Dog days in D.C.

As a child I believed that the so-called Dog Days of summer were called that because the intense heat causes dogs to pant more than usual to keep their body temperature down. And while my observation was not entirely misguided, I found out later that the appellation comes from the approximately six-week period when the rising of the sky's brightest star, Sirius—the so-called Dog Star associated with the constellation Canis Major, the "greater dog"—occurs before the Sun, making it visible to observers in the Northern Hemisphere.

The modern starting date is usually said to be July 3, and the ending date is August 11—though most people think of the Dog Days as extending into late August or even early September since they associate this period with exceptionally hot, humid weather in the Northern Hemisphere.

It was in preparation for such days that during my first summer in the District of Columbia, my landlady instructed her handyman to install an air conditioner in the window of the room I rent in a cavernous home in northwest Washington. She insisted that I would never make it through a hot, humid D.C. summer without air conditioning. I told her that I was pretty heatproof and that I would make it just fine. After all, I grew up in Michigan and managed the hot, humid summers there without air conditioning.

She reluctantly relented, but insisted that I would be begging her for an air conditioner when the really hot weather arrived. She eventually turned out to be right; but it took another six years.

Humans used to know how to deal with hot summers before air conditioning. We used to build structures to keep us cool where we work and live. For example, architects included "[w]raparound porches which shield the interior from the sun and allow open windows even during rainstorms" and "[t]ransom windows which allow circulation between rooms when the doors are closed (popular in apartment houses and hotels)." But now architects often design buildings without any consideration of climate. The climate will, after all, be controlled within the building by the heating and air-conditioning system.

In the pre-air-conditioning era, businesses located in city office buildings would let their employees off for a week or two for a summer vacation during the hottest days of the year. The siesta, a midday meal and break, is a proven way to structure one's day in warm climates or at warm times of the year to reduce activity during the hottest part of the day. Taking a dip in a pool or other body of water is also an effective way to keep cool.

Our bodies respond to heat by adapting if we let them. But with the widespread use of air conditioning, few people are obliged to adapt. That actually makes them more susceptible to heat-related illnesses. Because I allow my body adapt, by midsummer I think nothing of taking a 20-mile bike ride in 90-degree weather with high humidity. My body adapts and can shed the excess heat readily.

And yet, climate change has now come to Washington, D.C. In my seventh summer (last summer) a relentless heatwave sent both me and a housemate (who also preferred living without air conditioning) down to the comfort of the air-conditioned living room to sleep. Our rooms would simply not cool down enough to allow sleeping—even with the use of large, high-speed fans to pull in outside air. We thought the heatwave would last two or three days at most.

After a week of sleeping in the living room, we both relented and air conditioners were placed in windows in our rooms. I am admit it was a relief to sleep in my own bed instead of the easy chair in the living room. But I felt a small defeat. I would henceforth be unable to adapt completely to the heat of D.C's Dog Days. Human bodies can withstand exceedingly high temperatures during the day. But if we cannot cool our bodies down and recover at night, we can imperil our health.

In this my eighth summer in D.C. the weather has required the use of air conditioning only for about two weeks so far, but the summer isn't over. In the meantime, National Guard humvees have been deployed on the National Mall and at Union Station because the president says there is some kind of emergency in the city—something which no one who actually lives here full time believes.

The real emergency, however, is being ignored. The Dog Days of summer are becoming more and more intolerable as the climate heats up. And, yet the leader of the nation that has emitted the most climate-altering gases into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial age is busy with performative photo-ops regarding nonproblems that he is addressing with nonsolutions. The rest of the world's leaders are collectively doing little better. And so, there is little hope that I won't be using my air conditioner more often in the future as the Dog Days continue to put more humans (and more dogs) in danger of overheating.

Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.