Looking for cooler pastures

A Bris­bane friend told me her ther­mome­ter topped 41°C a week ago – and that was in the shade.

Inside, it was a sweaty 36°C which, accom­pa­nied by humid­ity, makes things pretty well uncomfortable.

She was mov­ing at the time which made the heated expe­ri­ence even more dif­fi­cult to cope with. In short, it was sheer hell.

But there again, this is a Bris­bane sum­mer. And the worst is yet to come.

A recent news­pa­per report in the Courier Mail has done noth­ing to allay my fears. In fact, I am in a mild state of panic at the heated state of the globe.

Experts, the story told, pre­dicted “an increase of up to 4°C is pos­si­ble by 2070 lead­ing to annual tem­per­a­tures well beyond any­thing over the past 50 years”.

Aus­tralia, it said, has just recorded its hottest six months ever and is on track to have the sec­ond hottest year since records began. Max­i­mum tem­per­a­tures were 6 to 9°C above normal.

My children’s ten­nis coach and Bris­bane old-timer tells me it wasn’t always so. In the good old days, he muses, there were cool­ing thun­der­storms at the end of a swel­ter­ing summer’s day. There was not day after day of end­less heat with no relief in sight.

Per­haps we should all be pick­et­ing in Copenhagen—telling our own per­sonal sto­ries related to cli­mate change. Mine would read like this:

Dear Mr Rudd,

It is bloody hot again in Bris­bane, with appar­ently no immi­nent relief.

My attempt at being kind to the envi­ron­ment by lov­ingly and dili­gently plant­ing a veg­etable patch has gone hor­ri­bly wrong. My toma­toes are fry­ing on the vine and my gem squashes shrivel as soon as they’re accosted by the ven­omous sun. Even my sun­flow­ers, surely the queen of sun wor­ship­pers, have turned their fair heads away from the fire ball accost­ing them daily. Weren’t they meant to fol­low the sun?

My chick­ens, dear Mr Rudd, are also tak­ing strain. They have cho­sen to set­tle (and poop) on the cool tiles of my veranda rather than endure their hot lit­tle pen. It takes all my resolve not to let them in with the dog to enjoy a lit­tle air-conditioned com­fort (I assure you it is one air-conditioner only—a mere pin­prick of car­bon emis­sion in the big­ger scheme of things).

My can­dles, Mr Rudd, are look­ing pos­i­tively phal­lic. I kid you not, the sun beam­ing through the blinds has caused them to bow down in submission—they have, in short, melted and lie pros­trate on the table.

My grass, Mr Rudd, laid at con­sid­er­able cost some months back, is a sun-baked shade of brown—it will take a del­uge or three to give it the will to live.

And get this: the inde­struc­tible gum trees are shed­ding their leaves—isn’t that an autumn pas­time?  Doesn’t that sound pretty out of sorts to you?

This is all only the tip of the ice­berg, Mr Rudd. I fear sum­mer has only just begun— there is Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary to endure.

But, I will try not to com­plain. I will lis­ten to my com­pa­tri­ots who tell me how lucky I am not to be liv­ing in a cli­mate where tem­per­a­tures drop to minus 20°C. I will nod sagely when they tell me how I would soon grow tired of the snow and the sludge and the murky grey skies.

And I try very hard not to tell every­one I meet that I am SO OVER THIS HEAT I want to move to cooler pas­tures. Today.

How cold is won­der­ful, won­der­ful Copen­hagen, dear Mr Rudd?