Beginning with the 2026 Drought: What Can We Do About Climate Change?

About the Topic

If you live in Seattle, drought may seem an unlikely concern.

We know long winter rains, gray skies, wet forests, and the much-discussed Seattle weather.

But in spring 2026, Washington declared a statewide drought emergency. One important cause was not an absence of rain, but a winter too warm to leave enough mountain snow.

In the Pacific Northwest, snowpack is a natural reservoir. It stores water in winter and releases it through spring and summer, supporting rivers, irrigation, urban water and power, and forest ecosystems. Drought also affects wildfire risk across the western United States.

Warmer winters raise the rain–snow boundary, bring less snow, and cause earlier melting, changing familiar water cycles.

Beginning with the Pacific Northwest drought of 2026, this talk considers questions closer to everyday life than they may first appear:

Why does global warming mean more than hotter weather?

How can a place face drought, floods, heat waves, and wildfire smoke?

Why can Seattle receive substantial winter rain and still face pressure on water supplies and ecosystems in summer?

Why must climate discussions address atmospheric circulation, the water cycle, ice, snow, and uncertainty as well as carbon emissions?

What can we do as individuals, technology workers, city residents, and members of organizations?

This will not be an account of climate change framed as impending doom.

I do not want people to leave feeling only anxious or powerless, or to reduce climate action to switching off a light or using one fewer plastic bag.

Instead, we will work through the distinctions between weather and climate; greenhouse gases, extremes, water, agriculture, and ecological risk; mitigation and adaptation; and the connections among personal choices, community resilience, professional skills, organizational responsibility, and institutional change.

Climate change is not one person’s fault and cannot be solved by one person’s perfectly arranged lifestyle.

Understanding it, discussing it, and considering it in work, consumption, voting, investment, and collective decisions are ways to begin participating.

To begin, I would like to ask a small question:

Did you change anything during the recent heat wave?

Perhaps you chose a higher hiking route, considered air conditioning, worried about a power outage, or changed when you exercise. Perhaps unusual weather stopped feeling like something confined to the news.

Such experiences make climate change part of the shared circumstances of life, rather than only charts, terminology, or a distant future.

Fear alone cannot address climate change. Understanding, conversation, more resilient lives, and more responsible systems offer places to begin.

If climate change is a long collective challenge, let’s start with Seattle’s water, mountain snow, and the drought of 2026.