Questões para Concursos

Heatwaves are killing people 1 In recent days heatwaves have turned swathes of America and Europe into furnaces. Despite the accompanying blast of headlines, the implications of such 4 extreme heat are often overlooked or underplayed. Spectacular images of hurricanes or floods grab attention more readily, yet heatwaves can cause more deaths. Heat is 7 one of climate change’s deadliest manifestations. Sometimes its impact is unmistakable — a heatwave in Europe in 2003 is estimated to have claimed 70,000 lives. 10 More often, though, heatwaves are treated like the two in the Netherlands in 2018. In just over three weeks, around 300 more people died than would normally be expected at that 13 time of year. This was dismissed as a “minor rise” by officials. But had those people died in a flood, it would have been front-page news. 16 The havoc caused by extreme heat does not get the attention it merits for several reasons. The deaths tend to be more widely dispersed and do not involve the devastation of 19 property as do the ravages of wind and water. Moreover, deaths are not usually directly attributable to heatstroke. Soaring temperatures just turn pre-existing conditions such 22 as heart problems or lung disease lethal. Heatwaves will inevitably attract more attention as they become more frequent. As greenhouse gases continue to 25 accumulate in the atmosphere, not only will temperatures rise overall but extremes of heat will occur more frequently. Britain’s Met Office calculates that by the 2040s European 28 summers as hot as that of 2003 could be commonplace, regardless of how fast emissions are reduced. Urbanisation intensifies the risk to health: cities are hotter places than the 31 surrounding countryside, and more people are moving into them. The good news is that most fatalities are avoidable, if 34 three sets of measures are put in place. First, people must be made aware that extreme heat can kill and warning systems established. Heatwaves can be predicted with reasonable 37 accuracy, which means warnings can be given in advance advising people to stay indoors, seek cool areas and drink plenty of water. Smart use of social media can help. In 2017 40 a campaign on Facebook warning of the dangers of a heatwave in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, reached 3.9m people, nearly half the city’s population. 43 Second, cool shaded areas and fresh water should be made available. In poor places, air-conditioned community centres and schools can be kept open permanently. In Cape 46 Town, spray parks have been installed to help people cool down. Third, new buildings must be designed to be resilient to the threat of extreme heat and existing ones adapted. 49 White walls, roofs or tarpaulins, and extra vegetation in cities, all of which help prevent heat from building up, can be provided fairly cheaply. A programme to install “cool 52 roofs” and insulation in Philadelphia reduced maximum indoor temperatures by 1.3 ?C. It is a cruel irony that, as with other effects of climate 55 change, the places that are hardest hit by heatwaves can least afford to adapt. In poor countries, where climates are often hotter and more humid, public-health systems are 58 weaker and preoccupied with other threats. Often, adaptation to extreme heat is done by charities if it is done at all. Particular attention should be paid to reaching both 61 remote areas and densely populated urban ones, including slums where small dwellings with tin roofs packed together worsen the danger that uncomfortably high temperatures 64 will become lethal. Adaptation is not an alternative to cutting emissions; both are necessary. But even if net emissions are reduced to 67 zero this century, the persistence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere means that heatwaves will continue to get worse for decades to come. As the mercury rises, governments in 70 rich and poor countries alike must do more to protect their populations from this very real and quietly deadly aspect of 72 climate change. Heatwaves are killing people. Available at: . Retrieved on: Aug. 22. 2019, with adaptations.

1 On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largess that accounts for the presence 4 within the city’s walls of a considerable section of the population; for the residents of Manhattan are to a large extent strangers who have pulled up stakes somewhere and 7 come to town, seeking sanctuary or fulfillment or some greater or lesser grail. The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an 10 individual, or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck. No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky. 13 [...] There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who 16 takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by 19 locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. Of these three 22 trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its 25 poetical deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements. Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but 28 the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to 31 escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference: each 34 embraces New York with the intense excitement of first love, each absorbs New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the 37 Consolidated Edison Company. White, E.B. (1999) Here is New York. New York: The Little Book Room, with adaptations.