Climate Crisis

Ok so lemme talk about this recent heat for a second.

My family are very eco-friendly. We have cavity wall insulation in our house to reduce heating costs in the winter, so we don't have to use the boiler at all most years. That's how good our insulation is. We don't have air conditioning because why would we need it? 30 degrees C is usually the maximum, and there's only a couple of days a year that even happens so it would be a pointless investment. We have 2 fans in the house for my sister and I to use at night during summer, because we tend to run hot.

2 fans is not enough to survive 40 degree temperatures!

We had to keep our dog inside and occasionally dunk him in the paddling pool, carrying him to the grass because the patio would've burned his feet. We had one ice cube tray freezing 8 ice cubes at a time, which we were keeping in case someone overheated and needed to be cooled down fast. There was no cold water because the cold water tap was producing water the same temperature as the outside world.

The only reason there weren't any deaths I'm aware of in my village (which has a very old population) is because the local coffee shop has air conditioning. So they kept their doors open 24/7 to provide people at risk of death by heatstroke a cool place to sleep. The local Tesco's ran out of frozen food, and then chilled food. Nobody could get the train to work anywhere because the rails were melting. Roads were also melting.

My cousin is a firefighter. I still haven't heard from her aside from an update on Monday evening confirming she's alright but has her work cut out for her. She's not used to dealing with wildfires.

4 people drowned trying to escape the heat in my county alone. The news are not reporting the heatstroke death toll.

The UK has always been susceptible to extreme weather patterns. The clash of the hot African air, cold northern air, moisture from the Atlantic and dry air from Europe produce unpredictable at best weather on a regular basis. But it has never, ever been this bad. This is the real physical effect of climate change. It's been killing people for years, and this week it has killed people in my country.

What I want to know is, what happened to the climate strikes? Covid killed our momentum and for good reason. But it feels like all the community groups in my area at least have gone completely silent. I never had particular ties to a specific group, but I showed up. And even though it is now illegal to protest in the same way, we need to keep showing up. Now more than ever. It feels like in my life I am always the one to organise things. I don’t want to take this responsibility upon myself. But if nobody else is going to do it, I will have to.

It'll take a little more planning than that, I’m not spontaneous.

Maybe I’ll make a website about it. The South West Web Climate Alliance. SWWCA. The British Web Climate Alliance (BWCA). That one’s already a forest in Minnesota. I shall… think on it.

- Blue