Methods to Cope with Life in Extreme Climates Essay

People use varying methods to cope with life in extreme climates. An extreme climate is an area with an abnormal weather pattern which increases the difficulty to survive. An example of where people have adapted to survive is in Australia. Australian settlers have spent countless decades refining complex methods of withstanding the astringent conditions of the outback. People in central Australia use a wide variety of methods and approaches to struggle against the sweltering heat. One example of this is the construction of houses cut from shear rock. This is a brilliant method of coping with the weather as it keeps your house the same temperature through the day and night. This is because in the day it is sheltered and cool and at night the rock radiates any heat it has absorbed through the course of the day, eradicating any need for central heating or air conditioning. This saves any costs or pollution from the man made systems. An example of this is shown in a hotel known as Prairie Hotel. They had an extension built onto the hotel underground with no additional heating or electrical bills as it sustains itself in that sense. Another way that people in Australia have adapted to living in extreme climates is by wearing longer, but thinner clothing. This is not what most members of the general British public would expect as we tend to wear short clothes so as to keep cool. However the risk of sunburn is so great it is not worth it. Many of the explorers who first tried to map Australia died of sun stroke because of that fact. However, the native Aborigines do not nee to wear long clothes as their skin has learned to cope with the heat on its own. Another way that Australians lead a different lifestyle from us in order to cope with the extreme weather and scale of the deserts is to generate their own electricity privately. This is so as to save the costs of laying millions of pounds of cable and paying the bills. Additionally as Australia is near free from cloud cover in the outback, what other technology would you use but solar power. It may be expensive, but not when focused in comparison to the costs to the cable company and the electrical firm. Moreover, it can also help the environment by lessening the number of people draining our coal reserves to make power. In conclusion, I think that the original statement is true as shown by the evidence above. The most major of these being the fact that they generate much more of their own power. I believe that it would be fantastic if more MEDCs adopted this, however in ones such as Britain and the Republic of Ireland the overall climate is far to cloudy to be able to generate solar power. However many other of their ideas and ways of life are easily transferable to other cultures which could help make the world a more sustainable and better place to live.