the Empathy List #107: Hot Girl Summer

Climate Change is Hot and Hard to Talk About...

Hello friend, Liz here.

This summer has been hot. Very hot.

You might even say it’s been a “hot girl summer.”

Meredith MacNeill from Baroness Von Sketch Show, Photo by Matt Barnes, Chatelaine.

And, no, I don’t mean sexy. I mean literally hot—as in, scorching, sweating, dehydrating, overheating.

I mean, top-out-the-thermometer-and-set-new-highs hot, as happened in Death Valley, California, where meteorologists recorded a reading of 128 degrees Fahrenheit.

I mean, so hot that the houseless have faced an epidemic of heat stroke and heat-induced death, as in the streets of Phoenix, Arizona and other American cities.

I mean, so hot that the Colorado River is on the verge of evaporating, leaving the American Southwest dessicated, returning farmland and cityscape back to desert.

I mean, so hot that Canada has not stopped burning.

I mean, so hot that the coral reef on the coast of Florida has cooked to death, shrinking an essential eco-system and leaving coastal states vulnerable to tropical storms.

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