By Keridwen Cornelius | Phoenix Magazine
Arizona’s bright days and balmy nights have lured generations of Americans. But will our ever-hotter and longer summers spoil the party? In the final feature of our Five Cs series, we explore ways people are trying to cool our cities and harness the power of our climate.
This summer, try an experiment: As you go about your day, observe closely everything to do with temperature and light. Feel your skin prickle as heat sizzles off the Valley’s expanses of sun-sucking black asphalt. Pause in the anorexic shade of a palm tree trunk. Sit on a bench exposed to the sun, burn your thighs and stare across the street at the shaded area with no benches. Drive the freeways, glancing at roadside shade trees, and imagine how much more they’d benefit that sweltering South Phoenix park where no kids play, or utility-deprived homes where people bake, sometimes to death. Stand in the ironic waste heat generated by air conditioning units, and picture the electricity zipping back to its sources: Just 5 percent of our electrical power comes from the sun; most comes courtesy of coal, gas and uranium.
