1 billion public health cost with the threats of warming winters to our state’s $3.3 billion outdoor recreation industry and multiple billion-dollar climate disasters affecting our region in 2023 alone, and the economic imperative to act is clear.
While individual actions certainly matter — like electrifying our homes and cars and generating cheap, pollution-free power on our roofs — they are not enough to protect our winters, our health and our economy from climate damage. Real progress starts with a comprehensive statewide climate action plan, which NH DES is now drafting with a Climate Pollution Reduction Grant from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. More than planning, NH must move into active implementation of proven solutions in energy efficiency and renewable energy that will lower costs and carbon pollution for everyone.
After eight years of climate inaction by the present administration in Concord, including numerous vetoes of bipartisan bills aimed at curbing carbon emissions, New Hampshire’s next governor must envision a fossil-free future and declare our state open for clean energy business. By removing arbitrary caps and correcting the undervaluation of local renewables, NH leaders can unleash thousands of well-paying jobs and billions of dollars in private investment to build our local clean-energy economy.
These simple solutions will not solve my pond hockey problem overnight, but combined with other climate actions by individuals and institutions, our winters — and world — might just have a fighting chance.
Dan Weeks is a co-owner at ReVision Energy. He lives in Nashua with his wife and kids.
