The inequality of extreme heat

It’s forecast to reach 38°C in Gauteng this weekend. Yes, thirty-eight degrees.

Mthatha is 35°C today (Friday), Musina will reach 41°C next week, Upington will be 37°C and Mbombela hits 38°C on Sunday.

Hot weather isn’t unusual. This is a hot and dry country, especially on the highveld. But we are still in October, a month into spring.

It is hotter because we are heating the planet. We did this. In South Africa, it’s thanks to our inefficient and polluting industries — mainly Eskom and Sasol.

That heat exacerbates existing problems, such as the inequality that we seem to have accepted as normal. When it gets hotter, those with less lose the most.

This sweltering weekend, people with money will turn on the air conditioning in their homes. And in their cars. Next week, they will go to offices that are cooler than outside. They’ll be able to work in comfort to accumulate more wealth.

Those without money will sit in a home that is not insulated. In a heatwave — a prolonged period during which the temperature is 5°C hotter than usual — it becomes too hot to sleep. Old and young people can die from the stress it causes to their organs.

Everyone else is exhausted. They’ll then go to work in the heat. That will mean sweat swirling in a crowded taxi, workers facing the steam from an iron, the heat reflecting off cement baking construction workers.when you’re tired, hot and trying to work to survive, finding time to study or look for another job becomes more difficult than usual.

And this is after just a fraction of global warming. We have massively increased the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere — from 250 parts per million to 409 parts per million. Last year the human race released more carbon into the atmosphere than at any time in history. We’re accelerating our pollution.

This has warmed South Africa by an average of nearly 2°C. There are already more hot days and fewer cold days. The seasons are shifting. The last five years have been ones of constant drought, with brief patches of intense rainfall to fill our dams. Even winter was dryer than usual.

At 38°C, we’re getting a glimpse of our world in a climate crisis. It only gets worse. — Sipho Kings