It wasn’t always this way.
Punishing heat, from 28° to 35° Celsius, day after day after day, almost biblical in proportion, oppressive, life-altering and dangerous for person and pet alike. Throw in runaway out-of-control fires, the new normal it seems, and you’ve got what we now know of as summer.
I hate it.
I hate to sound like grandpa here, but in my lifetime, the prevailing climate conditions have changed for the worst dramatically. Yes we had temperatures like those listed above, but they were exceptions, and certainly not the norm. Summers could be hot, sure, but they were mostly moderate, and going outside was something that was thought to be pleasant, not hazardous. Yes, this is climate change. But it’s a climate transition that’s taken place over the lifetime of a man of 64 years, a truly dramatic and alarming turn of events, where the Earth’s climate changes dramatically over a period of maybe twenty years, maybe even only ten. I hate to get overly dramatic, but if not already so, this is a situation that can become legitimately existential for us.
For some people, it already is.
As heat domes and incessant heat events become more the norm, more and more of society’s most vulnerable people feel the effects in a way that’s exponentially greater than the rest of us who may have the luxury of working and living in places that can offer respite from the harsh conditions outside. For the homeless, and those who make the streets their life, there is no escape, save death or significant heat-related illness that causes intervention and hospitalization. These people are always at the forefront of the effects of calamity, and this is no different.
There are, however, plenty of people about who are lucky enough to have shelter from the direct energy of the sun, but owing to a lack of air conditioning, suffer the effects of heat not directly, but indirectly as the sun pounds down upon their living spaces, almost baking the inhabitants in place.
After the homeless and the abject poor, people of low-incomes and seniors over the age of 60 are the next cohort of victims, many dying, right here in Canada, of the oppressive heat and their inability to get away from it or find any respite whatsoever. Even when communities open malls and other large venues with air conditioning as “cooling centres,” people, often from the groups listed above, can’t access them due to mobility issues that exacerbate just about every problem they face, this one included.
The government of British Columbia has decided to take some form of reactive/proactive action to help alleviate as much of this problem as possible. Health Minister Adrian Dix has announced that the province will provide energy-provider B.C. Hydro with $10 million over three years to purchase and install portable air conditioning units in the living spaces of low-income families and vulnerable seniors.
Conservatives, predictably, will decry the expense as a give-away to those unwilling to work for it, and another assault on the province’s treasury by liberal socialism. Sadly, you can’t take the asshole out of an asshole. I’ve no idea what the cost is to society for medical interventions made necessary by involuntary heat exposure, but I’ll bet it makes $10 million look like chump change. Sadly, conservative blind themselves in their self-serving rhetoric and can’t be trusted to have a mature reaction to anything deemed progressive, preferring instead to shoot themselves in the foot on every possible occasion.
Last year, in British Columbia, no fewer than 619 people died of heat-related health issues. The vast majority of them were of the low-income and senior citizen crowd over age 60. Fully 98% of these people died indoors, and more than half that number died alone.
The actions of the Province of British Columbia, through its governing party ( BC Liberal Party, a centre, centre-right party) are an example of what government is supposed to be all about: government of the people, FOR THE PEOPLE, by the people. My thanks to Abraham Lincoln for that, through his Gettysburg Address.
We are a family, and the government plays the role of a parent, encouraging, supportive, and protective when need be. Governments govern on behalf of citizens. It’s really only the rich that don’t see things this way, with their “every man for himself” inclinations tending to blinker them to harsh realities on the ground, sometimes of their own making. That said, there are more of us than there are of them, it’s still a one-person one-vote situation, so if inclined, the rest of us can just ignore them and tell them to go lie down.
It’s estimated that the government’s response will result in some 8,000 air conditioning units being installed in the province, all for the price of first-line centre Elias Petersson of the Vancouver Canucks, who makes $10.25 million a season while losing over half the face-offs he takes.
This is not the end of the problem, nor is it the beginning of the end. It may be, as Churchill said in World War 2, the end of the beginning. But whatever it is, it has to be considered at least a step in the right direction, hopefully to be followed by subsequent steps in the right direction.
Not only in British Columbia, but across the country as well.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 