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!
If you're thinking about a temporary situation, then covering accessible pieces of south side elevation with aluminum foil might be helpful.
Even if wet bulb temperature outside is high, it might still be lower than the temperature of e.g. the roof, so if water is available in large quantities one could try evaporating it off the roof.
I wonder if there's an easy and relatively quick way to increase heat capacity of a building (filling something with water? I can't think of a way to get enough volume that can be filled with water to make that reasonably effective).
