If one of those grim-faced Christians who carry sandwich boards had wandered by, his board proclaiming that the End is Nigh, it would have seemed appropriate, writes Colm Keena
I was sitting in a car, the engine turned off, the windows open, the car in the feeble shade created by a skinny, low tree. I was parked beside a shopping mall close to a village in the south of France where we were spending our summer holidays. The shopping was being done while I sat in the car minding the sleeping children.
I tried as best I could to make sense of the debate (in French) on the radio concerning the canicule, the heat wave that was making France feel like the Kalahari desert.
Most days during the first two weeks of August the temperature reached 40° Celcius. The weather had been unusually warm and dry since the beginning of May but in early August it had stepped up a gear, sparking of a national debate about the canicule, global warming and whether France was any longer a temperate country.
There was a guest in the radio studio, a senior adviser to the French government on global warming and the Kyoto accord. The most recent predictive model, she said, had a line crossing Europe from east to west below which the water table would not hold up through the hot, dry summers we could expect in the coming years and decades. Winter rainfall would bring the water table to a certain level which would have to be enough to sustain crops and vegetation through drier, hotter summer months. North of the line, there would be enough water. South of the line there would not be. Whether the south of France would end up north or south of the line was not yet clear, the woman said.
In the south of France this summer, sitting sweating in the canicule, it was hard not to worry about the future of the planet each time you turned on the fan - if you could find one - or the air conditioning (which is growing hugely in popularity). In car parks people sat inside their huge, four-wheel-drive sports utility vehicles, windows closed, engines running, air conditioning on full blast. Watching them, it was hard not to think that the species was doomed, that it lacked the sense to save itself.
Up in Paris the heat was culling the older population. Down south people seemed to be a bit more able to cope. They knew to stay indoors during most of the day, to drink water, to sit in darkened rooms. Going outdoors during a canicule is restricted to a few hours in the morning before the temperature grows unbearable, followed by a few more hours late in the evening, when the temperature grows briefly bearable again. During the nights you dream of rain.
Up on the tree-covered hilltops fires raged. Helicopters and light aircraft flew overhead, monitoring the direction of the incendies, dropping water and chemicals on the woods.
Some of the fires had been started on purpose. Others, just as unbelievably, were the result of tourists having barbecues. The dryness of the trees had made them into giant tinder. When dry storms crossed the land, the winds blew down the brittle trees.
The End came one day in Nimes. As lunchtime loomed I decided to stay in the city rather than go back to the village house where we were staying and sit in a dark, thick-walled room. The prospect of a seat on a terrace and a read through the Guardian was too great a temptation. The streets, I soon noticed, were curiously empty, the shutters on all the houses closed. When I asked a woman in a shop where everyone was, she said they were hiding from the canicule.
Finding that my heart was beginning to race in my chest, I found a dark room to sit in and ordered a Perrier. Just keep yourself hydrated and you will be fine, I told myself.
When I opened the newspaper I saw an article by George Monbiot. The headline was something along the lines that we were sleepwalking towards the cliff-face, seemingly unable to prevent our self-destruction. Monbiot said global temperatures had risen by 0.6° Celsius during the 20th century and might rise by 1.4° to 5.8° this century. Other estimates, taking into account changes in the amount of soot in the atmosphere, had temperatures rising by up to 10° Celsius this century.
Why weren't we pulling the owners of sports utility vehicles out of their vehicles and throwing them, the drivers, over the cliff, he asked. What was wrong with us?
I paid for my Perrier and made my way through the oven-like streets to my rendezvous with the rest of the family. Let's get out of here, I said, the moment they arrived. We hurried to the underground car park, climbed into the car and headed for the motorway north, the windows all closed, the air conditioning up full.
After a while on the motorway, driving too fast, I began to relax. We are all doomed.