Some like it hot
Husband-and-wife comedians and commentators Michele A’Court and Jeremy Elwood share their views.
Hot enough for you? As the country swelters, I’m reminded of my childhood in Canada. I grew up in Vancouver, which has a relatively temperate climate, but I used to spend a lot of summers and winters in Ontario, where 40 degrees C, with or without a minus sign in front of it, wasn’t unusual. However, even in those long ago years (it hasn’t escaped me that my youth happened in eras that they make historical movies about now) Canadian houses were prepared with air conditioning for summer, and central heating in winter. No doubt fuelled by coal, CFCs and other now-damned substances, but still.
When I eventually moved to New Zealand, one thing that struck me was how unprepared most homes – and indeed towns – here are for extreme temperatures. Dunedin, where I first lived, is a testament to the stubbornness of Scots who had decided they were shipping off to a Robert Louis Stevenson-style Pacific Island, and were damned if the reality of a southerly wind blowing straight from Antarctica was going to dent their dreams, or their wallets, when it came to building houses.
It’s the same in the heat. People are perfectly happy to complain when our summers are underwhelming, but shocked when they do what it says on the tin. How many news stories have you read, seen or heard this year (and I do mean “this year”, I only want you to count from January 1st) about temperatures being higher than any time “since records began” or the vagaries of the weather impacting on productivity? I’m not even counting farmers in this discussion, as them complaining about the weather is right up there with death and taxes as an inevitability.
We’re surrounded by water, though, and have rivers and lakes that we’re more than happy to base our tourism image on, so what’s the problem? Well, it turns out we’re not that great at maintaining those, either. I went for a beach swim last weekend in Auckland before I saw the signs warning of poor water quality at said beach. Turns out a sewage pipe had burst nearby, and I may have been swimming in an entire neighbourhood’s waste. Plenty of our rivers are in a similar state and when you add duck itch, jellyfish and gangs of teenagers playing touch rugby to the equation, our beaches and waterways aren’t quite as attractive as the aerial shots in our ads may suggest.
I guess what I’m saying is, as the planet heats up (which it absolutely is doing, to all of you online ostriches about to hit “comment” on this article) we’re all going to be running hot and cold a lot more. We might as well plan for it.