Climate change will test people’s ability to survive

Scientists say immediate action needs to be taken. According to them, we should rethink our lifestyle.

Extreme heat will be more and more a problem in the future, periodsaid Professor Blair Feltmate, director ofIntact Center on Climate Adaptation [Centre sur l’adaptation au climat Intact, traduction libre] from the University of Waterloo, Ontario.

Temperatures in India and Pakistan have risen recently to 50C, killing at least 90 people and destroying agricultural crops. South Asia, along with Africa, Australia and the U.S. Gulf states, are now faced with life -threatening combinations of heat and humidity – conditions that scientists did not predict until the end of the century.

Canada is also feeling the effects of extreme heat: in British Columbia during the summer, 595 people died in the heat. The village of Lytton, British Columbia, set a new Canadian record for heat (49.6 ° C) on June 29, before a forest fire burned the next day. Both init dome left the ground dry, contributing to major flooding in British Columbia a few months later.

Mr. Feltmate was one of the authors of a recent report warning of a future life threatening for Canadians in terms of heat, especially those living in the southern interior of British Columbia, along the U.S. border with the Prairies, and in southern Ontario and Quebec.

We’ll see some intense heat that will look pretty mild from what we saw in British Columbia last year during the heat dome. said Mr. Feltmate.

How heat affects our body

When you’re exposed to prolonged heat, you may be lethargic because your organs work harder to keep you cool-and alive.

Your heart beats harder to push blood to your skin, where it can cool down. Sweating is also important for cooling your body, but it becomes harder as the humidity rises.

In severe cases of heatstroke, the body begins to cook, leading to cell damage and organ damage.

This is very similar to cooking an eggsays Professor Stephen Cheung, an expert on environmental stress in human physiology at Brock University in St. Louis. Catharines, Ont.

The reason why it changes from a liquid white mass to a solid white mass is that the proteins have changed. […] If your body continues to heat up and can’t control its temperature, eventually your proteins will do the same in your cells.

Sitting in the shade and drinking water is not enough when you are already suffering from heatstroke. It is important to cool [une personne frappée d’un coup de chaleur] as quickly as possible, preferably by immersing it in as cold water as possiblesaid Mr. Cheung.

Heat can also have a negative impact on people’s mental health, says Michael Brauer, a professor in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia.

The temperature at night is very important. It’s really about trying to cool your room, keep your body cool enough for you to sleep.

Beat the heat

Cheung, who helped Canadian athletes prepare for the heat and humidity of the Tokyo Olympics last year, said our body temperature can adapt to higher heat in about two weeks gradually. gradual and continuous exposure.

The biggest advantage, in a sense, that humans have over other animals is our behavior. We can build things like housing, air conditioning, better clothes, etc.said Mr. Cheung. But it does have value, whether it’s forcing us to stay indoors, or increasing energy consumption due to air conditioning.

Many people cannot stay indoors and stay cool, especially those that involve physical exertion outside, such as farmers and manual laborers.

In the future, according to Mr Feltmate, the working day will need to be staggered so that these workers avoid the hottest hours of the day – for example, starting work at 5.30 am and finishing it at 1 pm.

Cities themselves need to be refrigerated, which means designing and renovating buildings with heat in mind, planting more trees and painting roofs white so that they reflect light instead of heat. ‘absorbs,’ said Mr. Feltmate.

He added that it is important that residential buildings have a backup power supply to keep the air conditioning and fans running in case there is a power outage caused by heat.

A lack of urgency

Although these steps seem simple, Feltmate said Canadian cities and governments are not acting quickly, despite warnings about the risk of losing life from extreme heat.

What is missing in the equation, more than anything, is the lack of appreciation for the need to take immediate action to perform the adaptation steps.

Adaptation also means making a plan in case places become too hot for people to live, as could happen in parts of the Persian Gulf, South Asia, Central America and West Africa before the end of the century.

There are real limits to what our bodies can handle even when acclimated, and the Gulf region is starting to exceed those limits more regularly.says Cascade Tuholske, researcher at Center for the International Earth Science Information Network [Centre pour le réseau international d’information sur les sciences de la Terre, traduction libre] from Columbia University, whose research focuses on exposure to the deadly heat of the city.

Poor countries, where people rely on subsistence agriculture, may see a massive shift to cities, which themselves lack the equipment to deal with the rising heat.

This is why global solutions to climate change are so important, Tuholske said.

I really question the livability of many of the most populous places on the planet due to extreme heat without adaptation. The future really depends on the present and how much we reduce heat today.