CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Wake Up and Face the Heat!

Image by Immo Wegmann.

America has never been so dry, so thirsty, yet so committed to fossil fuels and CO2-engineered heat as in the years 2025-2026. “Co2 Levels Hit Highest Ever Recorded, WMO Says, Warning of More Extreme Weather,” Reuters, Oct. 15, 2025. This has all the earmarks of a bad ending.

Moreover, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), effective May 28, 2026: “The world is already smashing heat records. It’s expected to get hotter.”

Our anthropogenic planet has become a virtual “heat machine.”

This puts datacenters smack dab in the center of attention as “heat machines” in their own right. “The vast data centers that power artificial intelligence guzzle huge amounts of energy but they also have another alarming impact, according to new research. They are creating “heat islands,” warming the land around them by up to 16 degrees Fahrenheit, and making life hotter for more than 340 million people.” (Scientists Have Found an Alarming Environmental Impact of Vast Data Centers, CNN, March 30, 2026). More on this horror story to follow, titled: Datacenter Wars?

Meanwhile, something very strange is happening with a twist that’s beyond anything in the record book of human behavior. It’s getting hotter, relentlessly hotter on a multi-year acceleration basis never seen before, but meanwhile everyday life continues to trudge along as if it’s normal, going to work, kids to summer school, trips to distant places, picknicks and barbeques, watching baseball and lazy days at the beach. On the surface it all seems so normal, nothing much to worry about, it gets hot on occasion, especially during the summer. But it’ll cool down this coming fall.

But what’s happening is not normal at all. Behind the scenes and in some cases directly in front of everybody with any curiosity, a very dangerous abnormality is fast at work.

The world is drying up right before our eyes. A dangerous heat syndrome is now a settled trend, higher and higher, year over year, with fossil fuel emissions at all-time highs, and accelerating, but nothing’s in sight to stop this ghastly trend. Over time, consequences bring a surreal world with people slowly resembling heat-induced zombies.

The U.S. Drought Monitor reported that 58.4% of the lower 48 states were in drought as of early June 2026 with expectations of a brutally hot summer almost upon us. According to Global Drought........

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