Portable wearable air conditioning and sun protection, that's what you'd need to make it comfortable. Maybe like a robotic exoskeleton, we can't be far from making that affordable.

cars are just suburban power armor

we can also have wheels to make it energy efficient. We can call it "the mobile" or maybe the auto-mobile.

Wheels might make it energy efficient but engines powered by oil from deep under the Gulf of Mexico shipped to refineries, then shipped hundreds of miles to gas stations, then people driving a ton or two of steel and plastic and rubber to the gas station so they can “efficiently” get one person 4 miles to a shop isn’t so efficient.

A bicycle on flat asphalt is more efficient than a person despite person+bike moving more total mass; but still the cost of mining iron ore, making steel, making a bike for every customer, compared to just building the store and the homes close enough to walk and not doing any of that…

Energy.gov says “In 2021, 52% of all trips, including all modes of transportation, were less than three miles, with 28% of trips less than one mile”, it’s daft either way that people want to use a car for such short distances or that urban spaces are designed so that things are relatively very close but juuuust too far for convenience.

Singapore has covered walkways everywhere to beat the heat.

Also I would love to see more covered bikeways.

Air conditioned suits could be a thing for E-bikes. Onboard power source.

That is why cultures in such climates tend to have a mid-day siesta when no one goes out, and a lively late night when the temperatures become bearable, the sun no longer tries to murder you with its rays, and people go outside to eat, shop and meet friends.

Nah, as someone who lives somewhere with actual humidity “mid day” is basically “whenever the sun is up”.

85 and humid here is worse than -00 and dry in Phoenix. It’s so humid your sweat can’t evaporate because the air is already saturated. It’s beyond miserable, and actively unhealthy to many.

Yeah, hot and humid areas have never been particularly friendly to human civilization. Prior to the industrial era, they were mostly covered by rainforests.

North Carolina is hardly rainforest, nor has it ever been.

You might be thinking "tropical rainforest". Even today parts of North Carolina (and even Alaska) are classified as temperate rainforests: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Temperat...

Very small parts. We just have lots of water and swampland down where I am.

The map of US rainforests shows an active rainforest along the western side of North Carolina. It is not all that hard to believe said forest could have been much larger before the human touch.

Western part of the state is farther from where I am than LA is from SF, just for the record.

The easternly side of the forest to the easternmost points of NC is not further than LA from SF, though. Unless you live way out in the ocean, but still consider that to be North Carolina for some reason, you are closer than said distance to the forest.

I do I. Fact live almost at the Coast. Just to get to Asheville, which is hardly the westernmost point in the state, is over 6 hours.

Los Angeles to SF is 381 miles. My town to the Cherokee, which is about where the rainforest zone starts, is 383. North Carolina is a much bigger state than most people realize.

You do live out in the Ocean? Fair enough.

Nobody has ever thought North Carolina was small, though. Where did that idea come from? In fact, it is not clear why the record needed a distance in the first place.

In the ocean, no, but about 30 miles inland.

I assure you, as life long resident, I have blown the minds of many non-natives by stating I can drive for 8 hours west and still not quite be in Tennessee. In most places east of the Mississippi that gets you through 3-4 states.

It's all relative, I guess. I'm looking at 20 hours of driving to get the western extent of the province. And seven hours the other way to get to the easternmost side. 8 hours is but a leisurely afternoon cruise.

It’s not a tropical rainforest though. Temperate/subtropical rainforests aren’t as bad.

I don't know much about NC, but the only parrot native to the US used to live there [0], which indicates that it must have been pretty heavily forested prior to the Colombian exchange.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolina_parakeet

Sicily? Rome? Angkor Wat?