Last night my husband asked "When do you think we'll see serious action on climate change in the US?"
We thought about it together & decided if we have a summer where it's hot & the power goes out for a week & in more than one major metro area that isn't in a generally hot region-- then... then maybe people will get it.
That's gonna kill a lot of people. But on the bright(???🙁?) side this will probably happen in the next few years.
We talked about how to make our neighborhood more ready.
Generators are difficult, but to keep a fridge going for medicine and critical food supplies we could safely put one on the roof.
There may be changes that can be made to the building to better manage heat, does everyone have sun curtains? Can we improve windows?
Older people may not be able to stay in the building, I think there would be cooling centers, but how do we do transportation?
What foods can we make without a fridge or using much heat? We have ways to boil water.
research time!
@futurebird - Solar panels are a good bet if your money extends that far. A small generator is good for running a fridge, but you'll also want to look into a battery/inverter setup if you don't want to spend an *inordinate* amount on gas. And if you've already got the batteries, solar panels and a charge controller are cheap.
Look into solar cookers for cooking without generating any heat.
@futurebird A generator is *the* most expensive way to produce electricity; it's just that it's easily portable and reasonably reliable.
I live in Puerto Rico, so I know more than I really wanted to about electrical self-reliance.
@vivtek @futurebird An issue w/ generators is fuel. If you can connect one to natural gas or propane at your home, fuel is less of an issue; for a heat-related issue as described, there won't be excessive demand for natural gas and the heat problem itself isn't likely to damage gas infrastructure (earthquakes and flooding pose the most direct risks to it.) Gasoline can be hard to source and can only be stored for a while, preferably NOT in the generator's tank. Get ethanol-free gas & stabilizer.
How much does gas infrastructure depend on the power grid?
@robryk @vivtek @futurebird natural gas is significantly decorated from the electric grid. Local infrastructure is usually pressure-feed from storage tanks, and natural gas facilities have all that fuel available to run backup generators for pumping into the storage tanks, etc. I'm sure that would eventually have issues in a weeks-long outage, but gas stations need electricity to pump gas too. There's no free lunch. Battery-backed solar is a good option for low maintenance.