CLIMATE FICTION | LIFE IN 2050
Life in Retopia: Time Shifting
Adapting to life on the Cool-Summer Schedule
PHOENIX — Sept. 3, 2050
As the door lock chimed behind me, the sensor light lit up the pathway. Nine-to-five. What a concept.
A lifetime ago, Nana danced by the sink, holding the dish brush like a microphone, singing “working nine-to-five, what a way to make a livin’” with her best Dolly Parton twang. I added the back-up singers’ woo-woos while shimmying on a swiveling stool at the wide kitchen island. She made me watch the movie with her on my ninth birthday, telling me about how when she was nine, the film changed how women were seen in the workplace. And every visit, if someone said “work” while we were in the kitchen, we’d start our routine, though neither of us knew more than a line or two of the chorus.
Yawning, I slung my backpack over my shoulder and headed to the light rail. Last year they changed the hours, starting the daily service at three in the morning after the city’s construction teams moved to the Cool-Summer Schedule. Unfortunately every other employer with teams working outside saw the city’s move to CSS as an invitation to jump on the four a.m. starting schedule bandwagon for half the year. At least when I stared at five a.m., I could have some semblance of a normal life, with evenings out with friends after a late afternoon nap, but my body clock still wasn’t in sync with the extra hour earlier.
The 3:16 a.m. stopped and I stepped in, another half awake rider hoping for a seat to myself. There were still some rows open, so I sat on the aisle seat, slung my backpack on the empty seat and closed my eyes. If I look solidly asleep, I’m least likely to be disturbed by someone wanting to sit next to me, but by the time I was five stops from work, the light rail car was full enough that someone nudged my knee with hers and asked if she could have the other seat.
. . .
By starting at four, and keeping the lunch break to 30 minutes, Mickelsen Construction bragged in its last annual report that it had cut hours lost to heat stoppages to fewer than 20 per employee in 2049 and this year they were on target to keep it below 10. “Our productivity is up and resource utilization at the highest it’s been this decade,” the CEO’s statement said, much to the mutterings of we utilized “resources.” There were three days last month that the unshaded temperatures hit 120F before the shift ended, triggering an immediate site shutdown. The day we closed the building site by eleven — a solid two hours before scheduled — prompted management to call all the site leads to a virtual meeting to discuss whether they could cut the two fifteen minute breaks down so the workday could end earlier. Jose, head of our energy specialist team, was adamant that losing the breaks would increase risks of accidents on site and overheating without a proper cooling break. We kept the longer breaks and enjoyed a fleeting sense of victory.
As the big dry set in in the 40s and heat became backdrop to everyday living, construction companies were tasked with adapting buildings to the new NegC codes.
August had been below average temperatures to date, but as I took my 6:15 break and loaded up with double strength cold brew to shake the last of the cobwebs out, I could already tell it was shaping up to be a hot day. A slight shimmer gave the building two blocks down a mirage-like wobble. It only got down to 85F overnight, and without shedding the heat overnight, the dark bricks were radiating warmth before the sun hit them. I checked the monitor in my hardhat: I knew it couldn’t have reached 90F yet as I hadn’t heard the helmet’s fan start its soft whir.
I grabbed a cooling vest and hooked it up to the small battery pack on my belt. I left it off for now; if I started using it before I really needed it, I wouldn’t leave enough settings to crank it up as the heat really kicked in. “Doesn’t go to eleven,” as my grandda always chimed in.
“Can we get the South finished first so we can work on the shady side after lunch?’
“My thoughts exactly,” Jose said as he headed to the lift.
. . .
The job was a full gut retrofit of a 1990s office tower, built when wealth was measured in acres of glass. It was one of the last on West Jefferson to be stripped to its sinning soul and rebuilt and redeemed layer by layer, despite the Daily Star’s site pronouncing the city uninhabitable. It had been updated in the late teens with LEDs and motion sensor lights, but as the big dry set in in the 40s and heat became backdrop to everyday living, construction companies were tasked with adapting buildings to the new NegC codes. Our energy specialist team was in the midst of wiring up the roof and south-facing facade for a PV skin. The architects touted the refit as a fully distributed system, which meant more design work for them and a load of additional connections for meters, inverters, chilled beams, batteries and every other smart gadget the company could think to install on every floor. Our crew would be followed by plumbers installing grey water flush lines and black water recycling in the basement so not a drop of dirty water left the building. Then the carbon-eating skin would be put on and the facade lit with For Lease signs.
I love the order, the color coding of wire, the neat lines branching off.
“You know this is all going to be behind drywall, don’t you Rit?” Jose ribbed and he returned from break. “It’s not bloody art school.”
“And who spent yesterday working out which circuit connected to the inverter? You can give me shit about my wiring when you stop wasting time working our what the hell that bird’s nest of yours is,” I teased back. We’d been on the same crew for two years now, and he made a point of keeping me on it when my apprenticeship ended.
“Beer with the gang after work?”
“Love to. Long as it’s cold. Icy cold.”
Retopian Trend: Time Shifting
By 2050, many of the cities we now live in will be consistently, relentlessly hotter. Vox’s exploration, Weather 2050, predicts Phoenix, Arizona, will have summer high temperatures 4.5F (2.1C) hotter than today’s average, and at 109.2F (42.5C), living in the city will change. Average is only that, average. Already today we regularly see Phoenix with temperatures approaching 120F (48.9C). Add 4.5F to that and the sixth largest city in the United States becomes unsafe for those who work outside.
Although we hope mitigation will bend the carbon curve down quickly enough to prevent this, chances are we’ll need to adapt to hotter weather that makes life in many regions challenging for outdoor workers. One adaptation, time shifting, will be a critical tool for lowering the risk of heat stroke for workers.
Retopian Dictionary
NegC Codes: Building codes where the built environment is expected to be not only carbon neutral, but carbon negative
Cool-Summer Schedule (CSS): A work policy that shifts the work day to start earlier for the hottest 3–6 months of the year to limit the time spent working in the hottest time of the day. While initially created as a way to protect outdoor workers, all workplaces are likely to shift towards an earlier start to lower the amount of energy spent cooling workplaces during the hottest time of the day.
Retopian Gear
Cooling vests: Pumps cooled liquid through a vest to provide localized cooling, essential for. outdoor work and often used indoors where cooling the entire space is not feasible. Developed originally for racecar drivers and firefighters.
Fan-driven hardhats: Hardhats with small fans in the crown to create air movement and lower the perceived temperatures. Powered by built in solar cells or rechargeable batteries and created from recycled plastic, they constitute 80% of all hardhats sold by 2040.
