Climate Change makes me feel dirty

Upon moving into our humble abode in St. Lucia, Sarah and I discovered a bucket of water in our kitchen. The conversation went something like this…

Me: What’s that bucket of water for?

Sarah: Maybe we’re supposed to drink out of it.

Me: I’m not drinking out of a bucket of water.

Sarah: I don’t know.

Me: What if it’s a Boy Scout type of thing? Like in case there’s a fire we have a bucket of water.

So we discovered what the bucket of water was actually intended for yesterday when we woke up to find out we didn’t have any water. No drop of water to brush my teeth, wash my luxurious mane of brown hair, or drink from. Sadness. So I did use the bucket of water even though I had extremely resisted it the first night. But only to brush my teeth.

When our boss Alleyne (pronounced Aa-lin) picked us up for the conference this morning we told him there was no water in our house. He did have water, and I apologized for any foul odors my person might have made. Alleyne explained to us that the Caribbean just got out of the worst drought it has experienced ever. It was illegal for St. Lucians to even water their plants, and it's common for all areas of St. Lucia to periodically have water outages. When this happens people collect water in buckets and keep it in their kitchen.

During the workshop we learned a few interesting things about how climate change is affecting the Caribbean. In some places there is less rainfall, while in other places there is more rainfall. When a climate is accustomed to a certain amount of rainfall, changing this can cause drastic results. The Caribbean has experienced an increase in hotter days and hotter nights. What this allows for are more mosquitoes to be around. And since there are more mosquitoes, there are more cases of dengue and yellow fever. Crazy!

My Island – My Community is fortunate enough to have a resident climate change expert with us during the conference. Dale Rankine explained to us that right now the globe is experiencing a 2 degree Celsius increase in temperature. Because of this we see rainfall weather patterns change and mosquitoes crop up. However, if we see a 5 degree Celsius increase in temperature the sea levels will change and the Caribbean islands will be entirely under water!

Fortunately St. Lucia has received rainfall recently. Sarah even captured a video. Point your browser over to sarahisonthelucia.blogspot.com to check out this glorious amount of rainfall. Thank you mother earth for showering us with your lovely elixir of awesomeness!

So yeah… climate change makes me feel dirty. Literally and metaphorically. Luckily today we woke up with water and I only feel dirty in the metaphoric sense.