Global Warming Both an Economic Boon as Well as Threat to Colorado

When they were teenagers my parents remembered walking through Washington Park in south Denver on their way to school in the wintertime. Back then, they recalled the lack was usually frozen solid all winter long.

With the exception of the abnormally severe winter this past season, the lake at Washington Park has been almost devoid of ice since the 1980s. Others remember that in summers long ago you could almost count on a rainstorm practically every summer afternoon. Nowadays rain in the Denver metro area is rare though severe thunderstorms on the eastern plains are not. Indeed, Colorado now seems to be stuck in a neverending drought pattern. Tornados, once relatively rare in Colorado, are becoming increasingly common. Once again this week, the record temperature for the date was beaten on Father's Day when the air temperature was 97 degrees.

Much of the early research that suggested global warming was a reality was conducted at the NOAA facility in Boulder, Colorado, so Colorado has known about global warming for a good deal longer than much of the nation. Happily, the local utility XCEL energy has been one of the leading developers of alternative clean energies, such as solar and wind (XCEL is one of the largest consumers of wind energy in the nation), yet because of the presence of enormous coal reserves in Colorado, Utah and especially Wyoming, most local energy still is produced by coal. A proposal by XCEL to build a coal plant met with what many feel is short-sighted opposition from some local environmental groups.