On these hot days, it's natural to think about summers of the past. The records seem to say it clearly: these temperatures are unprecedented, an absolute record, which reminds me of a godmother of mine, who told me, already a little senile, that that day had been the hottest of her life, an impression that might have seemed exaggerated, but which the news later confirmed: for more than eighty years, for more than eighty years.
A similar joke is now circulating around X: even though we're dying of heat, it seems like it could be the coolest summer of our lives (at least if we manage to survive). Even if this is true, there's not much we can do except complain and endure it, especially those of us who don't have air conditioning at home and don't know where to stand except in front of the fan, which is already man's best friend. This device now represents a kind of attainable utopia, far from the fraudulent and harmful implementation of air conditioning units. The fan as a symbol of heated virtue.
Everyone assumes that this rise in summer temperatures is our fault, the result of human action on the planet, something we nonetheless constantly stir up, with the result that we raise the temperature of the invention even further. Air conditioners do nothing but expel hot air outside, or the exodus of people seeking shelter by the sea, turning the coastline into a mess, the millions of tourist trips, airplanes heating up the atmosphere, so much asphalt and cement everywhere, absorbing and suffocating us. In empty cities, we may end up breathing better than on the concrete-filled coastline. Thus, every swimming pool we build is one more festering wound on the planet's skin. Everything we do to seek solace aggravates the problem. The cure isn't worse than the disease; the cure is already the disease. It has been seeking care for our unsatisfied condition just as we have ruined this wonderful planet. In our quest to escape the fire, we are literally creating a hell with air conditioning and takeout.
That many European cities are preparing for future summers with temperatures of over fifty degrees is a demented dystopia. Furthermore, the heat is distributed unequally: it's the working classes who suffer the most: food delivery workers, marsh workers, and street sweepers. This will require a serious rethink. Heat cannot have an ideology. It's cold.
