The sleet sounded like beaded curtains brushed aside by a fleeing intruder. I lingered in bed, tensing up every time the ice pellets danced across my window. My favorite blanket — the one with the embroidered dinosaur images — was beautiful but too thin. My teeth chattered…

I’m joking. It’s 102 degrees in Philadelphia today, and there’s no relief in sight. An extreme heat warning is in effect throughout the region and 100 million people in the East are reportedly at risk. The “urban heat island effect” has kicked in and row homes all over town are hotter than brick ovens. SEPTA’s Regional Rail service is a mess because the heat has warped the tracks and made the wires sag. The Independence Day Parade is canceled, as was the Wawa Welcome America Salute to Service concert featuring Queen Latifah. Devastating news!

My layabout neighbor Swamp Rabbit frowned. “Why you gotta be sarcastic, Odd Man? The peeps were looking forward to seeing the queen.”

Inevitably, he reminded me of how I mocked his desperation back in February when the city was stuck in single-digit temperatures and I couldn’t drive him to the liquor store because my car was encased in ice. I’d probably laugh now if he keeled over and died, he said.

“Quit whining,” I replied. “You’d be dead already if I weren’t such a good neighbor.”

The ancient air conditioner in his shack sputtered like a crashing plane and conked out last night. I let him sleep on my bedroom floor and gave him a bottle of French colonial water when he got up this morning.

“Ain’t you the generous one,” he said now. “I’m surprised you didn’t make me pay for it.”

“I put it on your tab.”

I think we’re both suffering from Angry Doomer Syndrome, a condition I just invented. It’s a state of mind that takes hold when you realize we’ve been taking one step forward, two steps back since the first Earth Day, in 1970. We’re still losing the battle against climate change triggered by our dependence on fossil fuels. The oil and gas barons are riding higher than ever, thanks to the crooks and bribetakers in government who are doing their best to stop the transition to renewable energy sources. You wouldn’t know it from the mainstream media, but many of us are angry and half-convinced we’re caught in a doom loop.

Swamp Rabbit balked. “I ain’t angry and I ain’t doomed. You’re just projectin’ your fear on all the peeps who ain’t doomers… But thanks for the water.”

“Just hope you don’t have to ask the government for water someday.” I said. “They’ll probably bring you gasoline.”

Footnote: From David Wallace-Wells in New York Times: “… One lesson of these pummeling, sequential extreme temperature events — one heat dome after another after another — is that we’re going to have to do an awful lot to make a future punctuated by so many more of them manageable.”