The people are enduring triple digit heat in Karachi. A not insignificant number of them are dying in what is Pakistan’s largest city.
That Pakistanis are suffering horrific summer temperatures soon to be followed by monsoons, would in a normal world be the story. Alas the world isn’t normal.
Instead of reporting solely on heat of the 104 degree Fahrenheit variety, heat that is paired with high humidity, an account of Karachi’s difficulties in the New York Times included the expected insertion about how the heat exists as “a brutal reminder of the deadly toll of climate change in a part of the world especially vulnerable to its effects.”
It’s difficult to know what’s sadder: the heat suffered by human beings, or the reporting from the New York Times. Actually, it’s not difficult to know: the suffering of the Pakistanis is what's truly tragic. Words are just words. But really, can’t the Times publish even one report about the actual horrors of heat without foisting (or feeding) its theories on its readers?
While the report from Karachi was inevitably detailed, and includes the pertinent information that will soon be discussed, what an odd detour into global warming theory. What a thoughtless detour, as though humans brutalized by repressive heat would really care about the global warming theories.
Furthermore, is it even the point? Think India, which Pakistan used to be a part of. To pretend that overwhelming heat in the big cities like New Delhi is novel is obnoxious. That is so because as long as the well-to-do could travel, they exited India’s cities in summers for Simla, and other more elevated locales as an escape from the unrelenting heat.
In Philip Ziegler’s biography of Lord Mountbatten, the author is clear throughout the Asia chapters of just how stifling the weather was in Delhi, and other locales where Mountbatten was headquartered. And this was the 1940s. To then even intimate, as the Times does, that this summer’s heat wave is something new for the Pakistanis insults history, reason, but most of all it insults the people enduring the heat.
To be clear, what the Pakistanis are suffering is not about the theory of global warming even if it’s actually about the theory of global warming. Assuming everything the warming alarmists say is true, those fortunate enough to drive in cars, eat red meat, fly in airplanes, and most of all, able to mitigate the difficulties of summer with air conditioning, aren’t about to give up those comforts.
Evidence supporting the above claim can be found in Washington, D.C. and its suburban surroundings. By all accounts the ideological lean of those in and outside of D.C. has a leftward quality to it, yet as the population surge in and outside D.C. reminds us, they’re here in large numbers precisely because air conditioning in cars, apartments, houses, metros, and businesses makes livable what formerly wasn’t. In other words, ideology takes a back seat to comforts in the parts of the world where summers are particularly brutal.
Which brings us closer to the real problem in Pakistan: a lack of consistent electricity first and foremost. As Zia ur-Rehman of the Times reports, “In recent weeks, power outages in the slums have become frequent and prolonged, lasting from 6 to 16 hours a day. Without power, millions cannot use electric fans that offer some relief.” As for actual air conditioning, ur Rehman reports that it “is rare.” It speaks to the biggest problem in Pakistan, which is one of insufficient economic growth, growth that in other parts of the world has more and more resulted in air conditioning as a fact of life.
The headline for the Times’ report on Karachi and its heat read as “Pakistan’s Largest City Withers Under Deadly Heat and Fears the Coming Rains.” A better, more realistic title would read something like “A Lack of Economic Growth Limits Pakistani Access to Cooling Comforts, and It Has a Rising Death Toll.” Alas, such a headline would distract from the obsession of New York Times reporters and readers with global warming. What a luxury obsession. What a cruel obsession.
