Another hot summer. Climate change is at it again.
For over five weeks, the mercury has been marking 100-plus temperatures, which is now every day. It feels like summer started just a little early this year because even before July, the temperatures were high enough to feel like summer but in spring. And also we have noticed that summer also feels hotter than usual.
The whole west coast of the United States is under a heatwave. It is so hot that people need AC now more than ever, and landlords must provide AC units in some cities. Politicians like to force people instead of letting the free market do its job. For people who rent rooms which is a thing in California is more challenging because landlords often try to scare tenants into not using an AC unit to save on electricity. And others are trying to profit from the need for cool air by charging extra money to tenants more than what their bill should be if they have a meter. I guess this is a thing that repeats year after year. I have a friend who can't install an AC unit because the landlord will increase his rent.
This year we don't have to worry about the regular heat wave, but also the fact that many of the western States have been in drought conditions since years ago, and it seems like it doesn't rain enough for the water reservoirs to fill themselves to top needs. And now some States are even mandating water conservation from citizens.
Suburbia is the American dream; many people's final goal is to have a home with a big back and front yards, and of course, those yards cover in natural green grass. That is a dream because California mandates that people preserve water and not waste water on useless grass. The local government is even suggesting to homeowners to change from natural organic grass to fake grass made of plastic or to switch to more environmentally friendly plants, which means plants that are local to the place where we live, which, mind you, is a desert.
I have a river just a few minutes from my house which supplies the whole city with water not only for homes and businesses but also for agriculture used, and we have seen the river get dry to the bone, where no water runs, and the lake up river has lost water too. The Colorado river is having water issues too, and the situation has crossed borders already; in Baja, California, a water situation developed a few months ago, too, because the Colorado river seems to be drying up too.
A lot of the greater LA receives water from the Colorado River, which is why the major of that city has called for water conservation. It seems like climate change is not a joke. In my country of origin, I hear some villages near the ocean get inundated because rivers overflow. I guess that is why climate change is extreme dry water in one area and extreme wet season in another. And I have realized that I hear more and more how the weather conditions change yearly to the point that people notice the changes, even when that is across miles away.
Now the city where I live, we only have like four weeks where we don't need either an air conditioner (AC) or a heater, but overall here it is you turn off your AC and turn on your heater, turn off your heater and turn on the AC again. Only about two weeks in between is when you can have excellent weather without the need for utilities, and that is just life in a city in California. The only difference is that year by year, it feels like it just gets a little cooler and hotter, and now we are noticing that the rivers are getting dry to the bone, and in other areas, it rains until fishes drop on your roof. I guess that is climate change for me.
This time we also experienced the very hot summer, but now the weather is changing little by little, as winter is coming in two months.