Lessons We All Should Learn From The Great Salt Lake Crisis

Those of us on the east coast have heard that the Great Salt Lake has receded to the verge of a public health crisis, including because toxins in the sediment that have been underwater for millennia may soon may soon be widely spread air pollutants. Today I had the opportunity to visit the rapidly shrinking Great Salt Lake and hear from leading experts about what might be done about it. Much of what I heard surprised me. More importantly, some of the lessons learned in Utah are generally applicable to our still evolving response to our global climate emergency.

How much has the Great Salt Lake shrunk? In the modern era it has lost 73 percent of its water and 60 percent of its area. Of the 120 saline lakes on the planet, 100 are in decline and on average they have shrunk, on average, 60 percent. That means that as bad as things are at the Great Salt Lake, there are many other places where things are worse.