Year 2, Month 1, Day 2: The Gypsy Woman Told Me…

The Times Of India notes that the tea plantations of Assam are reporting short crops…and flavor changes. The growers are attributing this to climate change. Why not? It makes a good hook for a letter.

The effects of climate change and the greenhouse effect are now beginning to be felt everywhere humans live and farm the land. Long predicted by climatologists, the problems attendant on planetary atmospheric warming have arrived. The changes reported in Assamese tea production, not to mention the unwelcome alterations in flavour reported by growers, are localized symptoms of a worldwide problem. While a specific example of extreme or unusual weather cannot be attributed directly to global warming (because that’s not how climate science works), the evidence is irrefutable: a warmer atmosphere makes weirder weather increasingly likely — more droughts, more floods, more “once-in-a-century storms” occurring every few years. It appears that scientists’ predictions match what Assam’s tea leaves are saying: humanity is facing an unimaginably different and difficult future, even if we change our ways immediately. And should we fail to make those changes, it’s going to be a bitter cup indeed.

Warren Senders