The heat is crushing across the entire country. Departments on red alert, nights with no sleep, elderly people in danger. The first thought goes to them — and to all those helping them get through it.
And then we know how it goes. In a few days, the temperature will drop. We will breathe again. And we will stop talking about it — until next time.
Perhaps that is where the real problem lies. Because we know. Scientists have been telling us for years: these heat waves will return, stronger and earlier each time. It is a surprise to no one. And yet, every time, we are caught off guard, as though we were discovering the problem for the first time.
How do we explain that? How can we know something so clearly — and never think ahead?
The answer may have less to do with heat than with the way we make decisions. Our leaders are elected for a few years. Yet preparing for tomorrow’s climate — cooler cities, adapted housing, trees for shade — costs money today and will only show results in ten or twenty years. Well after the next election. The result: we put it off. We manage the emergency when it arrives, but we do not anticipate. And as soon as the crisis passes, we forget.
This is not simply a matter of bad intentions. It is our very way of making decisions that struggles to think long-term.
Sageocracy will not bring the temperature down — no idea can. But it raises a question that does not fade with the heat wave: what if a society measured itself by its capacity to think ahead, rather than by its ability to put out fires once they have started? What if we finally learned to make decisions with tomorrow in mind?
The heat will die down. The question remains entirely open.