Well, I live in North Texas. And you all know what that means, you’ve been watching the news obsessively over the last month. I keep checking the weather every day like it’s going to tell me something different.
We’ve got a bit of a break today, only up to 101F, and it will be 94F tomorrow with a bit of rain. Amazing how your perspective changes when you’ve been suffering through 105F+ degrees.
This is our future. And it’s our future for the next 20 years, even if we begin dramatically now to reduce emissions and carbon dioxide. (And Texas Republicans seem determined to bring about the Apocalypse, so that seems unlikely.)
So as always I obsessively research the problem because I feel helpless, and it’s the only way to shut my brain up.
Insulation
The best way to think of the heat is as an extreme weather event, just like a big freeze. Extremely low or high temperatures are survivable if you’re in an sheltered area that’s climate controlled. We have to insulate the house. Not just blown fiber, but radiant barrier. My father in law got radiant barrier installed, and it reduced the temperature in the attic by 30F. We got some blown in insulation when we moved in 20 years ago, but it needs to be redone. We should fill the exterior walls with expanding foam. The cost for radiant barrier installation is around 30 cents per sq ft up to $2.00 for the material, plus at least $300 for installation. I estimate at least $1,000, plus whatever it will cost to put fresh blown-in insulation up in the attic.
Energy
Texas is against anything like a renewable energy source, but solar panel arrays are the perfect solution to producing extra power for cities. Fort Worth and other towns in North Texas are filled with limestone scree fields where they’ve been fracking for natural gas. They’re perfect for solar arrays. The city could subsidize the building of solar panel arrays over parking lots that are currently uncovered, because that’s unused real estate that’s already cleared of trees. We also need solar panel arrays over every possible surface in Texas that can hold a solar panel and isn’t good for anything else. Heck, you can raise sheep and goats around solar arrays, and they’ll keep the grass and weeds maintained. Or we could be growing hemp around the solar arrays, which I think is the best idea.
Personal energy generation is financially out of reach for us. With the Inflation Reduction Act, there will be rebates and assistance for updating the house. We qualify for a tax rebate for upgrades from the Inflation Reduction Act. That is, of course, if the Republicans don’t sabotage it with budget shenanigans. But that won’t even kick in until the last half of 2023, and we’re not quite there yet.
Water and shade
The front of our house faces the east, the back faces the west, which is fortunately shaded by big trees. I have the gray water from the laundry piped to water the trees, but the bushes are on their own. We lost two of our big shrubs last year during the big freeze (0F for three days.) Aside from the bushes and trees, our yard is completely dead — we don’t water — and so my thought is that we need something there to reduce the chance of a grass fire. Any hardscape we put down will make it hotter. I don’t know what to do about that, other than cover the entire back yard in an awning. I went to Big Bend National Park a lot as a kid, and I always liked the ocotillo awning they had in front of the store at Junction. It served the same purpose as 50% cloth — obscuring 50% of the sun’s rays so that the area under the awning was slightly cooler. Ambient temperature was still a problem, but it would bring it down a few degrees.
Architecture
Daniels Ranch, the adobe house at Rio Grande Village in Big Bend, is a great example of what can be done with simple materials. When I was a kid you were allowed to go in there, but now they have the openings blocked. The house was sunk into the ground to take advantage of the natural insulation of the earth, and the walls were more than a foot thick, made out of straw, rocks, and mud. It was always slightly cooler inside the building in the middle of the day. We need to make the walls of houses thicker here in Texas, provide more insulation, and plan on a/c systems that can sustain severe temperatures. We need to plan houses with graywater and rainwater capture systems, so that we can water whatever we choose to grow without using the potable water supply of the city.
Desert mindset
The culture in Texas and the other Southern states will have to change. Instead of forcing our environment to conform with our desires, we should be working within what the environment will allow. Resting during the middle of the day (or at least staying inside,) and planning activities during the night. Getting over our negative reaction to multi-family housing, because that will be how we can crowd more humans into a livable space. We need to put farms on all of the available arable land we’ll have left, and put humans, solar panels and wind turbines into the spaces where we can’t grow food. We have to start thinking about this now, instead of later when it’s too late.
Next week it will get up to 109F on Tuesday. With weather like that, I’m afraid to leave the house. The week after next we might see some temperatures under 100F, which I’m looking forward to. Welcome to the rest of our lives, right?