Earlier this week, the Third Avenue Bridge in Manhattan had to be shut down because the bridge – which pivots to allow ships to pass – wouldn’t close correctly. Why? Because it was so hot in New York City that day the metal in the bridge swelled, and the closing mechanism wouldn’t work. Firefighters had to spray water on the structure for several hours to cool it off before the bridge could be reopened to traffic.
A tragedy? Hardly. But it’s evidence of one of the central truths of our time, and one that is becoming more and more apparent every day: We have built our world for a climate that no longer exists.
Consider Houston, the throne of Big Oil, where the electric grid has the same hub-and-spoke basic architecture as it did 100 years ago. This week, Hurricane Beryl knocked out power to more than 2 million homes. Yes, hurricanes are devastating. But less than two months earlier, a sudden windstorm in the city blacked out electricity for more than a million people.
AC is becoming a survival tool for many people in ever-hotter climates, but it is not a magic fix for a superheated world. More than 750 million people on the planet don’t even have access to electricity, much less AC. We are not going to air condition the ocean, which is full of mysterious and beautiful creatures which hundreds of millions of people depend on for sustenance. We are not going to air condition forests, which are key to maintaining biodiversity on Earth. We are not going to air-condition the fields where food crops are grown.
Our dependence on AC, in fact, masks the true scope and scale of the challenges we face.
In the end, addressing the climate crisis is not about building better technology. It’s much bigger than that. We need to rebuild our world. Fast-rising temperatures and more extreme weather are forcing us to rethink everything about how we live – where we get our energy, how we grow our food, how we build our cities, and, mostly importantly, who we vote for.
AC is becoming a survival tool for many people in ever-hotter climates, but it is not a magic fix for a superheated world.／LSE
The sooner we stop clinging to the old ways and focus on building a smarter, more sustainable, more equitable future for everyone, the better off we – and every living thing on this planet – will be.
What has already been lost during the climate crisis is a tragedy. But what can be won in this fight is worth imagining too.
