Are cities ready for extreme heat?
19 Jul 2022
THE first chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future takes my breath away. Not just because I can almost feel the heat and humidity dripping off the pages, but because I know that—although the story is fictional—similar scenes are already playing out in real life.
This April, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, the temperature shot up to 45.9 degrees Celsius, or 114.6 degrees Fahrenheit, during a prolonged heat wave that wilted crops and killed at least 100 people (a likely undercount). While spring heat waves are not uncommon in parts of India, according to the country’s Ministry of Earth Sciences they are happening more frequently. Twelve of the country’s 15 hottest years on record have occurred since 2006. A June 2015 heat wave killed over 2,000 people. It’s perhaps no coincidence that The Ministry for the Future begins in Uttar Pradesh. Is truth stranger than fiction?
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