## 03 Climate change
And now for something serious... I'm a big fan of weather statistics and I was wondering about this year compared to other years. For my city, it's not the hottest summer, except for June. But for France, it's one of the hottest, despite the rainy July, especially in the southern half of the country. For Europe, it's worse with many heat waves. And for the earth, it's the hottest summer. We have seen this on TV for Canada, USA, Greece, sometimes Portugal, Spain, Algeria and even China, Hawaï... Many other countries in the world have suffered from fires and heat waves. Last year, it was also India, Pakistan but with ethnocentrism, Western media are speaking about «similar to us» or rich countries.We have been seeing these weather phenomenon for several years. Climatologists told us about that several years or decades ago. Now we are In ! In the climate change. It's not an exceptional year, it's becoming common.
If I'm writing such a post, it's not because I'm a specialist of the subject or ... (I'm a metrologist, not meteorologist !!). It's just I'm reading and hearing so much bullshit or mistakes (for example, on social networks, we could read the hashtag #caniculemoncul which can be translated by «heat wave, my ass !» ). Climate change is not an invention of the IPCC (GIEC in French) but a reality, confirmed by 99,9% of the climatologists, by statistics. It's a fact ! Some people are losing their homes, their land, their country and it's not just by reducing our consumption and travelling less for a year as we did during SARS-CoV2 epidemic that we could stop this phenomenon. We should change the way we live. This year, I had health problems during one month («I'm still in the thick of it»), and so, I used my old hybrid car less than usual. I now walk more often to the greengrocer store next to my house (500m), to the small supermarket 700m away, to the bakery, and most of the time, it's enough. I am lucky be
cause, in my «small» french town (10,000 inhabitants ), everything is less than 20 minutes away from home. But it's not so easy for my mother who lives in in a bigger town, because the only big supermarkets are at more than 30 minutes away from her home. The busses are not made for shopping but only for getting to work in the morning and back in the evening. She's still healthy and can walk but it's not common thing. But too many cities lost their convenience stores.
I have created [metrominuto](
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrominuto) of my town, for walkers and cyclists. It's an easy way, I think, to promote alternatives way of moving, getting around. But if you think about it a little, you might remember when you were a child. With my grandparents, I used to walk a lot to go shopping, more than 2hours to get there and back. We had a trolley, bags and...our feet. But since I'm an adult, I'm lazier and sometimes use my cars to save a few cents on some products. When I lived in Paris, I used public transport and not my car. But I can't imagine living in Paris now, with climate change. Too few trees and parks for me and 3°c more than where I am now. So the problem is not only to use or not to use our car for everything but to have the possibility to do something else. It's not just about having cycle paths everywhere but also about having shops not far from home, to have also bicycle parking. When I spent summers in Germany, I had no problem walking or cycling and it
was (in the 90s) easy to find shops without hypermarket or big malls like in France. I think it changed a lot, unfortunately. And if I compare with an emerging country like Vietnam, the motorbike has replaced the bicycle and they are making the same mistakes we did a few decades ago. So now the problem is not climate change but Lifestyle Change. Not easy of course for humans who are used to comfort.
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I have chosen a tree to illustrate this post, a dead tree. But is it dead ? It seems dead because we can't see any leaves. But like for climate change, if people are so pessimistic than they no longer want to make an effort, it's not «dead», after all. I'm not saying that science will solve all our climate problems. I'm just saying that we can change our way of living, but this time with a knife at our throats ! The tree will survive with new leaves next spring. Humans can learn to live on a different Earth, with respect for animals and plants, not follow those billionaires who want to do the same with another planet.
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