Extreme weather: the heat does not hit everyone alike – knowledge


If you were to observe the earth with a telescope from space these days, you would see disturbing images that have one thing in common with all the different colors. A clever algorithm would probably put them in the same photo album, with a sober title like Extreme weather.

There are the heated streets of Portland, in the US, where the Trams stopped and people fled to large halls to escape the heat. There is Lytton, a village in western Canada where the thermometers showed the unimaginable temperature of 49.6 degrees Celsius, and shortly afterwards flames started, which burned down house after house. There are also the sandy fields in Madagascar, where people have been waiting for rain for weeks, caught between dust and hunger, in the worst drought in 40 years.

If you turned the binoculars more and more, zoomed in, more and more images like this appeared, but these three already show at least two things: First, you no longer need dystopian future scenarios to become aware of the climate crisis. You don’t have to look to the year 2050 or 2060 – the present is enough.

Second, the climate crisis is already affecting some people much harder than others, and if you look closely, you can see the first, faint indications of what is in store for us.

In the New York Times for example was to read of a man who, during those scorching days in Toronto, took refuge in a five-star hotel after which his fan was no longer doing him adequate service. There was also talk of a lawyer who quartered himself in an air-conditioned hotel room who couldn’t stand it at more than thirty degrees at home.

On a small scale, there is a big difference that will determine the future all over the world: Anyone who has money can consume away the consequences of the climate crisis, at least to a certain extent, they can not only afford a hotel room, but also one in case of doubt Relocation, another apartment in a different location, high-tech air conditioning or just basal: enough water.

This is particularly perfidious because it is precisely those people who, through their lifestyle (many flights, many square meters, a lot of clutter), who shoot significantly more emissions into the atmosphere than the less privileged, get the best out of a crisis that they played a decisive role in causing can wind out.

The economist Maja Göpel describes in her book “Rethinking our world” that Bill Gates, one of the richest people on earth, is estimated to use up the carbon dioxide budget of 38 people within one year. In each case not that of a year – but that of a whole life.

At the national level, the situation is not very different: Many countries, including Germany, skilfully pass the costs of their lifestyle on to others, send their garbage to other continents, have their vegetables grown there or their animal feed, but ignore them Follow like cleared forests. Nevertheless – or precisely because of this – they have better prerequisites in the climate crisis than those on whom they impose the costs of their actions without being asked.

A global climate crisis hits everyone equally? Certainly not, at the latest the pandemic has shown us: In a world of inequalities, a crisis will never hit everyone equally.

So political decisions are needed to soften the differences. To prevent some retreating to cool hotels while others starve in scorching hot rooms. On a small as well as on a large scale. If that does not happen, the enormous inequality will continue to intensify, which is worrying, and even a little more if you read this text: My colleague Marlene Weiß and colleague Werner Bartens explain why parts of the world are probably earlier than expected could become uninhabitable and also why Canada is suffering from such severe heat these days.

Incidentally, the only beneficiaries of the unbearable temperature record are probably the manufacturers of air conditioning systems: In a video from the BBC one entrepreneur says that he is delivering four times as many devices as in normal summers – although the last normal summer was really a very, very long time ago.

I wish you a nice weekend, despite everything.

Best wishes,

Pia Ratzesberger

(This text is from the weekly Newsletter Environmental Friday you here free of charge can order.)

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