Deadly heatwaves are sadly becoming more common in Greece, as the Mediterranean country is experiencing some of the worst climate change in the region. This past June saw the deaths of a several tourists who were attempting to hike in dangerously hot weather. Heatstroke and other heat- related illnesses can strike fast and hard.
Research has shown that very high temperatures can also negatively affect brain function which can obviously lead to poor decision-making. This can be fatal for a hiker or anyone out in serious heat, especially if they don’t have enough water or shade. A hiker experiencing heat-clouded judgment might decide they can go just a bit further even if they are running low on water or that the nausea they are feeling isn’t from heatstroke, but from the big breakfast they had earlier.
Warmer winters in recent decades have brought less snow to mountaintops (yes, in the past, even southern Greece typically had snow on mountaintops well into summer!). Less or no snow of course translates to lower water levels, higher temperatures and more fire-prone forested areas.
Here are some heat projections for Athens from the World Bank’s “Building Urban Heat Resilience: The Athens Case Study.”
AC not OK
Air conditioning is one obvious solution but of course it guzzles electricity and heats up the area, not to mention that it leaves us with a planet full of useless hunks of plastic and metal. Plus many units use refrigerants which can harm human health and are strong greenhouse gasses which ironically speed up the heating from which air con offers us fleeting relief.
In Greek towns and cities, where the apartment reigns supreme, a typical apartment building can have 16 or more air-conditioning units. The heat these units add to the surrounding area is significant. Then, take a classic Athenian neighborhood like Kipseli and multiply that by a gazillion.
Fun fact: Kipseli actually translates to beehive in English and today the area happens to be one of the most-densely populated areas in Europe and looks like an actual beehive.
I worked in that area for nine years and I remember, during one particularly bad heatwave, a colleague not-so-jokingly asking me if his eyeballs had melted as we walked into the office after a short walk from the local sandwich shop. A lot of the heat we were feeling was from the thousands of air con units blowing hot air all around us.
Power grids do not always pass this stress test during Greek summers.
Tree hugging
Many cities around the world are adding greenery wherever they can to beat the heat—to rooftops, to bus stop tops and so on. Here in Greece, we are doing almost nothing to lower temperatures. Mayors sometimes offer air-conditioned spaces in town halls where people (especially the elderly living in cramped apartments) can go to cool off when a heatwave sets in.
Of course this is helpful to someone suffering in the moment, but we need solutions to the problem – not just symptom relief.
A more well-rounded and sustainable approach can be offered by making buildings more eco-friendly, planting lots of green, reducing sources of heat-trapping pollution and so on. Public transportation in most Greek towns and cities is very limited and traffic is horrendous, making air warmer and of worse quality than it needs to be.
Carpooling is virtually unheard of and sidewalks are not in good condition for walking. Also, walking in the
Greek summer heat is difficult and there are almost no clean public restrooms or fountains where one can splash water on one’s face or fill up a reusable water bottle with cool clean H2O!
I remember being so pleasantly surprised when walking in central European cities and coming across many clean public fountains. Instead, in Athens, locals and tourists are forced to buy overpriced plastic bottle of water once their personal bottle is empty. We need to demand better solutions which won’t fill up our landfills with more plastic.
Anyone who has spent any time in nature knows that trees offer the coolest shade and can even keep concrete-heavy cities from feeling the worst of the warmest temperatures. Science tells us time and again that more trees can help with so many aspects of climate change. The new mayor of Athens has said he will plant 5,000 trees per year during his term in order to ease the effects of climate change and we can only hope he will carry out this plan.
However, sadly, Greece as a whole has paid very little attention to public green spaces. Greek cities are generally very compact, densely populated and have limited open and green spaces.
Athen’s war on trees
As an Athenian and a tree lover, I have been horrified to see numerous mature, shade-giving trees being chopped down in the name of “urban renewal projects.” Typically, these projects translate into old well-rooted trees being replaced with sidewalk tiles containing zero allowance for any
greenery or sad little fountains which are rarely cleaned and soon break down, never to be replaced.
Otherwise, tiny, vulnerable saplings are planted but soon neglected and they of
course dry out.
Many say these projects are simply schemes/scams used to move public money into private hands.
Municipalities and townships which, in years past, usually did their own pruning and did a fine job of it have also, in many cases, outsourced this work and the results have generally been so catastrophic that a number of groups have been formed to investigate and protest.
These crews can often be spotted pruning in high summer temperatures which is wrong by all standards as it is known to put already heat-stressed trees under more stress, essentially wounding them, which frequently leads to illness or death of the tree. They don’t only cut back dead or problematic branches but often healthy ones too, supposedly because they are only allowed limited pruning times per year and they are trying to predict which branches will grow in problematic ways.
Some local governments are also allowing non-specialists from the electric companies to chop branches or whole trees down if they see fit if they are anywhere near power lines.
Another phenomenon we are seeing is trees in the few large city and suburban parks we have being chopped down suddenly or the same happening in forested areas around the city (the ones which haven’t been burnt in the wildfires of recent years).
These are trees which seemed perfectly healthy and many of them are end up in the many shady (no pun intended!) pellet and firewood outfits found around town. These outfits are said to be almost completely unregulated and indeed often seem to appear or disappear overnight. These businesses have mushroomed since heating oil and electricity prices have been steadily rising in the last decade or so and
left many people with only wood-burning and fireplaces as affordable (even if limited) heating options in winter.
Coming soon: Part 2 of Heat in Greece: Looking at the (hot) future in this changing Mediterranean clime and how to cope when the heat is on.
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See more about Greece here in Dispatches’s archives.
Read more from Christina here.
A Pittsburgher by birth, Christina T. Hudson is also half Greek and has – so far – spent most of her life in Athens, the chaotic but captivating capital city of Greece.
