If anyone has seen that the UK is in a heatwave and wondering why a number of us are complaining about it, here's some anecdotal stuff for you.
I'm going to assume anyone following me takes climate change seriously, so we'll skip that part because it's a given, right? Good.
Houses. The weather is cooler today where I am, however, as my house is designed to keep heat in, so while sitting on my balcony is quite nice, the bricks of the building are retaining yesterday's heat, so it is unbearably warm inside. Also, we don't have aircon, because there's simply no need for it as England isn't a warm country. Our little desk fans have been blowing hot air around, and it's uncomfortable and bleurgh.
Roads. Each country has different materials in their roads, because engineering is ace. Here, our roads are designed to dampen tyre noise and drain water from them. In short, that means our roads can melt and they store a lot of heat. That means, in the evening when it you'd hope it was getting cooler, all the man-made surfaces outside are kicking out heat like nobody's business, and it's another thing that just feels crappy to live in.
Layout. Ever noticed how, for example in Spain, they have lovely narrow streets and a lot of trees planted down their lanes and roads? That's for shade. It means they aren't cursing their luck every time the sun comes out. Not the case in England. When we get very warm weather, we're almost certainly stood directly under sun, and our faces turn pink and we have to change our t-shirts because the first one is wet with sweat.
Climate. We're not used to it. We are aware there are other countries that are hotter and we've even been on holiday to them. However, like a warm country that halts at the slightest hint of snow, or countries that can't deal with heavy rainfall, a spike in warm weather is what fucks us up. Also, huge areas of our nature randomly sets on fire and people and animals die and its bad.
Why so badly prepared? Well, various governments have treated climate change as something that is a future us problem, so we're left with houses and infrastructure that can't cope, and of course, a populace who doesn't really know what to do in extreme heat. We don't drink enough water. We don't have blinds on our windows. We get burned and get heatstroke as we try and carry on as normal. We sleep badly because our houses are too hot.
Sure, it's nice in some ways, and there's many people just cracking on, and enjoying sunbathing and sitting in the park. Don't mistake our complaints for saying "we've got it worse!" but rather, "hoo boy, we don't know how to cope with this because the weather hasn't been like this for the hundreds of years we've been living, and our lives aren't designed for it!"
That's about it. Hope this is interesting. I probably made a bunch of typos too, but I'm sat in my pants sweating and I can't be bothered proofreading this.
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