Ask Howard • 08-18-23
Climate change, pangolins and rude dates Aaaaand we’ve done it, folks! Yes, the history books are ours: This summer of 2023 has now, officially, become the very hottest human civilization has ever experienced.
Or rather, we’re now individually reduced to our very survival being dependent upon access to air conditioning. The sweltering citizens of Switzerland have even begun suing their government for not taking climate change seriously enough back when it still had the chance to. “Extreme fire behavior” is suddenly the worldwide, seasonal norm.
Just ask Canada. And here in Texas, with August firmly entrenched again, let us count our blessings that we’re merely residents of blazing Dallas where, this time of year, venturing outside always feels like opening the door to a blast furnace anyhow — as opposed to, say, Maui’s former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Lahaina.
Whoever imagined that verdant Hawaii could conflagrate so quickly? Or that the only way to survive would be by literally leaping into the sea and swimming away from shore fast as one’s legs could paddle?
