heat and carrying on
how much ought we change?
The increased temperatures confronting those living on this planet are highly unlikely to moderate in the near term, though history does have a few oddities we can look back upon. Following Indonesia’s massive Krakatoa eruption in 1883, the world’s temperatures were depressed for months because of ash in the sky reflecting the sun’s heat back into the atmosphere, lowering temperatures around the globe by several degrees on average. The same was true to a lesser extent after the May 1980 explosion of Mt. Saint Helen’s in Washington state. The nature-induced exception to our planet’s upward trend, however, were truly curiosities rather than a reversal in heating trends. I would not welcome the super-volcano at Yellowstone as a method to decrease climate issues, however, so I prefer we start pondering extreme weather and climate rather than a catastrophic natural event solving our problems.
For the most part, thus, temperatures continue rising is my operating assumption today.
We aren’t, however, altering behaviour quite as readily as one might anticipate. Sure, people stay indoors during the heat as possible but they have always done that over the summer in climes where the temperatures soar. Yes, in extreme snowfall conditions, we see people hunker down after cleaning out the groceries of milk, beer, toilet tissue and bread; for hurricanes, it’s batteries and water in bottles. Those are outstanding preparatory reactions to isolation.
Summer is a period when visitors flock to the beautiful cities of old but Europe still doesn’t equip many of its buildings with air conditioning, meaning that virtually no true relief from temperatures above 33 degrees Celsius where heat stroke can affect those with severe health challenges. Heat in conditions compared with the southwest of the United States in the old days can be far more than merely unpleasant; it’s dangerous. Relief can be hard to find under these circumstances in a Europe still operating as if it were 1724 rather than 2024.
I am primarily musing today about institutional change of behaviour. As noted in the New York Times this morning, we are carrying on with normal, scheduled huge events but should we be? Amassing hundreds of thousands people as heat rises and the necessary resources remain scare seems a bit peculiar to me.
The Paris Olympics, scheduled for next month, will occur in an era when July is increasingly beastly across Europe. London, a few degrees of latitude north, suffered through utterly horrid heat year before last. Spain is not that much further south but regularly fries folks as temperatures reach dangerous levels. It’s possible the temperatures will peak in a sustained heat dome precisely as the world’s athletes and associated fans convene. Finding relief, even in a metropolis, may become quite a challenge for the volume of people gathered to watch the fanfare.
Wimbledon, in London’s southwest suburbs, is a comparable example. Some fans will sit under shelter, as they do in Melbourne during the late January Australian Open tennis tournament, but many will suffer under draining heat for hours to be part of the crowd witnessing these famous global sporting skills.
What about cricket in Karachi or Mumbai as temperatures soar well above 120 degrees Fahrenheit? Players and fans are exposed to raw heat for an extended period because the games must go on yet dangerous conditions are guaranteed in the subcontinent year in and year out.
Sporting events bring to mind voluntary participation, provoking many of you to ask: yes, but if they want to go, it’s their choice, isn’t it? Why should anyone intervene? Absolutely true. I am not the least bit trying to assert that government needs to prevent these wildly popular contests though I do wonder whether the organisers would do well to consider postponements for the sake of the game—players and fans.
What does strike me as an event where multiple governments might want to intervene to prevent the excess of a thousand deaths so far in 2024 is the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj. According to the Koran, one of the Five Pillars of Islam for every believer who is physically and financially capable is to make the trek to visit the Kaaba in Mecca. That journey involves wearing prescribed garments to conduct a walk around the Kaaba, into nearby areas, and for a fixed period of time. The Hajj, bringing thousands upon thousands to the Saudi peninsula, moves across the calendar but the heat of Saudi Arabia is persistent, intense, and life threatening most of any calendar year.
And it is occurring right now this year, accounting for the well over thirteen hundred deaths of (the term for those who participate in this ritual) this year alone.
I fully understand that the Hajj requires sacrifice to meet Allah’s commandments but is it something that Mullahs could deem too dangerous for a particular year? I ask not out of subversive intent but out of practical ignorance: is the need for the sacrifice so profound to justify the pilgrim’s death at the event? It is a serious question though it also has several intricate complications.
Because the Hajj involves so many people coming to the Kingdom, the practical preparations must be insanely complicated. Yet the trip is a required, under the conditions noted, event in one’s life to be faithful. Changing its specific scheduled time would not be easy but it does raise ethical questions to me, a non-Muslim, about its execution. Is risking one’s life to do the Hajj a requirement or an optional opportunity? Does Islam’s Holy Book offer the religious authorities any opportunity for flexibility?
Our own activities are a bit more adjustable in the United States but we still engage in some dangerous behaviour. Baseball games go on daily, including in open air stadia with stifling heat and humidity in Dallas or Kansas City; at least Phoenix retains low humidity with its fiery temps. A few teams play in air-conditioned arenas. Golf tournaments on courses across the nation must transpire during the day to see the wee white ball but fans rarely have any shade from the sun beating on them. Of course they can voluntarily leave but far too many stick it out at their peril. Could we reschedule tournamets out of the hardest hit months?
As the heat deepens annually and extends past the traditional end of summer on Labour Day weekend, football kicks off with fans similarly exposed to beastly heat and humidity—often involving beer (as also appears at baseball games). The combination of sweaty conditions and high beer consumption levels can be fatal for someone underprepared and unwilling to take steps to assure her or his safety through responsible intake.
Simply preparing for football season involves asking young men’s (overwhelmingly) bodies to undergo rigourous stress that can be fatal if not medical response inadequate. Eager youngsters may not recognise the stress they are undergoing or ignore its possible effects because their obsession with the game succumbs to the myth of invincibility of youth. Yet life’s only certainty—at some point—is death rather than any false sense of guaranteeing continuing life because one is 19 rather than 89.
So, what is my solution? Encouraging people to be responsible and sensible rather than superheros. We also should adjust those events we can with relative ease (not scheduling the Olympics in the northern hemisphere between May and September, for example) is a good first step. Annapolis is an admittedly small town but just five days ago, the city delayed an annual parade because of fear for citizens’ prolonged exposed to the diabolical heat. We ought to maximise that behaviour wherever possible to reduce risks but we are never going to eliminate them entirely.
Climate change perhaps ought be called extreme weather change as that is what we are experiencing. Is ‘dangerous weather change’ more descriptive, thus appropriate? I suppose that an option but not a likely one everyone will execute.
Whatever we call the current environmental changes underway, we are seeing consequences for all of us in many ways. But we are trying to ignore these consequences. It’s still taking us a long while to internalise them, then figure how to respond regularly to not risk physical danger. I suspect we are years embracing reactions as easily as we breathe daily. Yet the number of changes we will need adopt are likely greater in the years ahead than we realise today.
By not adapting our lives to the world we now inhabit, anecdotal evidence indicates we will have much harder lives than trying to keep the old behaviours going in the new situation. Not necessarily impossible but far harder. How will we decide what to change and what to keep? Is it merely a random, individualised choice? Can we do these things as individuals or will we have to resort to government’s role to assure the process? Is that worse or better for us all? I suppose it depends on many things. And I am confident we will never completely agree on any answer yet we will have to figure out how to respond to climate dangers as well as pay for the health care for those who fall prey to its effects.
Actions create consequences, even if those actions are not directly controlled by human hands. Such as fascinating world we occupy.
I welcome your criticisms, comments, and thoughts on this or any other topic. Thank you for reading this column. Please feel to circulate it. Thanks especially to those who subscribe financially to Actions. I appreciate your support more than you know.
The days may be getting shorter but the heat getting longer. Be well and do be safe. FIN
Lazaro Gamio, Zach Leavitt, Elena Shao, and Malika Kuhrana, ‘Tracking Heat Across the World’, NewYorkTimes.com, 22 June 2024, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/world/global-heat-map-tracker.html
Stephen Kalin, Summer Said, Saleh el-Batati, and Mena Farouk, ‘Scorching Heat Ravages Hajj as More than 1170 Pilgraims Die’, WallStreetJournal.com, 21 June 2024, retrieved at https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/scorching-heat-ravages-hajj-as-more-than-1-000-pilgrims-die-d175a311?mod=Searchresults_pos1&page=1