Mike Tidwell caught the attention of program producers with a very personal book – The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue. It detailed climate change on his street in Tacoma Park, Maryland. Stately old oaks that had given the place charm and shade were dying, and people like him were getting tick-borne diseases.
“I have struggled with chronic Lyme disease for more than a decade from a tick bite that I got in my back yard," he says. "I manage the condition with periodic antibiotics and supplements. It’s not a picnic, but there was an Eagle Scout in my neighborhood – he spent a year bed-ridden from Lyme disease -- postponed going to college.”
His church was repeatedly flooded. Today, Tidwell says, people are getting tired of extreme weather – like last winter’s deadly ice storm in Virginia.
“As the jet stream wobbles, because of climate change, you’re going to see these cold bursts, followed by a very strange spring where we had record high temperatures, an on-going drought," he explains. "We’re predicted to get a lot of heat and rain from a super El Nino that’s forming, and the kind of damage we saw with Helene, the on-going sea level rise is a threat to the U.S. Naval Base – the biggest in the world -- in Hampton Roads, these are all factors that just won’t go away.”
He’s encouraged by greater public attention to the proposed build-out of data centers that require huge amounts of power generated with fossil fuels.
“What people aren’t appreciating enough is how extraordinary the public backlash is. I’ve just never seen anything like this in 25 years of being a climate and clean energy advocate. All over the United States, Republicans, Democrats, urban, rural, old, young -- the response is the same. We don’t like these things. We’re concerned about AI. We blame our rising utility bills on this. A friend of mine calls it organic, color-blind outrage.”
This year’s legislative session in Richmond held not one but two lobby days over the issue, with buses converging from around the state.
Despite having a president who contends wind turbines cause cancer, Tidwell is hopeful that offshore wind and solar power can meet the state’s energy needs, and he won’t be surprised if Virginia decides not to encourage more data center construction.
“I think that you’re going to see more states like Maine proposing multi-year moratoria. You’ve got the wealthiest industry in the history of money in the tech companies, and then you have voters," Tidwell says. "I think a lot of politicians are starting to understand that they can either do what the tech industry tells them or you can keep your job.”
He says this country will have to catch up with worldwide changes that bode well for our future.
“Every day, around the world, human beings deploy a gigawatt of solar power. That’s the equivalent of a new nuclear power plant every day. Half of all cars sold this year in the world’s largest automobile market – which is China -- will be electric cars. The war in Iran has just further emphasized the need to lower dependency on fossil fuels.”
Five years ago, he says, he could sit on his front stoop and not see an electric car for hours. Now, he reports, there’s one or more every five minutes, so he agrees with the Secretary General of the United Nations who said we are going in the right direction. We just need to go faster.
The series will air Sundays at 1:30, beginning July 5th on VPM, while Blue Ridge PBS and PBS Appalachia plan to air it Wednesdays at 7:30, beginning August 5.
