Some like it cool
Cool Tips for a Hot Planet series
Ginny Colling was passionate about the environment before retiring from teaching college communications students. After retiring she trained with Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and has presented to numerous groups about the climate crisis.
Nausea, migraine-like headaches. Those are some of the symptoms that hit Mike while installing heat pumps in last summer’s record-breaking heat. He missed a couple of days of work because of it. This year, during June’s exceptionally early heat wave, the company provided portable canopies and magnetic umbrellas for protection from the blazing sun.
We all need to adapt to these unnatural events. “Human-caused climate change makes the heat season start earlier and makes heat waves hotter and more dangerous,” the director of climate science at Climate Central told CBC. But they don’t hit every area equally.
In June’s early heat, howler monkeys fell dead from trees in Mexico. In Greece, tourists died or went missing while hiking. In Saudi Arabia, 1,300 pilgrims on the way to Mecca died in the 51.8C temperatures.
We’ve had our own heat tragedies. In 2021, 619 people died from the heat in one week in British Columbia. Most of them lived without air conditioning.
Extreme heat is more deadly than we realize. In fact, it’s the leading cause of weather-related deaths, according to the World Health Organization. U.S. studies show that in many years it’s responsible for more deaths than hurricanes, floods and tornadoes combined.
Heat also stresses the heart, lungs, kidneys and brain. Studies are beginning to show that kids in hot schools have more trouble learning. Excess heat affects our ability to focus and think clearly. And it affects productivity.
Exercise is great, but not when it’s sizzling. Thankfully, the bike club I belong to cancelled a planned two-day bike ride during June’s heat wave.
Those most affected are outdoor workers, young children, the elderly and anyone with an underlying health condition. Children and the elderly are more vulnerable in part because they don’t have the same ability to produce sweat to cool off.
We need policies to reduce the cause of much of this climate disruption by rapidly and equitably phasing out burning oil, gas and natural gas while switching to renewable energy. That would help make the future less catastrophic.
In the meantime, it’s all about adaptation.
Municipalities can preserve and expand tree canopies and green spaces. They’re much cooler than asphalt and buildings. And local governments can install public water fountains. They used to be much more common.
To protect those without air conditioning, municipalities are beginning to provide cooling centres. They can also pass bylaws setting a maximum indoor temperature for apartments, something Toronto and Hamilton are working on.
To protect ourselves, we can
- Wear loose-fitting, light-coloured clothing, preferably of natural fibres like cotton, linen or bamboo.
- Drink lots of water.
- Plant trees for shade, install window coverings and consider light coloured roofing. If able, install a heat pump. It would provide heating and cooling at a lower operating and planet-heating cost than most other options.
We can also turn up the heat on the province by calling our MPPs to support Bill 198. Introduced by the NDP in May, it addresses many climate impacts, including extreme heat. If passed it would set in motion changes that would protect workers and those living in apartments. It also proposes grants or other incentives to help landlords install heat pumps to keep tenants cool.
And keeping cool is not just cool. It can be life or death.
