At this point minimizing climate impact and preparing for resiliency is key.
Communities in the hottest and most humid areas are going to need air conditioned emergency shelters, and more likely people are just going to flee from them in large scale migration and everywhere else should have the social and material resources set up to absorb that.
As someone who lives in a hot/humid city, I don’t think it will be that bad.
First of all, air conditioning is multiple orders of magnitude easier/cheaper than heating in a cold climate. Everything is air conditioned, not just “shelters”. In a well insulated home you can just run it 24/7/365 with modest electricity consumption. The cost approaches zero if you only run it during the day (hopefully powered by solar) and rely on the insulation and lack of sunlight to keep temperatures reasonable overnight.
Second, your body gets used to it. Yes, heat can kill (it has killed a relative of mine) but it tends to kill people who aren’t acclimatised in buildings that are designed for cold climates.
It’s the cold climate cities, with periodic heatwaves, where people are at risk.
I don’t think you understand what happens when your power goes out though. Yes your ac works great, when you have ac. The problem occurs, when you don’t have power. And there’s nowhere to go. When it’s 110+ degrees, with 70%+ humidity, people start to die. Rapidly. It doesn’t matter how ‘acclimated’ you are, the human body just can’t take it.
At this point minimizing climate impact and preparing for resiliency is key.
Communities in the hottest and most humid areas are going to need air conditioned emergency shelters, and more likely people are just going to flee from them in large scale migration and everywhere else should have the social and material resources set up to absorb that.
As someone who lives in a hot/humid city, I don’t think it will be that bad.
First of all, air conditioning is multiple orders of magnitude easier/cheaper than heating in a cold climate. Everything is air conditioned, not just “shelters”. In a well insulated home you can just run it 24/7/365 with modest electricity consumption. The cost approaches zero if you only run it during the day (hopefully powered by solar) and rely on the insulation and lack of sunlight to keep temperatures reasonable overnight.
Second, your body gets used to it. Yes, heat can kill (it has killed a relative of mine) but it tends to kill people who aren’t acclimatised in buildings that are designed for cold climates.
It’s the cold climate cities, with periodic heatwaves, where people are at risk.
I don’t think you understand what happens when your power goes out though. Yes your ac works great, when you have ac. The problem occurs, when you don’t have power. And there’s nowhere to go. When it’s 110+ degrees, with 70%+ humidity, people start to die. Rapidly. It doesn’t matter how ‘acclimated’ you are, the human body just can’t take it.