08/14/2026
What Does a Hotter Planet Actually Look Like?
Wherever you live, the question is no longer whether climate change is making the earth hotter. The question is: What does a hotter planet actually look like?
The summer of 2026 is giving us some sobering answers.
Across the world, we are seeing record temperatures, deadly heat waves, stressed electrical grids, shrinking rivers, increased wildfire danger, and growing threats to agriculture and human health. This is not simply a collection of isolated hot days. It is a global pattern.
In Europe, extreme heat has become a matter of life and death. Western Europe experienced extraordinary temperatures this summer, with thousands of excess deaths attributed to the effects of heat. At the same time, low water levels in rivers such as the Danube and Rhine are disrupting transportation, industry, agriculture, and energy production.
In the United States, extreme heat is testing our infrastructure. Hotter temperatures mean more air conditioning, greater electricity demand, and greater stress on electrical grids. Texas offers an encouraging example: despite record electricity demand this summer, its grid held, in part because of enormous investments in solar power, wind energy, and battery storage.
But water may be an even greater challenge.
The Colorado River supplies water to roughly 40 million people and irrigates millions of acres of farmland. Yet warmer temperatures are increasing evaporation, melting mountain snow earlier, and reducing the amount of water that ultimately reaches reservoirs. Lake Mead and Lake Powell—essentially the West's water savings accounts—remain dangerously low.
And then there is Asia, where some of the world's largest and most densely populated cities are confronting extreme heat. South Korea recorded its highest temperature ever this summer. Thousands of people have been treated for heat-related illnesses.
Cities make the problem worse through the urban heat island effect. Concrete, asphalt, rooftops, and buildings absorb heat during the day and release it slowly at night. For millions of people, the heat doesn't end when the sun goes down.
Temperature is the measurement. The impact is the real story.
Higher temperatures mean greater risks to human health, more evaporation, declining river flows, agricultural stress, higher food prices, and greater demands on our energy systems.
The summer of 2026 is giving us a glimpse of what a warmer planet looks like.
Our faithful response should not be fear or despair, but wisdom and courage.
We are called to reduce the causes of climate change, protect the most vulnerable among us, and build communities prepared for the challenges ahead.
Caring for creation is not simply an environmental responsibility; it is an expression of our faithfulness to the Creator—no matter how hot it gets.
