The Western US is an empire built on snow. And that snow is vanishing.

Since most of the region gets little rain in the summer, even in good years, its bustling cities and bountiful farms all hinge on fall and winter snow settling in the mountains before slowly melting into rivers and reservoirs. That snowmelt, often traveling hundreds of miles from mountain top to tap, sustains the booming desert communities of Las Vegas, Phoenix and Salt Lake City — even coastal Los Angeles and San Francisco. A civilization of more than 76 million people, home to Silicon Valley and Hollywood alike, relies on snow.

“The snow in the mountains is this incredible gift that created California,” said Spencer Glendon, founder of climate outreach initiative Probable Futures and former director of investment research at Wellington Management. “Nobody would build all of that stuff in a climate that was on the brink of being a desert.”

Dangerously high temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and California’s deadly McKinney Fire flung the Western states’ changing climate back into the national spotlight this past week, and it only gets tougher from here. With the Southwest gripped by its worst drought in 1,200 years, there’s less precipitation of any kind these days across the region, especially the crucial frozen variety with its multi-month staying power. Rain, as desperately as it’s needed, isn’t quite the same: Unless it goes into a lake or reservoir, it won’t be available for weeks or months in the future, the way snowmelt can be. What little winter precipitation does arrive now often lands as rain and runs off, long gone by summer. The West’s mountain snowpacks have shrunk, on average, 23% between 1955 and 2022. By the end of the 21st century, California could lose as much as 79% of its peak snowpack by water volume.

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The Western US, which gets little rain in the summer, relies on its fall and winter snow for survival. But that precipitation is dwindling, and the economic fallout could be dire https://t.co/xRG3XP7D3d
The End of Snow Threatens to Upend 76 Million American Lives

— Svein Tveitdal (@tveitdal) August 4, 2022

It is with great pleasure that I send my warm greetings as you continue your meeting in the fifteenth Lambeth Conference. As we all emerge from the pandemic, I know that the Conference is taking place at a time of great need for the love of God – both in word and deed.

I am reminded that this gathering was necessarily postponed two years ago, when you had hoped to mark the centenary of the Lambeth Conference that took place in 1920, in the aftermath of the First World War. Then, the bishops of the Anglican Communion set out a path for an ongoing commitment towards Christian unity in a changing world; a task that is, perhaps, even more important today, as together you look to the future and explore the role of the church in responding to the needs of the present age.

Now, as so often in the past, you have convened during a period of immense challenge for bishops, clergy and lay people around the world, with many of you serving in places of suffering, conflict and trauma. It is of comfort to me that you do so in the strength of God.

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LATEST. The #LambethConference is taking place “at a time of great need for the love of God” in a changing world, the Queen has said https://t.co/99s53mNWyg

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) August 3, 2022

There are two reasons to put solar panels on the roofs of Calvin University.

One, renewable energy can provide power for the private Christian campus in Grand Rapids, Michigan, without adding to the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and nitrous oxide that are driving climate change.

Two, it will save the school some money.

At Calvin, the environmental reason is primary. The budgetary help is a bonus.

“I think taking care of the planet is a prerequisite to being a Christian,” Tim Fennema, vice president for administration and finance, told CT. “And as a Christian university, it’s something we want to do.”

Calvin is on a mission to be carbon neutral by 2057. The school got a little closer last month when it announced a partnership with the Indiana-based Sun FundED to come up with a plan to install solar arrays on university buildings, offsetting the high-carbon energy sources Calvin currently uses to heat, cool, and power the campus.

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More evangelical colleges and universities are trying to reduce carbon emissions by moving away from fossil fuels https://t.co/YaE3A0X5uh

— Daniel Silliman (@danielsilliman) August 3, 2022

Then came a massive contradiction. Abp. Thabo, drawing upon his experience in reconciliation in South Africa, forcefully asserted that what needs to happen in the Anglican Communion is an eye-to-eye conversation between people of different views to present their facts on a matter to reach the truth. Moments later, it was noted that the churches of Nigeria, Uganda, and Rwanda have not attended any Communion meetings since 2008 due to repeated violations of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 by the Episcopal Church and others. When another correspondent on Zoom asked about resolving this situation, he was told the question was out of order. As he attempted to address the fundamental underlying issue (Lambeth 1.10), he was muted. It seems that the facts, in fact, are not welcome, despite what was asserted about the nature and practice of true reconciliation within the Anglican Communion.

Realizing the outrageous contradiction made, the Lambeth Press team later allowed the questioner to ask about Lambeth 1.10 in a very brief discussion on the Call for Human Dignity. In that discussion, Bishop Thornton again asserted that Lambeth is not legislative and that all provinces are autonomous. When asked what would happen if the Global South motion to reaffirm Lambeth 1.10 was affirmed, his only comment was, “I don’t know what’s going to happen.” When asked about the process regarding the discussion of Lambeth Resolution 1.10 in the Human Dignity Call, Bishop Thornton said he could not talk about what process they would observe because it was confidential.
This kind of obfuscation continued as we awaited the results of the long-anticipated discussion on the Human Dignity Call. Instead of a report on the proceedings, we received at the Press Conference an email from the Lambeth conference that included only Archbishop Justin Welby’s opening remarks. In the Human Dignity session, the bishops were given only one hour to discuss the major cause of the division within the Anglian Communion around all that Lambeth 1.10, yet most of that time was taken up by Welby’s speech. (You can read the entire statement here) No time was given for the Global South leaders to speak out on the Resolution.

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Bishops travelled from Canterbury to London on Wednesday for the launch of a new environmental initiative, the Anglican Communion Forest.

A tree was planted in the garden of Lambeth Palace, in the first act of what, it is hoped, will become a global movement of reforestation and habitat renewal.

Bishops are being encouraged to launch initiatives in their dioceses which help to preserve and regenerate the ecosystem; this need not necessarily be tree-planting, the Bishop of Norwich, the Rt Revd Graham Usher, said, at a press conference on Wednesday morning, but could include restoring grasslands, or taking action to prevent the destruction of the rainforest.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said that there was “no doubt about the urgency, severity, and scale of the climate emergency”, and that it was “most especially an emergency for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable”.

“We are not just doing symbolic actions,” he insisted. He said that the structure of the Anglican Communion made it possible to “reach to the very heart, the very ground level of what is happening”.

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LATEST. Bishops travelled from Canterbury to London on Wednesday for the launch of a new environmental initiative, the Anglican Communion Foresthttps://t.co/4IX0XIypcN

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) August 3, 2022

O LORD God, who hast called thy servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown: Give us faith to go out with a good courage, not knowing whither we go, but only that thy hand is leading us, and thy love supporting us; to the glory of thy Name.

—Daily Prayer, Eric Milner-White and G. W. Briggs, eds. (London: Penguin Books 1959 edition of the 1941 original)

And as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came upon them, annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the morrow, for it was already evening. But many of those who heard the word believed; and the number of the men came to about five thousand.

On the morrow their rulers and elders and scribes were gathered together in Jerusalem, with Annas the high priest and Caiaphas and John and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family. And when they had set them in the midst, they inquired, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a cripple, by what means this man has been healed, be it known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well. This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, but which has become the head of the corner. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”

–Acts 4:1-12