I did a very Boulder thing this evening. My local theater listings were messed up. They claimed that the new movie sequel to An Inconvenient Truth was playing there, but with no showings listed, today or for any day for the next week. So I drove down to Boulder to watch it. I thought I'd go to the early evening showing, but took a dinner delay, and attended the "prime time" one instead. I don't know why I thought a documentary about climate change would be mostly empty on a Saturday night. This was Boulder, and it was opening weekend (well, nationwide release this weekend, anyway). All but the front couple of rows were completely packed. It was a good thing I was there alone, because only single seats were available more than six feet away from the screen.
I might have been the nerdiest person there. How many others could possibly have gone to see An Inconvenient Sequel and been disappointed that there weren't enough statistics and data? There were things that encouraged me, like the increase in global rates of solar infrastructure being built. There were also scenes that freaked me out, mostly involving melting ice and flooding cities. While former VP Gore focused on Miami's problems with flooding streets, all I could think of was how often high tides flooded downtown Charleston while I lived near there, and some news anchors thought it was hilarious when a few men kayaked on the streets near the Market. I, along with at least half of the theater, flinched and gasped audibly when they showed footage from a heat wave in India or Pakistan last year that made the asphalt streets melt, and people who tried to cross lost their flip flops off of their feet when they sank into the blacktop. One older woman fell over on her face on the melting tar. That's when the entire audience gasped. And then, near the end, when graphics on the screen mentioned the recent events when the current occupant of the White House ordered the US to pull out of the Paris Climate Accord, more than half of the theater spontaneous started hissing and booing.
I forget the exact numbers. I think they said it was 15 of the last 16 years have been the hottest ever recorded, with the hottest ever being 2016 (when most of this movie was filmed). I'm feeling that on a very local level. My 1959 house was built without air conditioning. It wasn't needed back then. It was installed decades ago, but the unit stopped functioning many years ago, and was removed when they replaced the roof. I wrote earlier this summer about how I decided to buy a single-room a/c unit instead of spending big bucks on a new compressor unit. On the way out of Costco this afternoon, we stopped and talked to the Lennox rep about how much a unit would actually cost. They partner with a solar panel leasing company to offset power costs, but they don't have an agreement with our local utility company, so that is out. Then I went to the movie. I left there thinking that the solar panels were the better priority, and maybe no a/c at all is a better idea. A whole house fan costs about as much as two of those single room a/c units like I have in the bedroom. The question remains, is it worth investing in now, when the first snowfall has already occurred above 11,000 feet, or waiting until next spring. There's almost always a late burst of heat in September. It would be convenient if I already had a way to offset it.
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