Bill McKibbon- Nearly 70 percent of the planet’s landmass, and nearly 90 percent of its population, is in the northern hemisphere. That means that the next six or eight weeks encompass the hottest days on planet earth each year, as we straddle the summer solstice on this side of the equator—the hottest days usually follow the solstice by a week or three, as the heat accumulates from all that sunlight on land and sea. Last year, in early July, we had the string of what researchers are certain were the hottest days the earth had seen in the last 125,000 years. Since then we’ve had twelve straight months of all-time records; we learned earlier today that May joined that list.

So while climate disaster can and does come in all seasons and all places now, we are heading into the peak of what you might call greenhouse season, when one can be sadly certain of hideous news. Right now we are seeing a heatwave of truly monstrous proportion across Asia—the temperature in New Delhi these past days has topped120 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time in its recorded history. (And the British colonizers were at least good about recording temperatures). This newsletter doesn’t describe every hideous consequence of global warming, because there’s not much we can do about it—our job is to try and keep it from getting worse. But sometimes moral and intellectual clarity demands simple description.Heat like this kills people, obviously—and when eventually total mortality statistics are analyzed, it will turn out that it killed many many more than we now know, people whose hearts simply gave out. But most people won’t die—there are 35 million people in Delhi, and most will live to endure the almost unimaginable, day after day.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time there over the years—it’s a leafy city, and home to some of the world’s most moving monuments, above all the Raj Ghat, where Gandhi was cremated. But it’s also badly polluted, filled with the smoke from cars and auto-rickshaws, cooking fires and factories; the last time I was there you couldn’t see the giant Indian flag at Connaught Place from across the street. And now—now it’s very like hell. It’s hard enough if you’re rich. Nitin Singh, a lawyer, told his story to the Guardian: “My home has three air conditioners, but frequent power outages have left me helpless,” said Singh. “A two-hour power outage last night compelled me to reserve a hotel room for my sick father and kids. My wife and I spent the majority of the night on our home’s terrace, and we had trouble falling asleep even for a few hours.” But most Delhiites are very very poor. Many of the city’s slums have no running water, and as supplies have dwindled in the heat, the trucks that deliver water for a price have dwindled. Here’s Esha Mitra of CNN, describing the arrival of the water wagon in one neighborhood: Dozens of people run to the truck, some even climbing on top of it to throw pipes in, pushing in to get their containers filled with water. It’s first come first served, and many people miss out. Mother-of-six Poonam Shah is one of those people. “There are 10 people in my family – six kids, me and my husband, my in-laws, relatives come over sometimes – can we all bathe in one bucket of water?” she asks. Today her family may not even have one bucket. Poonam was working her street food stall when the water truck arrived. She tried to run back for it – but it was too late, the water had run out. It’s not just Delhi, of course. As the Times reported last week, “over the past year of record-shattering warmth, the average person on Earth experienced 26 more days of abnormally high temperatures than they otherwise would have.” 

Right now Mexico is sweltering under record heat—monkeys by the hundreds are falling dead from trees, and people in the nation’s capital are forming human chains to block streets so that the government will send them water trucks. As Axios reports, the largest city in North America—which has already seen record temperatures and huge drifts of hail—could run out of water in the next few days.....read on https://open.substack.com/pub/billmckibben/p/intensity?r=mwxsy&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email