Vinay Kumar
Climate change is not only out there, it’s also within us
Coming into Heathrow, the pilot cheerfully announced: “It’s a lovely day, with the temperature at 30.”
A lovely day, with the temperature at 30°C? With the calendar yet having to catch up to June and still loitering about in the last week of May, which is supposed to be spring, not high blazing summer? Had spring got sprung? And if so, where had it got sprung to? Sub-Saharan Africa?
We got out of the airport and realised that the pilot had been wrong. It wasn’t 30°C. It was 33°C. How more godawful could it get? We found out the next day. It became 34°C. At 34°C, London was 10°C cooler than Gurgaon, where Bunny and I live. But 34°C in London feels much worse than 44°C in Gurgaon.
We’re told repeatedly there are simple reasons for this. In India, buildings are by and large designed to keep the heat out and the coolth in. In UK, everything’s done to keep the heat in and the cold out.
So, when it does get hot in Britain – as it’s doing more and more often thanks to climate change – the heat feels worse than what the thermometer shows.
This is because of a different kind of climate change: not outside climate change, but the inside climate change of our minds.
When we’re in Gurgaon, we expect it to be hot, so we don’t get all het up about the heat. At 34°C, it would indeed be a lovely day in Gurgaon in May.
But not in London, or anywhere in Britain which, despite growing evidence to the contrary, keeps telling itself and the world at large that it is not just a temperate country, but a cold country.
So, when Britain does get hot, the heat hits with a double whammy, both physical and psychological.
Einstein explored the phenomenon of space-time relativity. We need a psychological Einstein to explore the phenomenon of space-time climate relativity: How relative is the climate to where and when we are?
London in May at 34°C? An oven. Gurgaon in May at 34°C? How cool. Our internal weather depends on our whetherabouts, whether we are here, or there.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
