One thousand and two hundred years

First, here's a fact to set the scene. According to Scientific American, the American west is experiencing a drought unlike anything it has seen in the last 1,200 years.

Let's repeat that: the greatest drought in one thousand and two hundred years.

But that's just a number. What's the reality for the people living it? Enter Coalinga, a small Central California town. You might have seen a bit about them recently in the New York Times.

There's no sugar-coating this: things are bad there right now. Really bad.

Empty playground fields withered in the sun. Swirling dust lifted from parched soil, literal pieces of the land wafting away in bitter dryness. Their sole aqueduct and only water source is projected to run out before the end of the year.

This is our climate future, where Americans are held hostage by our water shortages and towns and ways of life face actual extinction.

This isn't some hypothetical debate between Democrats and Republicans. Climate change is real and here. And our duty, beyond trying to mitigate the damage, is protecting its survivors.

Our responsibility in this climate fight? It remains to each other.

We cannot ask the people of Coalinga, California, to abandon their homes as their wells run dry, much like we cannot ask their children to endure a generation of hardship if their parents rightly choose to stay to try and save their town.

The next steps aren't pretty, but we have to try. They're two-fold, so let's start right at the top.

→ Continue doing everything we can to address climate change. Even though we're already seeing the harsh results of inaction, that doesn't mean we give up. If anything, it means exactly the opposite.

→ Support small towns like Coalinga, be it through heavily-subsidized water, emergency declarations, anything and everything must be on the table if we're going to keep these communities alive.

This isn't a Democratic or a Republican problem, an urban or rural problem. It's a human problem.

We caused this. We can solve it. Because if it's them today, tomorrow it's us.

That's why Global Warming Solutions exists and why I'm writing to you. While our federal government and the state of California are working hard to save lives in drought-stricken towns like Coalinga, GWS is all about that first part – active efforts to address climate change.

We won't give up in this fight. Ever. And we hope you won't either.

Rob