If you think it’s been hotter lately, you’re not wrong. This past Sunday and Monday were the Planet’s two hottest days on record. Meanwhile, last month was the hottest June on record, and we’re on pace for the hottest summer ever recorded.
Given these brutal temperatures, one of the first safety tips is to stay inside. And that got me thinking about something depressing. Because of human-caused climate change, summer is the new winter.
Just like climate change is upending winters, replacing snow days with miserably sloshy days, so too does climate change upend summer: In each case, we’re driven inside, away from a world that is dangerously off kilter.
But whereas there has always been a degree of resignation to being inside during Old Man Winter’s favorite months — there’s something pleasant about reading a moody Russian novel by the fireplace — that same retreat indoors in the summer is just sad.
Summer used to mark pool parties, backyard barbecues, and, importantly, summer breaks; it was an all-day recess.
But with heat waves, kids are doing less splashing through sprinklers and more lounging in air-conditioned homes, looking through windows at a world that’s too hot to play in.
You don’t have to be a child playing out her summer break or an adult nostalgically returning to his childhood to be bummed out. One of my favorite holidays growing up was, and still is, Fourth of July — a day that embodies being outside.
I’ve tried to recreate the tradition in D.C., attending a Nationals baseball game every Independence Day. But what used to be an excuse to watch my favorite sport under the sun is now mostly a labor: something to sweat through, before eagerly moving onto the next activity, which is hopefully indoors.
Of course, that retreat inside is still a privilege for many:
Access to air-conditioning is unequally distributed across the United States, with the poorest neighborhoods less likely to have A/C.
Meanwhile, because of the urban heat island effect, those poorer areas are more likely to be hotter than wealthier, and whiter, neighborhoods.
And those places that have historically been cool — like Oregon, Washington, and Canada — are now struggling to survive without A/C: In 2023, a heat wave baked the Pacific Northwest, killing hundreds of people and sending hundreds more to the hospital. That heat wave, which saw temperatures hit as high as 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47 Celsius), was later found “virtually impossible” without climate change.
Those areas that do have A/C pump them like there’s no tomorrow, straining the grid and creating artificial igloos.
Office buildings, hotels, and museums, with their permanently sealed windows, become chilly mausoleums amid the summer heat (my office in downtown D.C. is frequently so cold that coworkers wear shawls and sweaters in the middle of July).
But there’s an immediate downside to air conditioning: A/C and other cooling units make cities hotter, accounting for 20% of all building energy use and 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
This new reality of extreme heat is ripping away part of our past, further separating us from the outdoors and leaving us with empty, fleeting memories of a more liveable world.
There’s a word for this feeling of loss: solastalgia, or a sort of nostalgic longing for a world before climate change. Jeff Goodell sums up this feeling in his 2023 book, The Heat Will Kill You First:
“We have the tools and technology to help us adapt and survive. At least the lucky ones have them. But our world will be transformed. The tree you used to climb when you were a kid will die. The beach where you kissed your partner will be underwater… Fourth of July celebrations will become life-threatening events. Snow will feel exotic.”
In times like these, an air-conditioner is a life-saver, but it’s also a man-made crutch, trying to stabilize temperature in an otherwise broken Planet. And when we flock inside during a heat wave, we flee from a part of our past, and into a future that is increasingly unrecognizable.
Good post. It is also worth pointing out that not only does AC use strain the grid and contribute to energy use and thus emissions, AC units also directly heat the area surrounding the building by ejecting hot air, exacerbating the heat island effect. Unfortunately, though far more energy efficient, heat pumps have the same fundamental problem. Both create, to quote JK Galbraith, “private affluence amid public squalor.”