My husband is an air-conditioning contractor based in southeast Florida, where A/C is needed almost the whole year round. This summer has been particularly hot—the temperatures pushing everyone’s A/C units to their limits. He comes home soaked in sweat and arrived on the border of a heat stroke one day.
Most service calls require a trip to the attic. Talk about gasping for breath. He tells me customers are especially upset this year because they can’t get their houses down to frigid. He explains repeatedly that frigid isn’t possible in such extreme heat.
He and I have always liked our house at 78, and it’s easy to stay at that temperature, but if I go outside in midday I want to go back inside.
I have no doubt we’re experiencing climate change, unlike some doubters. I see it here in the shrinking beaches, the overflow of the sea into coastal communities. Those things didn’t happen before—not to this extreme. Miami was considering putting up a wall to stanch the flooding but that would drive tourists away.
These are the times I don’t regret getting old. Who would want to be a child today, growing up amid changes that, thankfully, I’ll never see.
Pris Campbell
Lake Worth, Florida
