As Angelenos prepare to roast...
by David Atkins
Just another record heat wave:
Officials in Los Angeles County announced Wednesday that cooling centers would be opening as the National Weather Service predicted "record-setting" and "life-threatening" temperatures across Southern California.
The excessive heat is expected to last from Friday morning through Monday night with triple-digit temperatures across inland and mountain areas, the Weather Service said.
The agency issued excessive heat warnings or watches from San Luis Obispo to San Diego counties.
Temperatures in Antelope Valley could top out at 115 degrees, according to the Weather Service. Highs could reach the 80s along the coast and be near 90 in downtown Los Angeles.
This sort of thing is becoming increasingly commonplace, and record heat waves like this will continue to increase over the years and decades ahead. And keep in mind that many homes and apartments in Los Angeles don't have air conditioning because the climate has generally been too mild to require it. I lived for years in an apartment without air conditioning in the middle of L.A., and it was often miserable in summer even back then.
Climate change is going to end up killing more people than terrorism could ever dream of by many orders of magnitude. If only even a portion of the money being sunk into our growing surveillance state would go into solutions for fixing our climate change problems, we'd not only have a greater variety and number of good jobs, but a more reasoned approach to national security that actually saves move lives. And we'd have a safer, more beautiful environment to boot.
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