The Heatwave of It All

It’s hot in London. Stupid hot. It’s too damp to fry an egg, though, but if you’re lucky you can use King’s Cross as a forge! The other day I formed three rings of power there and I kept the one used for sustained, global civic action (invest in your future, I think). Everybody says I got the short end of the stick and that I should’ve taken the air conditioning one, because there is no air conditioning anywhere in the city. Store owners everywhere are probably posting on security Facebook groups about the skinny American flying into their stores, spinning around and testing the air, before flying out again in tears. This is gonna sound absurdly privileged, but I really have never known heat like this without relief. It makes the feeling of crisis that arises during hot days in 2026 difficult to ignore. I managed to for a few days but, after the third heatwave, I was reminded of my long history with worrying about heat.

There was never a moment in my life so important as one late afternoon, around 2015, thatI spent on my couch in Boston, Massachusetts. I was online — my parents and grandparents were in the kitchen, making dinner — when my wandering eyes fell upon an article purporting that climate change would ‘end the world’ in ‘twelve years’. My little OCD-riddled brain immediately demanded that I do a little more digging. I didn’t think it could be that simple, and it turns out it wasn’t. It was, disturbingly, only a little more complicated — as opposed to twelve years the world was given thirty, give or take. My ears got hot and my heart beat faster as my brain threw its hands up and shifted to reassurance-seeking. I went to my mother and asked if what I was seeing was true. “Yeah,” she said, “but that’s going to be a problem in centuries, centuries, centuries. Not in our lifetimes.” But, I had already read the article. My feelings shifted from incredible anger to deep, critical sadness; it was the beginning of my artistic life, as well as my critical thinking. If my Mom hadn’t spoken from understandable ignorance that day, I would be a stupider, more selfish person than I am now. 

I spent the next four-ish years trawling the internet for proof that I didn’t have to be existentially concerned. This included looking for technologies or promising agreements that would — surely — make this crisis something I didn’t have to worry about. As a child, I could sit back and wait a while for the inevitable relief from bewilderment, when cooler heads would emerge and press a bunch of buttons and solve the crisis. That’s what every history class I’d ever taken made seem inevitable. Meanwhile, though, things began to unbalance the scale: fires and heatwaves in Europe, itinerant dust from the Sahara making the sun set in brilliant blood red. Despite these things, the conversation did not seem to be shifting in a positive, proactive direction. Youtube commenter MICHEAL_JONES89$ still believed that “summer is s9mmer” and that “its hot.” And, without Micheal, who do we have? I grew more and more incredulous, more and more contemplative, as I tried to climb my way out of insurmountable grief. 

A few years before I came to university, my brain got tired and let go of the daily obsession with civilizational collapse. I finally seemed to be able to take the world for what it was, thanks to a ridiculously expensive pre-paid move to St Andrews! And, anyway, we really did have time. Time before the ocean currents collapse, or food shortages, or catastrophic yearly storms, or before the need for a discourse that could support the truth of all those things stemming from this issue of global heating. That last thing I was sure would come along with time. 

But it has not come along with time. If anything, it’s gotten worse. People my age look me dead in the face and say things like, “But the air looks so clean to me!” or “What’s that ring on your finger, Sam? Is it the one that makes air conditioning?” All of this would be acceptable, if the impetus toward action outpaced the pull of denial. The people around me, though, seem reluctant even to pay lip service to the issue. Over time, it seems, their awareness of the issue has atrophied, pushing even young people into a self-servicing fatalism. Actually, they seem to love it: better to live today than fear tomorrow, it’s all going to burn anyway, etc. You should see the glee on their faces. I don’t blame them. The crisis keeps getting layers added on: even if we could all agree on the source of the problem, nobody would let us talk about it. Discourse itself seems to lock out passè activism. In other words, activism itself.  

Anyway, now I’m in Prague for a lovely little mini break. As a temporary correspondent for Central Europe let me just say: it is burning. Literally and/or metaphorically. Standing outside, feeling the sun burn my skin, I am thinking back to the little boy who first read that article in 2015. I’m thinking about how desperately I wanted a resolution, and how it hasn’t come yet. Now it seems amazing to me that I didn’t expect this kind of timeline, but back then I was sure I’d be offered some hope by young adulthood — something to eek a couple decades out of. Now, I can’t believe how wholeheartedly I’ve accepted moving in the other direction. But then, by the Vltava river, with its big rodents and pretty barges, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. At least, it wouldn’t, if only it weren’t so hot.