India’s record-breaking heat wave has been a footnote in the news cycle. I would hardly have noticed myself, but my fiance, a commercial airline pilot, checked the weather ahead of a trip this week to Delhi. He braced himself for steady 112-degree heat.
It hit him even from inside the cockpit as he descended below 10,000 feet. The air was already heavy with the stench of humanity under stress — polluted, dusty and cooking. When he arrived at the hotel at 11 p.m., the heat was still unbearable.
India saw its highest average temperatures ever this March and April, and May typically gets hotter. Pavement literally melts. Fire risks are high, and crop yields threatened, compounding an already severe global food crisis. Melting Himalayan glaciers risk flash floods. Pollution rages. People cannot work, students cannot learn and heat-related deaths soar. Electricity usage stands at record levels as populations try to cope.
