NYT: Sure, it's ridiculously hot--but don't you worry about it!

[Maven]

This editorial is unbelieveable.

The news? It’s hot. In related news, it’s mid-July. The heat of summer usually trails a couple of weeks behind the sun, which reached its peak in the northern sky on June 21. In other words, this heat wave is right on time.

The sound of today’s weather is the universal hum of air-conditioners, coast to coast, and one way to measure the heat is to measure the megawatts being used to beat it. The Los Angeles region is likely to break its old record for peak power usage, which was set almost exactly a year ago.

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To some people, a heat wave like this is simply July as it should be. We all know someone like that, someone who isn’t happy till the subways are an inferno and the asphalt is soft and everyone in the city is as sticky as a melting ice-cream cone. They have their wish today. The good news is that cooler air is drifting south from Canada, and the rest of the week will see milder temperatures in the Northeast. We have our wish tomorrow.

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In other words, sure this has been the hottest year on record, and sure, we're running out of energy, but just turn your air conditioning on full-blast and wear some light colors. It's summer! Nothing to see here.

As I was riding the subway to work today, standing in a 100-degree underground tunnel, watching trains thunder by, using power to propel themselves, and yet more power to cool the wilting passengers within, I thought about the serious energy crisis ahead. I thought, also, about temperatures continuing to rise as more and more fuel was burned, and more fuel was depleted, completing the disastrous, escalating cycle. It's moments like that where you really FEEL: This way of life is NOT sustainable.

And yet here we have an editorial from the "paper of record" telling people to calm down and get on with business as usual. What will it take?