Gene Shalit’s gonzo “Today Show” review (I wish I could find) sent me to the theater to see RoboCop when it first ran in theaters. Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 satirical cop film was on TV last night and holds up pretty well. RoboCop 2, the 1990 sequel by director Irvin Kershner, not so much.
It’s just a coincidence that that one of the TV ads from that sequel presaged a news story CNN ran the other day:
The burning heat of summer has us all reaching for sunscreens. But before you slather that product on your skin, first check to see if it is part of a voluntary recall by sunscreen brands Neutrogena and Aveeno.
The companies recently pulled several sunscreens from market shelves after independent testing had found they were contaminated with a cancer-causing chemical called benzene.
Those products (and others listed) are aerosol sprays. By the time of RoboCop‘s near-future, the ozone layer had been destroyed by aerosols, so Sunblock 5000 came instead in a handy blue-green cream. One pint slathered on and you were good for hours in the California sun. Unfortunately, the fictional product was not designed to combat the western heat 34 years later.
“On Monday, Billings could be as hot or hotter than Phoenix,” the Washington Post reports.
It has been at least 95 F in Boise, Idaho for a record 20 straight days. Las Vegas reached 117 F degrees last week, which the Washington Post describes as (emphasis mine) “its warmest temperature ever recorded,” adding:
A major concern on Sunday and Monday is the prospect of dry thunderstorms, from the Sierra Nevada mountain range northward through much of northern Nevada, eastern Idaho and central Montana. These storms could unleash cloud-to-ground lightning that ignites new blazes.
Wildfires, air quality alerts, and stinging eyes extend as far as Alberta where crops are baking in the heat:
Cherries have roasted on trees. Fields of canola and wheat have withered brown. And as feed and safe water for animals grow scarce, ranchers may have no choice but to sell off their livestock.
“It will totally upend Canadian food production if this becomes a regular thing,” said Lenore Newman, director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia.
A heat dome roasted Canada in late June, leading to hundreds of “sudden and unexpected” deaths, according to officials, and sparkedfear among Canadian farmers and climate experts. A village in British Columbia claimed the nation’s highest recorded temperature, clocking in just shy of 115 degrees. This weekend, another scorching wave is expected to return to the nation.
“We can’t farm like this, where there’s a giant disruption every year,” said Newman. “Or we’re going to have to really rethink how we produce food.”
Maybe sunscreen for crops?