Maine has become an example of the dangers of global warming. Here you can see from the water mark on the boulder that our pond water levels are down by more than a foot. Maine is suffering more from long-lasting drought than any other state on the east coast, according to yesterday’s weekly U.S. Drought Monitor.
In Brooklin and other Maine mid-coast areas, that drought is “extreme,” the government’s second-most dangerous category:
In addition to lowered ponds and lakes, streamflows and well levels are low. If this keeps up, wells will dry up and many Mainers will have no residential source of drinking water. Hovering above all of this is the increasing dangers of wildfires, rising sea levels and increasingly harmful storms.
We had rain yesterday afternoon and last night, but it wasn’t nearly enough and much of it couldn’t sink into the hardened ground. I’m beginning to realize why a perfected artificial intelligence might decide to take over the world and rid it of incompetent, greedy and vicious humans who continue to make bad things worse.
(Photograph taken in Brooklin, Maine, on September 15, 2026.)