As of now, July 22, 2024 is now the hottest day ever recorded.
But hey, its only Friday.
Who knows what the weekend holds?
Tourists trying to cool off in Rome, Italy, on July 21, 2024, the second hottest day ever recorded. The mark was broken the following day.Massimo Valicchia/NurPhoto/Getty Images
Or the rest of the summer, for that matter.
Are you shocked by news of this record-breaking heat?
Did you mourn the396 deathsfrom heat that are under investigation this summer in Phoenix?
Did you sell your car and buy an electric bike?
Were you inspired to sign up to knock on doors to help Kamala Harris defeat the climate-hoax-pushing-criminal Donald Trump?
The problem is not you.
The problem is that a broken heat record is just another statistic.
Wed have cities crowded with bike lanes and a high speed rail service between Dallas and Houston.
Or its not happening fast enough.
But for what its worth, heres how Id explain it.
First, nobody cares about numbers.
They care about stories.
They care about emotion.
They care about life, death, hope, dreams.
A heat statistic is not a visceral thing.
It is a data point.
Where is the line between fake news and fake data?
I wanted to tell readers a story about what happens inside the human body during a heatstroke.
How heat cells melts and proteins unravel.
And how it is not just old ladies with heart conditions or migrant farmworkers who heat kills.
For anyone who is half-awake, the idea of climate crisis is not new.
Its baked into our thinking about the world we live in.
Its hard to jolt anyone out of that, especially with a statistic or a headline.
But an even bigger threat is the way we habituate to climate chaos.
I live in Austin, which had42 dayslast summer above 105 degrees.
It was shocking and brutal.
But the response from many Texans was, Yeah, its always hot in Texas.
No statistic was going to change their view about that.
People come to believe that thatheat wavesthat cook cities are just the way that nature works.
In some ways, this is the dark side of climate adaptation.
We adapt by learning to live with it.
Air pollution from fossil fuels kills aboutfive million peopleevery year.
But those deaths are largely (and tragically) background noise.
It has just become part of life in the 21st century.
A similar thing is happening with the climate crisis.
Not only do we lose our outrage.
These are dangerous times, and not just because democracy is on the ballot in November.
The very stability of the climate that gives us life is also on the line.
Are we willing?Thats the unanswered question.
