The people who will ultimately suffer the most from global heating are the poor
Having just survived Ireland’s longest, hottest, driest period this century – we hit 25oC for 13 days in a row – we need to talk about global heating.
After all, if cool Ireland runs out of air conditioners then there’s a problem. And I know Ireland ran out, because I bought the last one.
South Africa played a role here, too. But let’s reverse a bit.
Before the latest Irish heatwave, mainland Europe was already cooking, and my son in Paris was close to the flames with daytime temperatures topping 40°C. Living in a flat atop an old building, they were slow-roasting at night too: at midnight, his meat thermometer read 37.5°C.
With temperatures like that, a fan is useless, only stirring hot air around like soup, so they lay on towels, put their feet in buckets of water and sweated. Of course, he tried to buy a portable air conditioner, but no one in France had stock.
That’s when I jumped in because there’s no power like mummy-power. I searched online but everywhere was sold out. I threw my net wider, made strategic phone calls, learned of a delivery of cooling equipment, but when it arrived it was just fans.
Finally, I tracked down a solitary aircon unit three hours away, phoned the shop, bought it and immediately got in the car to fetch it. (What was that about emissions?)
Six hours later I was back home and arranging its shipment to Paris. Done.
At 25°C, I don’t need an air conditioner myself – not yet. I will though, because this is climate change and anyone arguing otherwise is a fool.
However, sometimes it seems South Africa is sitting back impervious, burning coal with impunity, collectively presuming it’s not part of the problem. After all, it’s the richest who make the most emissions and there are so many desperately poor folk in South Africa that they bring the average per capita greenhouse gas output right down. Thank you, poor people.
However, how many people realise that South Africa still manages to produce more CO2 per capita (6.3 tons) than Ireland (6.1 tons), and even more again than the European Union does per person (5.6 tons)?
And while I can afford aircon – if I can find it – the people who will ultimately suffer the most from global heating are those who cannot, and who never caused the problem in the first place.
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