We hope the warming will not be too severe, and wise words will prevail as we reverse the carbon. However we also have to be practical and plan for the alternative. We consider, in this short piece how to go about keeping 120F cities cool for as long as we have to. Much of the U.S. will bake again this weekend as temperatures nudge closer to that.
How Keeping 120F Cities Cool is Getting Harder
A fresh climate change report predicts hundreds of American cities where 80% of U.S. residents live will soon start experiencing extreme temperatures. Urban factors behind this include trapped waste heat, air-conditioning exhausts, and concrete structures and sidewalks absorbing solar heat.
Keeping 120F cities cool will become harder as these become as much as 22ºF hotter than the surrounding countryside. We decided to find out what people in the ‘desert states’ of Texas, Nevada, Arizona and others are doing about this. We discovered the citizens of Phoenix, Arizona are planting green avenues of trees to protect vulnerable people.
A Wealth of Creative Ideas that Hardly Address the Problem
Not to be outdone, the city of Austin, Texas wants 50% of open parking under canopy trees by 2030. They plan to create a sustainable and diversified forest including preserving native species.
Meanwhile in Albuquerque, New Mexico climatologists are advocating painting roofs white to reflect the sun. Others are suggesting planting gardens on roofs to trap heat through evapo-transpiration. In our journey through these cities, and also Los Vegas and Los Angeles we did not always sense the same enthusiasm for tackling the root cause of the warming.
The rich will always find a way around the problem while the poor will suffer greatly elsewhere. We need to solve the problem by getting rid of fossil fuel instead of focusing on keeping 120F cities cool. Our climate is ailing. We should treat more than just the symptoms.
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Preview Image: Chilling Out at Imperial Beach, California
