Lets Cool It

I suspect that most people would say that their favorite season of the year is summer.  Summer is associated with vacations, good times outdoors, and beloved sports like baseball, softball, tennis, and golf.  This is the season when people are usually more active and, consequently, usually experience better health.  

But this summer in particular has thrown us a curveball, to stay with the baseball metaphor.  Instead of good times outdoors, we’ve been advised for the sake of our health to stay indoors.  The culprits have been the smoke being blown south from the over five hundred wildfires in Canada and the excessive temperatures in heat domes that are baking our nation’s south and west as well as other parts of the planet.  In the northeast states, flooding is washing away homes while Phoenix, Arizona, can’t see any relief in the near future from daily highs of 110 degree or more.  Last week, the earth recorded its highest recorded temperature four days in a row.  And we haven’t gotten to late July and August yet.  

Face it, it’s a tough time to be a weather forecaster.  I imagine many forecasters have people stopping them on the street or messaging them, saying, “When are you going to give us some good news?”  

So, if you are one of those folks who have been angry this summer with weather reports on TV or on the internet, you are not alone.  This summer just doesn’t feel right.  

While it might be tempting to think that the planet is angry with us, we would do better to understand that we are in a conversation with the Earth.  And weather is the main way that the earth, our home, is communicating.  The question is: are we listening?

Let’s return to Phoenix, Arizona, as an example of the wrong-headed conversation we are having with the planet.  Not only is Phoenix setting heat records, but it has a severe water problem.  It’s an established fact that there isn’t enough water to sustain Phoenix’s present population, much less its future. Yet, according to the last census, Phoenix is the fasting-growing city in the country.  Clearly, we’re not listening to our planet. 

I’m sure I’m not the first person to suggest that we have a “climate entitlement” problem.  That is, we feel we are entitled to the climate we prefer.  And with climate entitlement, as with any form of entitlement, there is a sense that the weather should bend to our wishes.    

While it’s both unfair and silly to think that the weather is currently angry with us, it is true that weather won’t be dictated to.  Weather isn’t some factor on our planet that is choosing anything.  Weather doesn’t make choices; weather just reflects and responds to the choices that we are making. 

Once we accept that we are the ones who are causing the heat domes, the temperature records, and the flooding, our conversation with our home planet can begin to change.  And that change will begin by listening to our earth instead of railing at her.     

I have a colleague who has inspired me over the years because he asks a simple question to whatever decision he is faced with.  His question is, “Will this be good for the planet, my home, or not?”    

That is the right question now more than ever.

-DC