She told me to expect lots of rain and cloudy, cool days. A classic London summer, said my mother. Her word is usually very believable and backed by science. So, without hesitation, I packed my coat, rain jacket, and rain boots. However, since landing at Heathrow I’ve used my umbrella exactly once for ten minutes. It’s been two months since I arrived in London, and what I’ve experienced could very well be compared to a Pennsylvania summer. Hot, humid, and miserable.
The only difference is that this country isn’t equipped for heatwaves. Most buildings here were built with the cold in mind, and so they’re heavily insulated and trap heat. In fact, as I write this in the middle of the cutest coffee shop, I’m sweating. The NHS in particular, was created 87 years ago when the climate was much cooler (no data centers). Every time the weather exceeded 26 degrees Celsius, the building I worked in was closed, which was about almost half of the time I was working there. My supervisor at King’s College Hospital told me that this heat typically only lasts about ten days out of the whole summer. The math just doesn’t add up.
During the heatwave, I got an opportunity to do some shadowing, and as I walked through the different wards, most of them didn’t have air conditioning either. I honestly couldn’t imagine how the people in those wards must have felt being forced to sit there in that sweltering heat all day. I was miserable being there for just a few hours, but day and night? It sounds like climate change isn’t so far away in the future. We’re seeing and feeling it in real time.
Come to think of it, I was in an Uber once and my Uber driver asked me if I believed in climate change. He was under the impression that Americans didn’t believe in climate change at all. I don’t like to speculate, but I told him that some of us definitely do. Between the wildfires in Canada, this unnatural heat in London, severe flooding in Texas, and so much more, how much can we take before we have to acknowledge that the way we treat our earth is wrong?
And who will suffer the most? We can certainly take cover by hiding indoors, but our wildlife cannot.
I would not like to end this article on a low note, so here’s my last point. By far my worst experience was the tube this summer. Imagine a hot, dimly lit, stinky, crowded compartment and multiply it by twenty-six thousand. If you take that sum and multiply it by pi, then square it, then you get how many farts are circling London’s underground tube network.
In conclusion, if you’re thinking about visiting London this year, bring plenty of hair ties and a handheld fan.
