I took this picture while on vacation walking by a student’s summer camp, with kids cooling off in the park fountain located next to the Hudson River in Manhattan, New York, on July 1st - the start of the warmest month ever recorded globally! Scientific American states this might be the hottest month in over 120,000 years! Not only did we and millions of other people deal with extreme heatwaves, to make matters worse, smoke from over 4,300 wildfires in Canada, drifted into the United States. I wore an N95 mask on many days of our vacation despite the heat.
When we returned home to North Carolina, I took my son camping looking forward to the cooler mountains. While we enjoyed seeing Pilot Mountain and Mount Airy, location of the Andy Griffith TV show, it was too hot to be outdoors in the daytime. So we found some indoor activities including eating lunch at the Loaded Goat (to commemorate the episode where a goat ate too much dynamite). When we got back to the State Park campground in the evening, a large family set up next to us and ran a loud-sounding, gas-powered generator and air conditioner into their tent all night long! In their tent, not an RV!
Like many fortunate people, we depend on air conditioning at home. The hotter it gets, the harder our AC needs to work. The more energy we burn to produce AC that uses hydrofluorocarbons causes more carbon emissions, contributing to climate change. It’s a vicious cycle. With the hottest month on record, many people’s AC’s broke down - including ours. Luckily, we got a repairman to come out the same day to replace the condenser - a device that stores energy to start up the AC. Despite our home being one level and very energy efficient with great insulation, inside the house got up to 90 degrees F before we got the AC fixed and it took several hours for the house to cool down to 70 degrees.
Also this month we took a weekend trip to northern Virginia traveling north on several crowded interstate highways clogged with commercial trucks and passenger cars that were slowed by construction zones. Returning home we came back on US 29, a road I drove many times over 45 years ago when I went to college. My memory of the unimpeded highway clashed with the new realization of numerous traffic lights halting stop-and-go traffic. Urbanization from D.C. to Charlottesville, VA resulted in the highway becoming a local road lined with strip malls. We considered a detour to get back on I-81; luckily, a new bypass around Charlottesville enabled traveling at highway speeds and we enjoyed the return to the countryside of the Blue Ridge mountains as we headed south.
Observing the collective and personal burning of fossil fuels weighs heavy on my mind, hoping for a brighter future where we can all reduce pollution. Coming soon, I hope to share an important project that is addressing many of these environmental-energy issues that, if adopted, will greatly contribute to future reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Stay tuned to this space and please post a comment on these topics.