Summertime, and the living is uneasy
Alison Mau knows all about 40 degree temperatures – and she has some tips.
Gawd it’s hot. Today I read about the hottest day ever recorded in New Zealand; February 7, 1973. Rangiora hit 42.4 degrees Celsius; schools closed and factory workers went on strike. Tens of thousands of chickens on poultry farms died in their sheds. Roads melted, rail lines buckled. Right now, anywhere in New Zealand, you can at least start to imagine how that might have felt.
Self-evident truth: it is summer. Of course it’s hot. But it’s not generally this hot, for this long, is it? And there’s no relief coming for you, sweltering sinner. Records will most probably be broken by Tuesday. Open your arms and welcome the out-of-body-experience that is 40C.
Every summer of my childhood years, growing up across the ditch, it was a given that temperatures would climb into the early 40s for a decent stretch, at some point between Christmas Day and the end of February. In 1970s Melbourne, very few houses had air conditioning; nor did most shops, buses, trams or trains.
The reverse-cycle heat pump was but a science fiction dream. When I worked at McDonald’s as a teenager in the holidays, we would spend our breaks in the walk-in freezer. When the night-time temperature refused to dip below 30C, the only way to sleep was to soak a beach-sized towel in very cold water and lie ramrod straight underneath it. Rinse, wring and repeat every couple of hours.
Even so, Melbourne’s summer heat was a doddle compared to much of the rest of that dry, red country. In 1977, aged 12, I took my first ever airplane ride to spend the summer holidays with friends of the family who ran a cattle station near Darwin.
I clearly remember stepping out of the plane into the blast furnace sun and nearly losing my grip on my bags, which threatened to slip straight out of my hands.
The temperatures were close to 50C, and at the station homestead we were kept inside the farmhouse for the first three days to acclimatise. And funnily enough, you do, after a while, acclimatise. People who live in properly hot climates learn to get along with the heat. When it’s been 40C for weeks, you learn to move more slowly; no-one runs for a bus, or hurries anywhere.
As night falls you have a choice to make. For the first time in 14 hours it’s cooler outside the house than in; but open the door a crack and in come mozzies the size of migratory seabirds.
Do you open those windows, and stay awake all night seized by fear that you’ll be terrorised by opportunistic home invaders? We’ve all read about the effects of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef, the ice caps, even the monarch butterfly. These extreme summer temperatures are a final heads-up for those who until now may have had their heads in the sand on the issue.
If that’s not enough, try this: owners of coastal properties in certain areas of New Zealand will be unable to insure those properties just a few years from now.
In an interview on RNZ National this week, climate economist Belinda Storey explained the concept of ‘‘insurance retreat’’.
Your insurance risk is calculated on the risk of storm damage to your property. This is most likely from storm surges. In places with large tidal ranges (like Auckland) a 50cm storm surge might hit at low of mid-tide, and not cause much damage. In places with small tidal ranges, like Wellington and Napier for example, there is no such protection from that 50cm storm surge.
When you add in even a very
small amount of sea level rise, the probability of damage increases significantly. A 10cm rise in the sea level in Wellington would change the probability of storm damage from a one in 100 year chance, to a one in 20 year chance.
Those properties which get insurance now because they live in a 100-year flood zone can kiss goodbye to cover when it becomes a one in 20-year zone. If you can’t insure your house and land, you’re technically in default of the terms of your mortgage. A buyer would have to pay cash.
The end result would turn current property price logic on its head. Beachfront properties, now among the priciest, would be cheap. There would be a premium on homes and land away from the sea.
This is the irony, (and the strong probability) that awaits us within the next 20 years. My apologies if that’s just one more thing to keep you awake at night.