The climate crisis is no longer a worry about the future. In many parts of the world, it has already started.
The year 2021 was the hottest on record. Millions of people are living in extreme temperatures, facing an increasing threat from floods or forest fires.
Next, five people from different parts of the world explain how extreme temperatures have changed their lives.
‘We have many sleepless nights’
Shakeela Bano often puts her family’s bedding on the slab of her one-story home in India. It’s just that some nights are too hot to sleep indoors. But the surface may be too hot to walk on.
“It’s very difficult,” she says. “We have many sleepless nights.”
Shakeela lives with her husband, daughter and three grandchildren in a windowless room in Ahmedabad. They only have a single ceiling fan to keep them cool.
With climate change, many cities in India are now reaching 50°C. Densely populated and built-up areas are particularly affected by something known as the urban heat island effect. Materials such as concrete trap and radiate heat, raising temperatures. And there’s no respite at night, when it can actually get warmer.
In homes like Shakeela’s, temperatures now reach 46°C. She gets dizzy from the heat. Their grandchildren suffer from rashes, heat exhaustion and diarrhea.
Traditional methods of staying cool, like drinking lemon water, no longer work. Instead, they borrowed money to paint the roof of their house white. White surfaces reflect more sunlight and a coat of white paint on the roof can reduce indoor temperatures by 3-4 degrees.
For Shakeela, the difference is huge; the bedroom is cooler and the children sleep better. “He didn’t sleep in the afternoon,” she says, pointing to her sleeping grandson. “Now he can fall asleep in peace.”
‘Hot as fire’
“I come from a warm place,” says Sidi Fadoua. But the heat in northern Mauritania, in West Africa, is now too hot for many people to live and work. The heat here is not normal, he says. “It’s like fire.”
Sidi, 44, lives in a small village near the edge of the Sahara. He works as a salt miner in nearby locations. The work is hard and gets more difficult as the region heats up due to climate change. “We cannot withstand such temperatures,” he says. “We are not machines.”
To avoid temperatures above 45°C in summer, Sidi started working at night.
Job prospects are slim. Those who once made a living raising cattle can’t do that anymore—there are no plants for sheep and goats to graze on.
Like a growing number of her neighbors, Sidi has plans to migrate to the coastal city of Nouadhibou, where the sea breeze keeps the city fresher. Locals can hitch a ride there on one of the longest trains in the world, bringing iron ore to the coast.
“People are moving out of here,” explains Sidi. “They can’t take the heat anymore.”
The 20-hour route is dangerous. Locals can sit on top of carriages, where they are exposed to heat and sunlight during the day, before temperatures drop too much at night.
In Nouadhibou, he hopes to find work in the fishing industry. The breeze can bring relief, but with more and more people escaping the desert heat, it’s harder to find work opportunities. Sidi remains hopeful.
‘How do you end up with hell?’
Patrick Michell, head of Kanaka Bar First Nation, began noticing troubling changes in the forest near his reserve in British Columbia, Canada, more than three decades ago. There was less water in the rivers and the mushrooms stopped growing.
This summer, your fears came true. A heat wave was sweeping across North America. On June 29, his hometown of Lytton broke records, reaching 49.6°C. The next day, his wife sent him a photo of a thermometer that indicated 53°C. An hour later, his city was on fire.
Her daughter, Serena, eight months pregnant, rushed to load her children and pets into the car: “We left with the clothes on our backs. The flames were three stories high and were right next to us.”
Patrick ran back to see if he could save the house. He grew up dealing with forest fires. But like the weather, fires have also changed. “It’s not forest fires anymore, it’s hell,” he says. “How do you end up with hell?”
Despite family circumstances, Patrick sees what happened as an opportunity: “We can rebuild Lytton for the environment in the next 100 years. It’s scary, but in my heart there’s this optimism.”
‘When I was a kid, it wasn’t like that’
“When I was a kid, the climate wasn’t like that,” says Joy, who lives in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. The region is one of the most polluted on Earth, and the hottest days and nights are increasing.
Joy supports her family by using the heat of gas flames to dry tapioca and sell the product in a local market. “I have short hair,” explains Joy, “because if I let my hair grow out, it can burn my head if the flame changes direction or explodes.”
But the flames are part of the problem. Oil companies use them to burn the gas that is released from the ground when they prospect for oil. The flames, which reach 6 meters (20 feet) in height, are a significant source of global CO emissions.2, which contribute to climate change.
Climate change has had a devastating impact here, turning fertile lands into deserts in the north, while flash floods hit the south. People don’t remember such extreme weather growing up.
“Most people here are not well-informed enough to explain why the climate is changing rapidly,” says Joy. “But we suspect the continuous flames.”
She wants the government to ban gas flaring, although she depends on it to support her family.
Almost no oil wealth has been reinvested in Nigeria, where 98 million people live in poverty. This includes Joy and her family. For five days of work, they earn the equivalent of R$30 in profit.
She is not optimistic about the future. “I think life (on Earth) is coming to an end.”
‘This heat is not normal’
Six years ago, Om Naief began planting trees in a patch of desert near a highway. A retired Kuwaiti civil servant, she was concerned about the increasingly severe summer temperatures and worsening dust storms.
“I spoke to some employees. They all said it was impossible to plant anything in the sand,” she says. “They said the earth was sandy and the temperature very high. I wanted to do something that would surprise everyone.”
Om lives in the Middle East, which is heating up faster than much of the world. Kuwait is heading for unbearable temperatures — it is usually hotter than 50°C. Some forecasts suggest that the average temperature will increase by 4°C by 2050. However, Kuwait’s economy is dominated by fossil fuel exports.
The two flowerbeds Om planted are modest, but they have a purpose. “Trees protect from dust, eliminate pollution, clean the air and reduce temperatures,” she says. Land urchins and spiny-tailed lizards now visit the site. “There’s fresh water and shade. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Some Kuwaitis are now calling for a large-scale green belt to be planted by the government. The shared hope is that Kuwait is ready to take a stand against the climate crisis. Om says they must protect the land and not let it dry out.
“This heat is not normal,” concludes Om. “This is our fathers’ land. We must give back because she gave us so much.”
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