Climate Change in Colorado: How It Affects Us and What We Can Do About It

Climate change is the preeminent issue that we face as a species in the 21st century, and its multidimensionality necessitates that it be understood from a holistic framework that takes into account both the scientific as well as the human sides of the problem, paying particular attention to the social, economic, and political factors that are connected to it. What makes climate change so important is the fact that it doesn’t just affect one group of people or one part of the world, it affects all of us. Inevitably, some areas will be more vulnerable than others, and many people are already experiencing the everyday reality of climate change where they live. We can see this, for instance, with people living in low-lying islands in the Pacific who may be forced to migrate elsewhere in the coming years due to rising sea levels, and with people living in the Arctic who are having to change their hunting and harvesting practices in response to the increasingly sporadic winter and spring seasons in these regions. Even in our own country, we are seeing climate change already take a toll on some coastal areas, like with the constant flooding in Miami Beach and the outbreaks of the Zika virus that have occurred in south Florida and Texas in the past several years.

Studying the places where climate change poses the biggest threat can provide us with valuable insights about how climate change might affect other places in a similar manner if temperatures and emissions stay on their current trajectory, but at the same time, these case studies have the ability to perpetuate the myth of climate change only affecting certain areas, lending a false sense of security to many people who aren’t in these extremely vulnerable locations. Climate change is a slow onset event whose signals can be hard to spot, but every place on Earth has been and will be affected by it in some manner. For this reason, it is imperative that case studies of climate change don’t merely concentrate on a few places; instead, all places need to become aware of the observed changes that are happening in their environments to develop the proper measures that will ensure their habitability for the long-term future. Being located near the middle of the continental U.S. surrounded by several other states, Colorado at first glance wouldn’t seem to need to worry much climate change, but this could not be further from the truth. The research that I have compiled indicates overwhelming evidence that climate change in Colorado is a serious issue that has started altering the nature of our state and will only become more pronounced, and the present and future impacts of climate change specific to our state should be known by all its residents and taken into account in every public policy decision that is made by the state and local governments going forward.

When you think of what Colorado represents as a place, chances are that having a high quality of life is one of the first things that will pop into your head. We are very lucky to live in a beautiful state with so many wonderful outdoor activities available to us, from biking to skiing to hiking in the mountains and more, which is why the potential of climate change reshaping our state to the point of it being virtually unrecognizable is so worrisome. Colorado is still a great place to live, but the mounting danger from climate change is becoming more apparent with every passing year. The effects, though not yet extreme, are real, and you don’t have to be a climate scientist to tell. I’ve only been alive for 21 years, but I can tell that the weather patterns in Colorado today are vastly different from what they were compared to just ten to fifteen years ago. During many days of November and December now, the temperature is routinely in the high 60’s or 70’s, making it feel more like Summer or late Spring than late Fall/Winter. And as we have seen this year with the relative lack of snow during what are supposed to be our snowiest months (March and April), precipitation seems to be decreasing, or at the very least, it’s becoming much more unpredictable- which is one of the hallmarks of climate change.

In addition to these signs that a regular person can discern, scientific measures confirm that climate-related changes in Colorado are occurring. Average annual state-wide temperatures have increased by about 2°F in the last 30 years and 2.5°F dating back to 1960 (Colorado Climate Plan 2015, 2), and this warming is responsible for the shift in Colorado’s climate. In early 2015, a climate change vulnerability study involving climate experts and researchers from CU Boulder and CSU was commissioned by the Colorado Energy Office, and along with the observed change in temperature, other trends in Colorado that were found to be a result of climate change in the study include: more heavy precipitation events and flooding, a decline in snowpack, snowmelt and peak runoff in the river basins occurring as much as one month earlier than usual, and a steady rise in soil moisture drought conditions over the past 30 years (Childress et al. 2015, ii).

Using global climate models, this study also generated future projections of climate change under a mid-range emissions scenario and broke down how it will impact the different sectors of society- ecosystems, water, agriculture, energy, transportation, outdoor recreation and tourism, and public health- to show how climate change can have wide-ranging effects on every facet of life. Under this mid-range emissions scenario, by the mid-21st century, Coloradoans can expect temperatures to rise by an additional 2.5°F to 5.5°F relative to the 1971-2000 baseline, summers to become “warmer than in all but the very hottest summers in the observed record,” April snowpack to further decrease, more severe droughts and longer growing seasons, and winter precipitation events to become more frequent and stronger than ever (Childress et al. 2015, ii). Any one of these trends or a combination of them would cause a chain of negative consequences on the sectors listed in the report, exposing existing vulnerabilities to potentially devastating effect.

While this 2015 report from the Colorado Energy Office presents a nice survey of some of the most vulnerable sectors and population groups related to climate change, it was not designed to act as a definitive statement on the specific policies that need to be enacted to mitigate and adapt to climate change in Colorado; instead, the report “provides a template that state agencies can use to develop a preparedness plan.” (Childress et al. 2015, vii). It’s not a coincidence, then, that later that same year in September of 2015, a Colorado Climate Plan was unveiled by Governor John Hickenlooper and the Colorado Water Conservation Board. Upon its release, the climate plan was met with criticism from both the political right and environmentalists alike (Frank 2016), and after reading most of it for myself, it’s not hard to see why.

Even though Colorado was identified as one of the thirteen states who had “detailed sector specific action recommended” in a journal article that analyzed the status of climate change state adaptations plans across the U.S. (Lysak and Bugge-Henriksen 2014, 331), the Colorado climate plan was not so much a plan of action as it was a regurgitation of the facts listed in the Colorado Energy Office’s vulnerability study. As pointed out in a piece written for The Colorado Independent, “Hickenlooper’s climate plan is certainly comprehensive in its description of how climate change will affect various sectors… But it largely promotes adaptation over mitigation, taking climate change as a given and prioritizing ways to ready the state for climate change rather than preventing it.” (Ray, 2016) Indeed, the language used in the report, like the phrases of increasing Colorado state agencies’ “level of preparedness,” “adequately preparing for the changes we cannot prevent,” and “Colorado is on the right track” (Colorado Climate Plan 2015, Executive Summary, 3), downplays the pressing nature of acting quickly against climate change, making it evident that Hickenlooper’s plan was written as part of his enduring “compromise approach” with environmentalists and the energy industry in Colorado (Frank 2016).

The main problem with Hickenlooper’s climate plan is that it fails to lay out any clear goals for how the state and its agencies are actually going to carry out recommended mitigation and adaptation policies. Unsurprisingly, without anything to go off of, little to no meaningful progress on climate change has been made in the past year and a half since the plan was disclosed to the public. The insufficiency of the plan reflects Hickenlooper’s uneven record on environmental issues and regulations (Frank, 2016), as he is in the pockets of the oil, coal, and gas industries. Hickenlooper originally worked as a geologist for the Buckhorn Petroleum company in Colorado before his political career, which offers an explanation for why he has catered to the ongoing drilling for natural gas and oil (Ray 2017), and why he is a strict proponent of fracking- even going so far as to drink some of Halliburton’s fracking fluid back in 2013. Even though Hickenlooper’s administration is supposedly working on “a new residential energy tax program, policies to boost solar energy production, and a statewide water plan that emphasizes conservation” (Frank 2016), his unwillingness to fully commit to opposing the economic interests of fossil fuel industries is symptomatic of the larger neoliberal corporatist mindset that is ingrained in so many establishment politicians that make up the United States government today, and it is holding Colorado back from making significant strides in combating climate change.

The other part of why this 2015 climate plan is inadequate is because it is not innovative; in fact, it actually moves Colorado backward in terms of climate change goals that had previously been established (Cross and Wockner 2016). The first major climate plan for Colorado was created under Governor Bill Ritter back in 2007, and it called for a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2020 and 80% reduction by 2050 based on a 2005 baseline (Ray 2016). Moreover, Ritter’s plan proposed moving forward on clean coal technologies, a carbon offset program for agriculture, and making oil and gas companies in Colorado report all their emissions to the state. In other words, Ritter’s plan had ambition and set out a tangible plan of action (Ray 2016). The 2015 report commissioned by Hickenlooper does briefly mention Ritter’s plan in the introduction, but it never talks about the specific goals and policies that were laid out by Ritter, as if Hickenlooper were trying to conceal the ineffectiveness of his plan because he knows it isn’t as progressive as Ritter’s.

The only true target included in Hickenlooper’s plan is to reduce carbon dioxide power plant emissions 30% by 2030 using a 2012 baseline, but even that isn’t anything new. Rather, it’s part of what Colorado pledged to do in correspondence with the 2015 Clean Power Plan policy that was created by President Obama, which was designed with the goal in mind to reduce nation-wide carbon power plant emissions 32% by 2030 as the U.S. transitions to more renewable energy sources (Ray 2017). The Clean Power Plan was going to go into effect in 2022 and be a big part of the United States’ push to meet the GHG standard set in the Paris Agreement, but as of last November, it is currently still under review as part of an ongoing legal battle in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Furthermore, since becoming President, Donald Trump has said that he is going to get rid of the Clean Power Plan, and at the end of March, he signed an executive order for the EPA to review the plan. Whether or not Trump will be able to dismantle the Clean Power Plan remains up in the air, but regardless, the more concerning fact is that the Clean Power Plan by itself doesn’t do nearly enough for emissions reductions anyways.

Analyzing the specifics of the Plan, Scientific American found that natural gas power plants will “still be emitting 771 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour of electricity in 2030” and that carbon emissions need to be reduced entirely by 2050 if we hope to limit global warming to 2°C (Biello 2015). As we know though, carbon is only one of the primary GHG’s, meaning that even if we erase all carbon emissions, we would still be polluting our atmosphere with other sources. The other big GHG is methane, which comes from natural gas. Under the Clean Power Plan, natural gas would become “the single largest fuel for electricity generation” (Biello 2015), and even though burning natural gas is conventionally thought to be better than carbon due to having a shorter half-life, the methane from burning natural gas is actually 88% more heat-trapping than carbon dioxide (Ray 2016), so even if we are emitting much smaller amounts of methane than carbon, it could be just as, if not more, harmful. Given that the current emissions goal in Colorado’s climate plan only accounts for carbon but not methane at all, it is no wonder why Hickenlooper’s plan projects that by 2030, overall greenhouse gas emissions in Colorado would rise 10% compared to 2010 levels (and 16% compared to 2005 levels) (Ray 2017), as the main driver in that rise would be the ever-increasing natural gas drilling. All of this is to say that the goal of reducing carbon power plant emissions in Colorado 30% by 2030, as part of the Clean Power Plan, is not only a step down from Ritter’s plan, it won’t get us where we need to be by then, both as an individual state and as part of the larger picture.

Last August, a new goal that modestly improves on the carbon reduction target in the 2015 plan was drafted by Hickenlooper and leaked to the press. It would have lowered carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector 25% by 2025 and 35% by 2035, but after again coming under fire, Hickenlooper scrapped the executive order and he now appears to be content with just remaining on track to meet the 2015 carbon target (Ray 2017). As such, “Even if CO2 were the only greenhouse gas, Governor Hickenlooper’s proposed new goals would translate to statewide GHG emissions reductions of only 8% by 2025 and 11% by 2035 compared to 2005 (levels)- both substantially less than the 2020 goal established by Governor Ritter.” (Cross and Wockner). The science says that Colorado should aim to reduce its net GHG emissions as close as possible to zero by 2030 at the latest (Cross and Wockner), but under Hickenlooper’s leadership, the exact opposite would happen, as overall GHG emissions are calculated to go up from the established 2005 and 2012 baselines. This prospect would be deeply troubling for any state, but it is especially so for Colorado, since our state is so dependent on its environment (Ray 2016). The only logical conclusion that can be reached is that a sizeable revision of the current Colorado climate plan is needed right away, and stricter regulations for GHG emissions from not only carbon, but also methane, must be the first step in this process.

As previously mentioned, the 2015 vulnerability study submitted by the Colorado Energy Office is a solid resource for understanding the general ways that climate change impacts Colorado in the present and the future, but I also found more specific information about the problems that climate change poses to particular sectors in our state. The four areas of interest that I chose to focus on are the areas that I believe will have the most important implications on Colorado in relation to climate change, and the remainder of this paper will explore those issues, which are water, extreme climate events, fracking, and energy sources.

Since water is the essential resource needed for all life, water resource management is arguably the most critical element in guaranteeing the sustainability of society. This goes double for Colorado being that it contains the headwater (source) of four major river systems that run throughout the U.S. (Colorado Climate Plan 2015, 7). One of these river systems is the Colorado River, which runs through seven different states and northern Mexico, and is divided into the lower basin (California, Nevada, and Arizona) and the upper basin (Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Wyoming) (Dettinger et al. 2017, 2079). Previous research has shown that the Colorado River in particular experienced drought-like conditions from the years 2000-2014, a formidable problem due to the fact that 70% of Colorado’s surface water comes directly from snowpack runoff (Colorado Climate Plan 2015, 7). A new 2017 Water Resources Research study took a look at the Colorado River Basin, finding that annual flows of the river during this recent drought were 19% below the 1906-1999 long-term average, with at least one-sixth to one-half (most likely one-third) of that flow reduction coming from the rise in temperature (almost an entire 1°C higher than the 1906-1999 average), making it the “worst 15 year drought on record.” (Udall and Overpeck 2017, 1). This finding implies that as annual temperatures in Colorado continue to increase, flow loss for the Colorado River may exceed 20% by 2050 and 35% by the end of the century- and that’s based on the most conservative emission estimates (Udall and Overpeck 2017, 1).

Still, temperature is not the only thing responsible for river flow. Precipitation is key too, and previous models from the Colorado Vulnerability Study and the Colorado Climate Plan had indicated that annual precipitation in Colorado may actually increase in the future, with the caveat that precipitation projections are very hard to predict and that there was no definitive consensus among climate scientists. However, one of the novel results from this new study is that it would be almost impossible for an increase in precipitation to offset the projected rise in temperature and keep river flows from further decreasing. The study smartly points out that during the recent 2000’s drought in the Colorado River, precipitation decline is only 75% of what it was during the River drought from 1953-1967, “thus begging the question of why the recent drought was more serious.” (Udall and Overpeck 2017, 5) The answer lies in current annual temperatures being much higher than any ever recorded from 1896-1999, whereas temperatures during the drought in the 50’s and 60’s were just slightly above the normal averages from 1896-1999 (Udall and Overpeck 2017, 5). In this same vein, the study expanded upon previous research that had been done on future risk of drought and put it in conversation with their data on reduced river flow, finding that:

…with continued anthropogenic warming, the risk of multidecadal megadrought in the Southwest increases to over 90% over this century if there is no increase in mean precipitation; even if modest precipitation increases do occur, the risk will still exceed 70% [Ault et al., 2014, 2016]. At medium warming (4°C), 20-30% precipitation increases will be needed to reduce megadrought risk below 50% and at high amounts of warming (>6°C), it will take a 40% increase in precipitation to reduce megadrought risk below 50% [Ault et al., 2016]. These changes in precipitation are huge and unlikely, and they would still only reduce megadrought risk to below 50%.” (Udall and Overpeck 2017, 5).

Therefore, the chances of the Colorado River Basin and much of the Southwest drying out in the near future are high so long as temperatures continue to get hotter each year, barring an enormous increase in precipitation. As river flows are reduced and the demand for water becomes higher as the population increases, water delivery shortages in both the Upper and Lower Basins could occur. And with the Colorado River supplying water for approximately 40 million people across all of the major cities in the Southwest, as well as the entire Front Range in Colorado, this would be problematic not only on a state level, but also on a national (and international in the case of northern Mexico) scale, illustrating that the Colorado River drought is “every bit as serious” as the multiyear drought California has been experiencing (Udall and Overpeck 2017, 2). The only way to make sure that such a crisis is avoided will require both significant emissions reductions in Colorado and each of these states, and greater collaboration between the states in the Upper and Lower Basins to ready themselves for a megadrought and work out new agreements about how the River and its water distribution can be managed without shorting any party (Udall and Overpeck 2017, 12).

Drought-like conditions don’t only affect water management, they also can act as positive feedback loops that destabilize the environment and magnify extreme “natural” disaster events. This is the case with flooding and wildfires, two things that Colorado is no stranger to, especially after 2013, when we had both the Black Forest Fire in June and the catastrophic flooding across the Front Range in September of the same year. Although climate conditions do not cause an extreme flood or wildfire to occur by themselves, they are both integral in the formation of these events and they both exacerbate the devastation these events are capable of inflicting. According to a 2014 study that investigated the complacency (the stability of fire frequency) and sensitivity (inferred severity) of fire regimes to centennial and millennial scale climate change in the Rocky Mountain subalpine forests, the frequency of droughts and rate of summer evaporation have both increased in the past 1500 years, “highlighting a direct link between fire and climate.” (Higuera et al. 2014, 1429) Additionally, the study differentiates the direct and indirect effects of climate change on fire, and by comparing the biomass burning of the forest with fluctuating temperatures across the early, middle, and late Holocene periods, it comes to two conclusions. One, that fire severity is impacted by change in climate more than fire frequency and two, that droughts indirectly affect fire severity by modifying the plants and fuels in the forest (Higuera et al. 2014, 1429), both of which should be kept in mind as the climate keeps rapidly changing.

Similarly, a journal article focusing on whether extreme storms can be attributed to climate change looked at four different extreme storms that have occurred in the 2010’s, one of which was the 2013 Colorado flooding. In studying the floods that occurred here, the authors determined that “In Denver, the three highest amounts of total column water vapor ever recorded for September (since 1956) occurred on September 12-13 2013.” (Trenberth et al. 2015, 727-728) At the same time, sea surface temperatures off the west coast of Mexico were more than an entire 1°C above normal for all of August 2013, and these high sea surface temperatures pushed a “river of atmospheric moisture” northward into Colorado right when the record water vapor hit Denver (Trenberth et al. 2015, 728). The combination of these two forces made the conditions ripe for the massive flood that would occur. What this means is that high sea surface temperatures influence extreme storms by feeding moisture into weather systems, and though sea surface temperatures are subject to natural variability, they also involve a significant human component (Trenberth et al. 2015, 728), all but proving that climate change indirectly impacts the formation of floods and other extreme events.

Shifting gears once again to return to fossil fuels, fracking is yet another climate change driver that Colorado will have to try to contend with. Not only does fracking contribute to rising temperatures by burning fossil fuels and polluting the air, it is also detrimental to the environment because it uses water that gets contaminated and is then lost in the hydrological cycle. In the past four to five years, fracking in Colorado has gone through the roof, as more and more gas and oil companies seem to be coming in here every day to set up their own wells. Unfortunately, recent developments make it appear that the fracking craze won’t be going away any time soon. Governor Hickenlooper’ support for fracking is well known, but the bigger dilemma is the passage of Amendment 71 last November, which, “in the words of the Denver Post’s editorial board, will make it ‘nearly impossible’ for Colorado voters to amend their state constitution to allow for local fracking bans- or, for that matter, anything else.” (Light 2016). Now that the amendment has been voted in, a proposed local ban against fracking would need to get 2% of the signatures from registered voters in each of Colorado’s 35 state districts just to make it onto the ballot (Light 2016). 2% may not seem like that much, but it would be very difficult to obtain 2% of registered voters to sign an anti-fracking petition from every district given that there are a number of overwhelmingly conservative districts in the state who are ok with fracking, not to mention how much it would cost to push such an initiative and gain enough traction in every district. The passage of this amendment came seven months after the Colorado Supreme Court rescinded fracking bans that had been instituted by five Colorado communities in 2015 and ruled that fracking is not under local control (Light 2016), a devastating blow to anti-fracking sentiments. From 2001 to 2015 and 2012 to 2014, natural gas production and oil production, respectively, have doubled in Colorado, and now with Amendment 71, production would only figure to further increase (Light 2016). As Suzanne Spiegel, an anti-fracking organizer put it, “The political system in Colorado is really aligned with the oil and gas industry” (Light 2016), and until a radical realignment comes about, there’s sadly not a whole lot that can be done to prevent fracking in our state.

If fracking is the proverbial thorn in Colorado’s side, then the renewable energy sources are the bright ray of hope. Oil and natural gas production in the state still reign supreme overall, but encouragingly, renewables are also on the rise: in 2004, 0.54% of Colorado’s energy was generated from renewable sources, while in 2014, the amount of renewable energy in Colorado jumped up to 14.36% (Colorado Climate Plan 2015, 3). The plains of eastern Colorado have seen a large uptick in solar and wind energy in the past decade, and as of July 2016, 16% of Colorado’s energy in the past 12 months originated from the almost 2,000 wind turbines that line the eastern plains (Proctor 2016). When combined with the new solar power plants that are being built, over $5.4 billion of renewable energy has been invested into eastern Colorado (Proctor 2016), which is great not only because of the fossil-fuel free energy it produces but also the economic benefit it brings to Colorado as a whole and these individual communities. All told, Colorado’s eastern counties have amassed $2.7 billion worth of revenue from these renewable projects, and the construction of these plants and turbines have created hundreds of jobs for construction crews and maintenance operations (Proctor 2016). There’s no reason why Colorado shouldn’t be able to expand these projects even more and fully transition to having all clean energy within the next 10 or so years, except of course the stranglehold that the oil and gas industry have over Colorado’s politics. In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as President, Colorado is forecasted to be at the center of the national energy debate. With the oil and gas industry thriving but renewable sources quickly gaining momentum, a Denver Post article from last December predicts that a mix of the two will probably be maintained, “with an ongoing shift toward renewable energies, as market conditions allow.” (Eason 2016) The good news is that state lawmakers are working on putting a plan in place to have 30% of Colorado’s energy be generated by renewables by 2020 (Eason 2016), and the task now is to make sure that becomes a reality.

In the grand scheme of things, climate change is a national and global issue, but it ultimately all comes back to affecting local communities. Because of this, all adaptation and mitigation plans need to involve people deciding what’s best for their communities and actively participating in the political process and the environmental movement. This paper has shown that Colorado faces a number of burgeoning climate change impacts, and if we want our state to remain as it is, these impacts will need to be addressed. With a President who is trying to defund the EPA, a governor who won’t commit one way or the other, and a state legislature that is split, it’s apparent that a top-down approach to climate change isn’t working, which leaves it up to us to take it upon ourselves and do everything we can working with our local governments to find solutions from the bottom-up. Right now, the cities of Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins are leading the way: Boulder has targeted 80% GHG emissions reduction by 2050 and 100% renewable energy by 2030 (Eason 2016), Mayor Hancock aims to have Denver follow suit and eliminate 80% of its carbon emissions by 2050 (Finley 2015), and Fort Collins hopes to be 100% carbon neutral by 2050 (Ray 2016). As these governments continue to establish further environmental action, the hope is that we can make more and more people aware of the seriousness of climate change and shift the values of our culture to one that puts the interests of our climate first, with the eventual goal being to translate that ideological shift to a state and national level. In the meantime, the fight goes on, and each of us is responsible for protecting the future of our city, state, country, and world to the best of our ability.

References

Biello, David. "How Far Does Obama's Clean Power Plan Go in Slowing Climate Change?" Scientific American. August 06, 2015. Accessed April 20, 2017. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-far-does-obama-s-clean-power-plan-go-in-slowing-climate-change/.

Childress, Amber, Eric Gordon, Theresa Jedd, Roberta Klein, Jeff Lucas, and Rebecca McKeown. Colorado Climate Change Vulnerability Study. Report. Edited by Eric Gordon and Dennis Ojima. January 2015. Accessed March 11, 2017. http://wwa.colorado.edu/climate/co2015vulnerability/co_vulnerability_report_2015_final.pdf.

Colorado Climate Plan. Report. 2015. Accessed March 11, 2017. http://cwcbweblink.state.co.us/WebLink/0/doc/196541/Electronic.aspx?searchid=243b8969-739b-448c-bd2d-699af9b7aea0.

Cross, Kevin, and Gary Wockner. "Hick moves Colorado backward on climate change." Boulder Daily Camera. September 10, 2016. Accessed April 20, 2017. http://www.dailycamera.com/guest-opinions/ci_30348292/kevin-cross-and-gary-wockner-hick-moves-colorado.

Dettinger, Michael, Bradley Udall, and Aris Georgakakos. "Western water and climate change." Ecological Applications 25, no. 8 (2015): 2069-093. April 3, 2017. Accessed April 20, 2017. file:///C:/Users/Andrew/Downloads/Dettinger_et_al-2015-Ecological_Applications.pdf.

Eason, Brian. "Trump EPA could put Colorado at center of climate change, energy debate." The Denver Post. December 12, 2016. Accessed March 11, 2017. http://www.denverpost.com/2016/12/09/trump-epa-colorado-climate-change-energy-debate/.

Finley, Bruce. "Denver aims to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050." The Denver Post. April 19, 2016. Accessed April 24, 2017. http://www.denverpost.com/2015/12/03/denver-aims-to-cut-carbon-emissions-80-percent-by-2050/.

Frank, John. "Hickenlooper’s climate change plan draws scorn, spotlights his record." The Denver Post. June 07, 2016. Accessed April 20, 2017. http://www.denverpost.com/2015/10/07/hickenloopers-climate-change-plan-draws-scorn-spotlights-his-record/.

Higuera, Philip E., Christy E. Briles, and Cathy Whitlock. "Fire-regime complacency and sensitivity to centennial-through millennial-scale climate change in Rocky Mountain subalpine forests, Colorado, USA." Journal of Ecology 102, no. 6 (2014): 1429-441. August 8, 2014. Accessed April 20, 2017. file:///C:/Users/Andrew/Downloads/Higuera_et_al-2014-Journal_of_Ecology.pdf.

Light, John. "Oil industry's sneaky plan could make it nearly impossible to ban fracking in Colorado." Grist. November 07, 2016. Accessed April 21, 2017. http://grist.org/climate-energy/oil-industrys-sneaky-plan-could-make-it-nearly-impossible-to-ban-fracking-in-colorado/.

Lysak, Marin, and Christian Bugge-Henriksen. "Current status of climate change adaptation plans across the United States." Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Climate Change 21, no. 3 (2016): 323-42. Accessed April 20, 2017. https://0-link-springer-com.skyline.ucdenver.edu/article/10.1007%2Fs11027-014-9601-4.

Proctor, Cathy. "Wind and solar power the Colorado plains." Bizjournals.com. November 11, 2016. Accessed April 22, 2017. http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2016/11/11/wind-and-solar-power-the-colorado-plains.html.

Ray, Kelsey. "The doomed fight to fix Hickenlooper's impotent climate plan." The Colorado Independent. March 10, 2016. Accessed April 20, 2017. http://www.coloradoindependent.com/158236/the-doomed-fight-to-fix-hickenloopers-impotent-climate-plan.

Ray, Kelsey. "Critics say Hickenlooper's clean energy pledge falls short of needed climate action." The Colorado Independent. March 31, 2017. Accessed April 20, 2017. http://www.coloradoindependent.com/164668/hickenlooper-trump-clean-power-plan-colorado.

Trenberth, Kevin E., John T. Fasulio, and Theodore G. Shepherd. "Attribution of climate extreme events." Nature Climate Change 5 (2015): 725-30. June 22, 2015. Accessed April 20, 2017. http://tb4cz3en3e.search.serialssolutions.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info%3Asid%2Fsummon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info%3Aofi%2Ffmt%3Akev%3Amtx%3Ajournal&rft.genre=article&rft.atitle=Attribution of climate extreme events&rft.jtitle=Nature Climate Change&rft.au=Kevin E Trenberth&rft.au=John T Fasullo&rft.au=Theodore G Shepherd&rft.date=2015-08-01&rft.pub=Nature Publishing Group&rft.issn=1758-678X&rft.eissn=1758-6798&rft.volume=5&rft.issue=8&rft.spage=725&rft_id=info:doi/10.1038%2Fnclimate2657&rft.externalDocID=3957202001&paramdict=en-US.

Udall, Bradley, and Jonathan Overpeck. "The twenty-first century Colorado River hot drought and implications for the future." Water Resources Research, 2017, 1-15. Accessed April 20, 2017. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016WR019638/epdf.

#Politics #Opinions