--:-- Shamitha: Hey there, it's Shamitha here. We are working on a series for our weekly show, Apple News in Conversation, all about big life transitions. And we want to hear from you about one transition in particular, becoming a parent. We want to know how did parenthood change you, your identity and your sense of self. We want to hear both the good and the bad. Just use your phone's voice memo app to record yourself. Tell us your name, where you're from, and your story. And please try to keep it to about a minute. You can send it to us at AppleNewsToday at Apple.com. And we might include your story on the show. Thanks.
--:-- [Music transitions to a news theme]
--:-- Shamitha: Good morning. It's Wednesday, July 12th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, the catastrophic flooding in Vermont. How humans are changing the planet so drastically that we've pushed it into a whole new geologic era. And Hollywood braces for another major strike.
--:-- Shamitha: We'll start with Vermont, where floodwaters have taken over roads and trapped people in their homes. The images are dramatic, with people kayaking in the streets of the Capitol, cars underwater, shops swamped. Search teams are at work across the state trying to get people out of flooded homes and cars. More than 100 people have been rescued, but emergency workers say calls for help keep coming in.
--:-- Shamitha: Vermont took some of the hardest hits from the storm system that drenched the Northeast. Some places got two months' worth of rain in a few days. Officials haven't seen anything close to this in the state since Hurricane Irene back in 2011, which caused around $750 million in damage. AccuWeather estimates that damage and economic loss this time could hit $5 billion. In some places, waters are receding. People there face a massive cleanup.
--:-- [Music transitions to a news theme]
--:-- Shamitha: NBC talked to a local resident about the scale of the damage. Resident: There's no words. Just even unbelievable doesn't explain it.
--:-- Shamitha: A key dam in the state is being stretched to its limits and more rain is in the forecast for later this week. Yesterday Governor Phil Scott warned residents to brace for more. Governor Scott: So I want to be clear. We are not out of the woods. This is nowhere near over, and at this phase, our primary focus continues to be on life and safety before we can shift into a recovery phase.
--:-- Shamitha: Vox has a good step-back piece about the rise of extreme flooding, not just in America, but around the world. As the Earth gets warmer, floods are getting worse and spreading farther. A hotter atmosphere holds more water, meaning heavier and deadlier rainfall. As one scientist put it, climate change is delivering a new abnormal.
--:-- Shamitha: From floods to wildfires to extreme heat, we are living through one climate disaster after another these days. Human activity has been driving major change to climate, as well as other environmental impact. Now, some scientists say humans have done so much damage that we've taken the world into a whole new geological time period. They call it the Anthropocene.
--:-- Shamitha: You see, the Earth's 4.6 billion year history is divided up by geological eras. In science class, you've probably heard of some of the big ones from long ago, the Precambrian, the Paleozoic, or the Mesozoic, where the dinosaurs were. Some scientists believe that we are living in a new historical subchapter. They argue it began around 1950. That's when human activities, including nuclear weapons tests and a surge in pollution, began to leave an imprint on the planet's geologic record.
--:-- [Music transitions to a news theme]
--:-- Shamitha: Yesterday, they announced a key piece of evidence, a lake in Canada. Crawford Lake has this perfect combination of chemistry and conditions that is basically like a bellwether of what's happening to the planet. Sarah Kaplan is a climate reporter at the Washington Post. She explained to us this group of scientists is saying this lake is a record of human impact on Earth because it very, very deep.
--:-- Sarah Kaplan: Anything that fell into it, whether that was debris from logging or pollen from crops or even just specks of soot, sunk down to the lake floor where it was perfectly preserved in layers of mud. And so you can dig into the sediments at the bottom of the lake and really see the physical geological evidence of basically how much the world has changed as a result of humans.
--:-- Shamitha: Analyzing these layers allowed them to travel back through time, a thousand-year record of environmental history. They saw a spike in plutonium from nuclear tests, and there were other human footprints. They saw these black particles called fly ash that comes from burning coal. They saw other sort of molecular signatures of fossil fuel use. They saw that the species composition of the forest, the kinds of trees that grew in the forest, were changing in response to rising temperatures.
--:-- Sarah Kaplan: So the kind of cold-loving species weren't as able to thrive, and then the heat-loving species, you know, their numbers increased.
--:-- Shamitha: Scientists call this lake the Golden Spike, the hard geological evidence needed to prove the degree to which humans have transformed the Earth. Crawford Lake was selected from among a dozen possible Golden Spike candidates. Researchers say it's the best evidence we have that we're now living in a distinct era defined by human-driven environmental havoc, that we can see and observe etched into the Earth.
--:-- Shamitha: The Post has images and an interactive graphic where you can see how scientists dug up the lake and what they found. You can check it out on the Apple News app.
--:-- [Music transitions to a news theme]
--:-- Shamitha: Before we let you go, let's take a quick look at some other big stories in the news. Today, President Biden is at the NATO summit in Lithuania. His agenda includes a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and a speech on the importance of supporting his country. Zelensky arrived at the summit after sharply criticizing NATO members for not doing more to support Ukraine's desire for membership in the alliance.
--:-- Shamitha: As we talked about on the show yesterday, Republicans in the Iowa legislature voted to pass a bill banning nearly all abortions at roughly six weeks of pregnancy. That's before many people actually realize they're pregnant. The governor says she will sign it into law on Friday. It will quickly face legal challenges.
--:-- Shamitha: In Hollywood, we could be hours away from another major strike that could further freeze the entertainment business. We're in the third month of the writers' strike. Now the Actors' Union is agreeing to a last-minute call for federal mediation of its contract. But it says it won't extend its strike deadline. That means if there's no deal, actors could go on strike at midnight. That would put Hollywood in a situation it hasn't faced in more than 60 years. Writers and actors both striking over a contract dispute at the same time.
--:-- Shamitha: The last time that happened, the president of the Screen Actors Guild was a guy named Ronald Reagan. And finally, you might have seen headlines earlier this week about an unusual chance to see the Northern Lights in a big stretch of the continental U.S. That was based on an earlier forecast. But predicting this kind of thing is tricky to do. And it now looks like the northern lights will be visible in Alaska and maybe a few U.S. cities at high latitudes. Probably not in a larger part of the country, as early predictions said.
--:-- Shamitha: Not this time, at least. But keep your eyes peeled. Space weather data says we're heading for a period of maximum solar activity, which could mean more opportunities to see northern lights in more places. You can find all these stories and more in the Apple News app. And if you're already listening in the News app right now, don't go anywhere. We've got a narrated article coming up next from New York Magazine. Rebecca Traister looks at how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is affecting Democratic politics with his presidential campaign. She calls him both an adult conspiracy theorist and an undeniable manifestation of our post-pandemic politics. So sit back, enjoy listening to that, and I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
