If You Can’t Stand the Heat

By David Glenn Cox

I wanted to go swimming yesterday, but it was too hot. Admittedly this is Arizona, and I am conditioned to the heat. But like most of the country, it’s a little warmer this year than last. It’s nine o’clock in the morning, and it’s already over ninety degrees. As I step outside, it feels even warmer with residual heat coming up from the sidewalk and radiating off the building walls. The air thick with heat still and motionless.

If I went to the pool now, in thirty minutes or an hour, it would only be hotter. No longer refreshing as once in the warm water you must emerge eventually to face the heat and the oppressive sun. The air conditioning is acting up in my car. There’s nothing wrong with it. Only it is unable to conquer one hundred- and twelve-degree heat on short trips. Let the temperature drop down to one hundred or so, and it just works fine. Sitting at a light in a closed-up car under the pounding sun and it just doesn’t have the BTUs.

In Mecca, the pilgrims are dropping like flies this year in the one hundred- and twenty-five-degree heat. Come for the religion! Stay for the heat stroke. Massive flooding in China and a dam gives way in Minnesota. Wildfires almost everywhere it isn’t raining.  The other day it tried to rain here but couldn’t get up enough gumption. The grey overcast clouds wanted to rain but couldn’t gather up enough moisture to spit in this dry climate. The clouds hung motionless prostrated by the heat finally spitting out a few pitiful drops of water.

Not enough rain to even wet the pavement as the drops were vaporized as soon as they hit the sun-baked asphalt. If you blinked, you would have missed the whole thing.

Back in the 1970s the battle was about smoking. With Republicans insisting there was no direct connection to cancer caused by smoking tobacco. You can’t prove that! Was their battle cry.  But you could prove the connection between the tobacco lobby and the Republicans. It reached such a farcical nature of Republicans defending tobacco when it was clearly untrue. And it’s like Déjà vu all over again.

There’s no such thing as climate change! You can’t prove that! There’s no connection to all this weird fucking weather with man made activities! There is a direct connection from the Republicans to the fossil fuel industry. It’s Déjà vu I tell you! But it is getting harder to avoid, isn’t it?

Let me play Dr. Doom here for a minute. If we meet our carbon reductions targets of 35% while the population expands geometrically, what will we be accomplishing? One billion automobiles motoring across planet earth. And for every gallon of gasoline used six gallons of air are used. And more than 60% of the weight of the gasoline is in pure carbon.

Politicians whistle past the graveyard for the simple reason that any cures they might suggest would be painful. And no politician wants that. “I have nothing to offer this house but blood, toil tears and sweat.” That’s old hat, today we form a committee. They make a study and write a blue-ribbon panel expert report and if we are lucky. They shall make it so long enough that no one would ever dare to read it.

So, what are we going to do? Elon Musk is going to Mars for some reason. He’s got it all planned out and robots will do everything. They will mine ore and build our shelters. The robots will repair the other robots, and they will artificially farm and do all kinds of neat stuff. But if the robots are going to do everything, why do humans need to be there? What is our purpose Obi Wan?

Hang out on Mars for a couple of years doing nothing much. Mining iron ore at $90,000,000 dollars a pound plus shipping and handling, F.O.B. Mars. Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be billionaires.

“Eureka! I’ve got it! A grandiose delusion of a futuristic life on distant planets. Isn’t that better than worrying about the impending reality? “I’ll build a rocket ship and fly away! We can all go! It’s a real big rocket! We still have a few details to work out like how to refuel in space, since no one has ever done that before.” Ever wonder why? If you said, because it sounds dangerous as hell, you’d be right. The very thought of it would make a NASA Administrator crap his tighty whities.

So, all of us who are staying on Earth, what are we going to do? Chances are, little or nothing until it becomes so destructive that the mechanisms of society begin to break down. Who wants to go to Florida now? Enjoying the fun in the sun. When the summer rains begin destroying the crops, if the rains come at all. Tornado season is now from January to December.

I guess living in Arizona is like tasting the weather of the future. The playgrounds are covered with sun shades and children play outside in the morning around 6:00. It’s too hot to ride their bikes, play baseball or go swimming. All the things summer meant to us as children are denied to our grandchildren. But there is no climate change…right?

Living on the dreams of Mars or the lies of Fox News. Why would an oil company lie? Can we save ourselves from ourselves? The jury is still out. I’ve been asked what am I personally doing to fight climate change. I’ve agreed to die and reduce the population by one sometime in the next twenty-five years or so. Admittedly, for the planet Earth it’s not much. But personally, it’s a hell of a sacrifice.