Speaker 1: This is a C. N. A
Speaker 2: podcast.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the climate conversations with me julie you.
Speaker 2: We have all experienced days when we are home and
Speaker 2: sweating buckets. The full blast of a fan doesn't work.
Speaker 2: So it's energy guzzling air conditioning to the rescue temperatures
Speaker 2: have been soaring in Singapore with the mercury hitting a
Speaker 2: merciless
Speaker 2: 35° on some days.
Speaker 2: But according to data, Singapore is heating up twice as
Speaker 2: fast as the rest of the world maximum daily temperatures
Speaker 2: can reach 35-37° by the year. 2100 other countries already
Speaker 2: experience hotter temperatures than this.
Speaker 2: But the reason this spells trouble for Singapore
Speaker 2: as a humidity is high all year round, which can
Speaker 2: intensify the impact of heat. Urban planners. Architects and climate
Speaker 2: experts are all racing to redesign our buildings to keep
Speaker 2: us cool. So as the city changes to cope with
Speaker 2: extreme heat, how will our daily lives change along with it.
Speaker 2: This history holds some answers for us and how different
Speaker 2: groups from migrant workers to managers and offices adapt to
Speaker 2: climate change and will a productivity plummet when things get
Speaker 2: too hot to handle with me to discuss this hot
Speaker 2: topic is Associate Professor Gregory Clancy, historian and leader of
Speaker 2: the Science Technology and society cluster at the ASIA Research Institute.
Speaker 2: Welcome Professor Clancy, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Great to see
Speaker 1: you. Thank you.
Speaker 2: So, Professor Heat sometimes gets overlooked because we can't really
Speaker 2: see it and very little has been written on the
Speaker 2: history or social cultural engagement surrounding it in ASIA. So
Speaker 2: what drew you to this particular area of study why
Speaker 2: urban heat
Speaker 1: for a long time at the ASia Research Institute where
Speaker 1: I work, we've been looking at natural disasters and we've
Speaker 1: done a lot of histories of earthquakes and floods and hurricanes,
Speaker 1: but we realize that the biggest looming natural disaster in
Speaker 1: our future is heat. But as you say, we know
Speaker 1: very little about it from a humanities and social science
Speaker 1: perspective about
Speaker 1: how people have dealt with heat in the past.
Speaker 1: We don't know much about the history of basic technologies
Speaker 1: like air conditioning
Speaker 1: and so we thought as mainly historians, we would do
Speaker 1: a project which focused on heat but also provide some
Speaker 1: lessons for the present and future based upon the past
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 1: So we've constructed a website which anybody can access. It's
Speaker 1: called Heat in urban Asia. If you just type in
Speaker 1: heat in Urban Asia, you'll find the link to it.
Speaker 1: The subtitle is past, present and future.
Speaker 1: And to begin, we chose a number of Asian cities,
Speaker 1: Singapore being one another, Delhi 3rd Wuhan and 1/4 Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: But you can see by our website, we've expanded well
Speaker 1: beyond those. It has a couple of features which
Speaker 1: People might be interested in. One is there are maps
Speaker 1: of Singapore from the 1820s onward showing where all the
Speaker 1: weather stations were and what types of weather information. Climate
Speaker 1: information was being collected how and by whom.
Speaker 1: We also have a map of Asia, where you can
Speaker 1: click on links in particular cities to see how temperatures
Speaker 1: have risen all the way from Singapore to Delhi to
Speaker 1: Seoul and Korea.
Speaker 1: And there's also a series of articles, short articles very
Speaker 1: readable by our team members
Speaker 1: about the cultural and social aspects of heat historically. For example,
Speaker 1: the history of cold storage,
Speaker 1: how he may have affected fires in the past in
Speaker 1: Singapore etcetera.
Speaker 1: So I really recommend everybody take a look at our website.
Speaker 2: It's a very comprehensive study and the project is titled
Speaker 2: Heat in Urban Asia, Professor, you are a historian. So
Speaker 2: take us 2030 years back into history of sunny Singapore
Speaker 2: and how hot was it then? How do residents cope
Speaker 2: with the heat in the past?
Speaker 1: Singapore has always been hot of course, but it's interesting
Speaker 1: to look at british colonial records of english colonizers who
Speaker 1: came here from India
Speaker 1: always described Singapore as an easy posting compared to India
Speaker 1: because it was cooler. So within the tropics colonies, Singapore
Speaker 1: wasn't considered to be among the hottest places.
Speaker 1: And ironically, Singapore is much hotter now than it was
Speaker 1: in the colonial period. We always used to say to ourselves,
Speaker 1: how did people endure heat in the past? Of course
Speaker 1: it was hot in the past and they didn't have
Speaker 1: air conditioning,
Speaker 1: But it's harder now. We've gathered temperatures here ever since 1820,
Speaker 1: the average temperature in 1820 remained relatively steady all the
Speaker 1: way up to the 1940s.
Speaker 1: If you had lived in that period, you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: noticed changes from year to year, but the average temperature
Speaker 1: wouldn't have changed much now since 1948.
Speaker 1: We know that temperatures have risen here
Speaker 1: every decade by about 0.25 degrees so cumulatively, in the
Speaker 1: lifetime of the pioneer generation. I mean, from 1948 onwards,
Speaker 1: the temperature has risen 1.6 degrees centigrade, which is substantial. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people may not have noticed it because
Speaker 1: it's been gradual, but it's had a big effect on
Speaker 1: what we call the urban heat island effect, which I
Speaker 1: can talk about a little bit more later and it
Speaker 1: of course had a big effect on nature as well
Speaker 1: as on human comfort ability. We are in the midst
Speaker 1: of something unique, something that we've never experienced before.
Speaker 2: Indeed. And professor, you've alluded to some of the cases
Speaker 2: back in history. Do you have more examples of what
Speaker 2: history can teach us to better prepare for the world
Speaker 2: that's heating up?
Speaker 1: I go back and forth. It's been fascinating to go
Speaker 1: back and look at how people dealt with heat in
Speaker 1: the past and we've come up with all sorts of
Speaker 1: interesting anecdote or interesting pictures of how people have dealt
Speaker 1: with heat.
Speaker 1: A good example is rotten furniture, which was actually meant
Speaker 1: to cool bodies off because it had little air holes
Speaker 1: all over it.
Speaker 1: Rotten furniture was abandoned for plush furniture at a particular point.
Speaker 1: But maybe we have to think about going back to
Speaker 1: those sorts of things so we can find little clues
Speaker 1: in the past about things that
Speaker 1: we've abandoned which were very common
Speaker 1: before. Air conditioning. But the past isn't a perfect guide
Speaker 1: to the future because what we're experiencing now is unprecedented.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just how worried should we be about this? As
Speaker 2: you mentioned, the Singapore has been heating up twice as
Speaker 2: fast as the world average over the past six decades.
Speaker 2: What's your assessment to help people in the country are
Speaker 2: dealing with surging heat?
Speaker 1: Well, the way that most of us are dealing with
Speaker 1: surging heat is air conditioning which is itself a problem.
Speaker 1: And it's a chicken and egg thing is it gets hotter.
Speaker 1: We add more air conditioning and the air conditioning helps
Speaker 1: to increase the heat because every time you cool inside,
Speaker 1: you're throwing heat outside and of course you're using energy
Speaker 1: more fossil fuels. So I think architects are
Speaker 1: more and more thinking about alternatives ways to at least
Speaker 1: reduce air conditioning by
Speaker 1: designing buildings so that they're more naturally cool. And that
Speaker 1: involves drawing upon perhaps some past architectural elements which we've
Speaker 1: forgotten about. For example, more than 1000 years ago in Cairo,
Speaker 1: they invented things called wind catchers which are still now
Speaker 1: coming back in the Middle East. They're basically like chimneys
Speaker 1: that go up and catch wind and push it down
Speaker 1: into buildings as a way of natural air conditioning
Speaker 1: and architects are more and more looking at those historic
Speaker 1: non mechanical ways and also involving different materials and thicknesses
Speaker 1: of walls etcetera, which we relied upon exclusively for centuries.
Speaker 1: We may need to rely more and more upon again
Speaker 1: because air conditioning is not the answer in the future,
Speaker 1: unless we can make it much much more efficient than
Speaker 1: it is now and reduce the heat, it's been generated
Speaker 1: by it.
Speaker 2: Professor, it's not just Singapore, but you've also looked into
Speaker 2: three other cities, you mentioned Hong kong Delhi and Wuhan
Speaker 2: that are well known for their steering summers, what does
Speaker 2: the hotter global future mean for places that are already
Speaker 2: so hot to begin with. How are they dealing with it?
Speaker 1: Well, India is a particularly striking case because parts of
Speaker 1: India have always been among the hottest places in Asia
Speaker 1: and they're getting hotter and hotter.
Speaker 1: The governments all around the world are responding with mitigation plans.
Speaker 1: Singapore I think has done really well. You can see
Speaker 1: the results of all the tree planting
Speaker 1: trees are maybe the front line of defense at least
Speaker 1: in cities. I think everybody agrees with that, that we
Speaker 1: just need to plant many more trees. Singapore is remarkably
Speaker 1: green city, but most asian cities are not and you
Speaker 1: know that from travel,
Speaker 1: this gets into the problem of the urban heat island effect.
Speaker 1: A lot of people feel helpless with climate change because
Speaker 1: I think what can we do about rising oceans, What
Speaker 1: can we do about typhoons and storms? One thing we
Speaker 1: can do
Speaker 1: is try to mitigate the rising heat that's caused by
Speaker 1: the city itself. In other words, the global climate change
Speaker 1: is only one component of the reason we're hotter. Another
Speaker 1: component is what's called the urban heat island effect, which
Speaker 1: is that
Speaker 1: cities as they get dense and built up and they
Speaker 1: cover natural ground with pavement and with buildings, the buildings
Speaker 1: absorb heat during the day and then they release it
Speaker 1: at night.
Speaker 1: So the city never cools and part of the increase
Speaker 1: in temperature as little to do with global climate change.
Speaker 1: But it has a lot to do with local
Speaker 1: infrastructure and how it's made. Now
Speaker 1: planting lots of trees which the government is doing is
Speaker 1: a way to help mitigate that. Along with other things
Speaker 1: like putting greenery on top of buildings designing buildings so
Speaker 1: that they channel wind which is being done in Singapore
Speaker 1: more and more. We can now use computer generated models
Speaker 1: to figure out how wind off the ocean works its
Speaker 1: way through the city and take advantage of that to
Speaker 1: cool areas of the city and of course reducing air
Speaker 1: conditioning as part of that as well. Those are things
Speaker 1: we can do locally to make ourselves more comfortable
Speaker 1: that doesn't affect sea level rises, but it does affect health,
Speaker 1: particularly elderly people, they're very vulnerable to eat.
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Speaker 2: Let's talk about those people who are more vulnerable individuals
Speaker 2: or in the sector society who will be most affected
Speaker 2: because when we look at the social impact side of things,
Speaker 2: the reality is that heat waves or periods of extreme
Speaker 2: worms do not affect everyone in the same way. So
Speaker 2: what are some of the main factors that lead to
Speaker 2: this vulnerability and what can we do to address these?
Speaker 1: We're doing a lot of things already. And one is
Speaker 1: that to cover as many outdoor walk spaces as possible
Speaker 1: so that people aren't out in the sun much and
Speaker 1: don't experience heatstroke. I think there's a lot of local
Speaker 1: habits which have perfected over time, which are excellent strategies.
Speaker 1: One is to be careful about what part of the
Speaker 1: day you go out, how far you go. I notice
Speaker 1: that there's more and more talk about
Speaker 1: air conditioning, bus stops where people have to wait for
Speaker 1: long periods of time and I can't help it, but
Speaker 1: are very dangerous, particularly for elderly people. There's a very
Speaker 1: good argument that the older you get, the more you
Speaker 1: do need to depend on air conditioning. But the alternative
Speaker 1: side of that is I think younger people
Speaker 1: need to rely less on air conditioning. For example, I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here under a fan
Speaker 1: And I'm from a very cold place. I'm from one
Speaker 1: of the coldest parts of North America. I've been in
Speaker 1: Singapore for 22 years and when I first came here
Speaker 1: I was utterly dependent on air conditioning and I used
Speaker 1: far too much of it
Speaker 1: and now I use almost none of it, except when
Speaker 1: I don't have a ceiling fan in her room. So
Speaker 1: I think younger people
Speaker 2: did you have to force yourself to do that or
Speaker 1: it just happened naturally over time, partly,
Speaker 1: but then partly, I also did force myself to do
Speaker 1: that because I realized it wasn't just the price of
Speaker 1: air conditioning. It was also the fact that I just
Speaker 1: didn't think it was good for me. And now that
Speaker 1: I've been doing this project, I realized it's not good
Speaker 1: for anybody
Speaker 1: for younger people, even though I'm not a younger person,
Speaker 1: I think younger people need to wean themselves off very
Speaker 1: cold indoor temperatures. That's the other thing that struck me
Speaker 1: when I first came here is how cold some indoor
Speaker 1: temperatures could be and people have been
Speaker 1: adjusting that over time but basically reserve strongest air conditioning
Speaker 1: for elderly people who really need it for health reasons
Speaker 1: and younger people should really try to acclimatize themselves back
Speaker 1: to ceiling fans and away from artificial thermal.
Speaker 2: We often tend to forget those who work in outdoor
Speaker 2: settings such as those engaged in agriculture or in construction sites.
Speaker 2: How significant is the impact of heat, stress and labor
Speaker 2: productivity or decent working conditions and what should employers do
Speaker 2: to ensure the well being of their staff in such instances?
Speaker 1: Well, this is a huge problem. As you say, construction
Speaker 1: workers in agriculture where they can't help but work outside
Speaker 1: and I guess shading and lots of water and clothing
Speaker 1: which is not going to harm them being to have
Speaker 1: the same sorts of things that armies around the world
Speaker 1: are worrying about with their troops and are perfecting ways
Speaker 1: to monitor and to protect people.
Speaker 1: But it's not just a matter of doing things in Singapore, 90%
Speaker 1: of our food is imported from abroad. Climate change is
Speaker 1: also going to affect agriculture and agricultural workers and particularly
Speaker 1: through droughts, it's going to affect prices and produce availability
Speaker 1: of products in the future here. So even though there's
Speaker 1: not a lot of agriculture in Singapore, I think we
Speaker 1: have to be as concerned about
Speaker 1: the protection of agriculture and agricultural workers in the region
Speaker 1: as any city does because we're totally dependent on imported food.
Speaker 2: We're also seeing unbearably hot temperatures already testing the limits
Speaker 2: of human survival with rising heat related deaths and illnesses
Speaker 2: around the world.
Speaker 2: I also read reports that heat waves affecting early pregnancy
Speaker 2: causing still births as well. Professor, just how much heat
Speaker 2: and humidity can a human body withstand how hot
Speaker 2: it's too hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard to say because again it depends on your age.
Speaker 1: It also depends on this is another thing that we found,
Speaker 1: which is a very controversial and very difficult to
Speaker 1: figure out. But people acclimatize different ways in different cultures
Speaker 1: and it partly depends on whether you've grown up in
Speaker 1: a particular hot place. As I said, I didn't, so
Speaker 1: it took me a long time to acclimatize. Scientists have
Speaker 1: been trying to answer the question, you just asked a
Speaker 1: particular global standard
Speaker 1: and it's been not possible to do that
Speaker 1: because people in particularly hot places do adapt
Speaker 1: over time. Not everybody there's illness but
Speaker 1: they adapt in different ways.
Speaker 1: It's interesting in the Northern Hemisphere now they're experiencing
Speaker 1: far greater shifts than we are here in Singapore. Places
Speaker 1: like Tokyo paris, New york,
Speaker 1: heat waves are becoming more frequent and they're becoming more
Speaker 1: noticeable to those populations than the gradual rise in. Heat
Speaker 1: is noticeable to our population. And so there's actually more
Speaker 1: deaths from heat related causes in the northern cities than
Speaker 1: there are here
Speaker 1: on the equator because they're not used to it
Speaker 1: And they haven't, their infrastructure is not prepared for. In fact,
Speaker 1: the word heatwave we know was invented in the 1890s
Speaker 1: because of the heat wave in New York before that
Speaker 1: people didn't talk about heat waves, heat was invisible and
Speaker 1: making it a wave made it more visible, like a tsunami.
Speaker 1: And now people in the Northern Hemisphere and cities like
Speaker 1: Tokyo and new york and paris are talking about heat
Speaker 1: waves all the time. We're still not talking about them
Speaker 1: here because they don't strike us as tsunami. Like things
Speaker 1: that occur just in certain periods. It's more stealth here,
Speaker 1: but it's still happening
Speaker 2: for us here in Singapore. As you mentioned a number
Speaker 2: of times, air conditioning is extremely pervasive. So rather than
Speaker 2: hiding in air conditioned buildings which instantly hot air outside,
Speaker 2: what do we need to do to live better adapt
Speaker 2: to hotter temperatures in a more sustainable way.
Speaker 1: There's one interesting development is people are experimenting with misting,
Speaker 1: you talk about outdoors, you see that a little bit
Speaker 1: around Singapore now, but it's a global new technology of
Speaker 1: basically missed very select outdoor areas to make them more
Speaker 1: comfortable rather than using outdoor air conditioning, which is a
Speaker 1: terrible idea given how much
Speaker 1: energy air conditioning uses.
Speaker 1: This basically goes back to a very old and habitual
Speaker 1: practice in India putting water on walls which will then
Speaker 1: slowly evaporate and make things more comfortable. Of course it
Speaker 1: intensively uses water which is also a concern because we
Speaker 1: have a finite amount of it here in Singapore.
Speaker 1: If droughts become more common then that's not a long
Speaker 1: term solution but it's an interesting new technology which I
Speaker 1: think we'll see more and more of
Speaker 1: because people are not going to abandon outdoor living. They're
Speaker 1: not going to not want to sit outside at a
Speaker 1: restaurant for example, so you will get used to more
Speaker 1: and more probably missing technologies in the future, but on
Speaker 1: the other hand, we might also indeed retreat more and
Speaker 1: more inside over time, over the long term. That just
Speaker 1: may be inevitable
Speaker 2: before we let you go, Professor, what do you make
Speaker 2: of the current attention
Speaker 2: placed on climate change and the movements this has spawned?
Speaker 2: How would you place this in a historical perspective? And
Speaker 2: what can history tell us about where we're headed as
Speaker 2: a planet in this respect?
Speaker 1: Well, I guess the most optimistic thing you can say
Speaker 1: is that in the past we have avoided other global crises.
Speaker 1: Common sense has prevailed. We've not destroyed ourselves with nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: which we thought we might do in the 1950s and
Speaker 1: 60's
Speaker 1: overpopulation has been controlled when I was a child, there
Speaker 1: was talk about mass starvation because we run out of food.
Speaker 1: That hasn't happened.
Speaker 1: In other words, we've used technology and common sense and
Speaker 1: diplomacy in the past. We thought that the hole in
Speaker 1: the ozone layer was going to continue to expand indefinitely.
Speaker 1: The Montreal protocols put an end to the use of
Speaker 1: freon and we don't talk about the ozone layer anymore.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm being optimistic in the sense that we
Speaker 1: should use these past victories over
Speaker 1: global problems
Speaker 1: to inspire us
Speaker 1: to redouble our efforts to deal with the current global problem,
Speaker 1: which affects everybody everywhere
Speaker 1: and everybody and everywhere. Should constantly thinking about what not
Speaker 1: only what governments can do, but what they can do.
Speaker 2: All right. So on that optimistic note that will have
Speaker 2: to end our conversation there. But thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining us. Really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you for asking.
Speaker 2: Well we hope you enjoyed this episode of the climate conversations.
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Speaker 2: This is julie,
Speaker 1: you