Daytime temperatures for the coming days are forecast to get up to 36 – 37° C, a bit on the warm side even for here. But as temperatures are on the rise everywhere, maybe this is not so exceptional.
In the daytime, the air-conditioner goes on, usually by at least lunchtime, and stays on till the evening. When I go for a walk, or do any physical activity outdoors, I make sure that it’s before 09:00 or after 18:00. Then it’s fine. Evenings are also cooler, so we normally manage to sleep just with a fan.
Actually, the heat part of climate change doesn’t have me worried so much. The air-conditioner becomes an addiction, it’s true, but I’ve managed to spend many a summer in south India, where it both hot and humid, without any A/C at all. There, it’s the ceiling fan that feels like a necessity – it’s just awful when the power goes off!
The fact is we can adapt; and probably will need to do so.
Adaptation might mean adopting some of the life-style habits and other wise choices made by southern peoples.
In many parts of the global south, during the hot hours, people will just find a shady part of the street, stretch out and enjoy an afternoon nap in situ. Southern Europeans seem sometimes to be skipping the siesta these days, due to the pressures of work, a modern lifestyle and, maybe, just the luxury of A/C.
In South India, buses and houses dispense with the idea of glass windows. Traditional keet (straw) walls allow the least breeze to pass through.
In Palestine, where there is more of a winter, older houses have thick stone walls, high ceilings and are often cooled by a cistern in the cellar, where rainwater is collected. Those houses remain cool even on the hottest days. In addition, the houses and streets of old villages would be arranged in such a way as to maximize shade.
We may not be able to build like that today, but we don’t need to: we are much more knowledgeable about matters like insulation. We just need to put our knowledge into practice and not build, for example, houses with heat absorbing red tile roofs, like this one (what was I thinking?).