What Cyprus gets right about summer heat

By Dina-Perla Portnaar My phone almost exploded recently because of all those alarming weather reports in the Dutch media. Notifications screamed about a so-called Code Red, an impending apocalypse measured in degrees Celsius. I looked up from the screen. The Cypriot sky was a hard, brilliant blue, and the sun was asserting its existence with the brute force of a fundamental law. In the Netherlands, people have a love affair with management. They managed the water. So now, they assume they should manage the sky. They built dikes against the sea. Now, they build digital dikes against the sun. Code Red and Code Orange: these are exaggerated, linguistic reflections of a society that has externalised its discomfort and common sense. The Dutch have turned the weather into a ghost. In other words, something to be afraid of. Citizens are told not to assess their environment by simply using their common sense. All those innovations such as electric cars come with new risks during heat waves, especially in cases of forest fires like we’ve seen in France recently. The Netherlands is great at innovating, yet behind at mapping out the new risks of those innovations. Sometimes, deciding not to innovate can bring more good to humanity than we think. Sometimes, not innovating can even safeguard people’s vitality. Code Red is thus the colour of panic, when it is needed for real emergencies. Stating the obvious here, the inflation of the term isn’t a good idea. The argument is, of course, climate change, threatening the elderly and vulnerable. But the climate narrative shouldn’t erode social infrastructure. Back in the day, we didn’t need colour coded journalistic drama to remember to check on each other. Something people still do well in Cyprus. Code Red, in its deepest, most tragic sense, is the official colour of a society that has to be reminded to be human. It says more about our staggering rates of loneliness and atomisation than it does about El Niño. In Cyprus, heat is the landlord. The temperatures that trigger an official crisis in Amsterdam are merely the Mediterranean baseline in July and August. Here, the heat is a condition to be negotiated – not hysterically but smartly. The Cypriot keeps sophisticated rules to deal with it. The Netherlands doesn’t experience the sun. There is barely any. Dutch people experience mobile notifications about the sun once it finally becomes summer, warning them upfront to stay away from a natural source of good. The consequence is a profound infantilisation of the populace, swapping intuition for interface. The Dutch, a nation of world explorers and traders, have reduced their relationship with the natural world to a traffic light. Green is safe, orange is caution, and red is stop. Life, apparently, has a panic button. From Cyprus, the algorithmic noise of the Dutch media sounds like a flock of panicked geese. My phone explodes with bulletins urging me to take care, while the entire island of Cyprus yawns and stretches. The more profound realisation is that this obsession is a mirror. A civilisation isn’t defined by the number of warnings it issues, but by the level of trust it places in the judgement of its citizens. It should warn when absolutely necessary and not impose climate dogma of a changing world onto citizens. And it should live a little. Enjoy the summer. The Dutch might find out that it can, in fact, enhance vitality and resolve many health issues. The Dutch approach is one of deep, systemic anxiety, a belief that without the constant glare of framing and data, the populace will collapse into a heap of incompetence. The Cypriot approach, born of necessity and respect for an unforgiving environment, is one of learned autonomy. It trusts that a person, equipped with the accumulated wisdom of generations, can make a decision. It looks after one another and employs the right support tools to deal with the heat. I’m so done with that weather mentality in the Netherlands, that I’m happy to have landed in the south, where people are enjoying the wonderful sun, the love of my life, without the state holding hands and painting the sky unnecessarily red. The Netherlands, keep calm and carry on.