The intense heat has created new urgent needs

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I’m starting to get a little bit of a habitThis is to prepare for the first real French heat wave this year. Tomorrow, Saturday, the temperature will be 38 Paris. In the southwestern parts of the country, the mercury is expected to rise above 40 in several places and the newspapers are full of housewives’ advice about when to ventilate, sleep and green plants that can help lower the indoor temperature by a few decimal places.

These are the survival clues we feed on in newspapers and on TV. The French learned from August 2003 when it was estimated that 15,000 people died no cannula The French word for heat wave comes from the Latin word for “Little Dog,” which is also the only fun thing about it all. In the past 20 years, extreme temperatures have become more common here during the summer and come earlier and earlier.

falls this week Heat wave with many national interests. On Sunday, the second round of the parliamentary elections will be held in conjunction with the graduation dates for high school students. On Wednesday morning, final year students wrote a national test in philosophy in school buildings that generally lack air conditioning, and instructions for teachers abound. Recently in 2019, a two-week entrance examination was introduced to avoid temperature extremes, this year buildings will be ventilated at night and examinees will pay extra attention to students showing signs of heat stroke.

In the home care service, there has long been a protocol to follow when temperatures rise above 30 and in major cities, private cold rooms and city parks are open at night for the elderly so they can breathe.

The government introduced this week A package of five billion kronor to “naturalize” French cities by helping, among other things, planting more plants to lower temperatures. It is no longer a matter of preventive action. These are panic measures to deal with the new normal, i.e. temperatures that head towards the 40 mark several times over the summer.

Meanwhile, the French state was recently indicted in court for failing to meet its CO2 targets during 2015-2018.

Climate change caused by human behavior contributing to warming is now generally accepted knowledge across the planet (except for the local conspiratorial aberrations of Åke, Gunnar, and Berra in my inbox). The consequences of this are already evident in droughts, degraded ecosystems and large refugee movements. But what do these temperatures do for us more directly?

High pressure like that in France The southwestern United States has now created an urgent need to understand what stress on the human body the constant intense heat entails, and what we can do to protect ourselves. Scientific studies have mostly been done for shorter periods and with the help of artificial heat, something that cannot necessarily translate into real life.

We don’t know the long-term consequences of getting up every day and working three hours in near-deadly heat, sweating a lot and then going home, says climate researcher Matthew Hooper. to the New York Times.

What we do know is that people who die from heat die of stroke, of cardiovascular causes, or of kidney failure. Extreme heat destroys our organs, cells, and DNA, and the damage is worse in the elderly, young children, and already sick. In the weakest of society, if you will. But those in power are rarely held responsible for the health risks in the wake of climate change. Perhaps because the Western world has not been hit hard yet.

Incidentally, this year’s question about the French Philosophy Exam for graduate students reads: “Is it up to the state to decide what is fair?”