In the final episode of Not Built for This, we reckon with the biological limits of climate adaptation.
This is episode six of Not Built for Maximum Temperature.
Last summer, temperatures in Phoenix, Arizona got above 110 degrees for more than 30 days in a row.
A couple of times in July, the thermometer nearly cracked 120.
It is always hot in Phoenix in the summertime, but this was a new and unwelcome record.
And as the city endured this string of unbear hot days, there was this one image that I became fixated on.
All right, check this out.
Even the saguaros here in the valley.
Can'T take the heat anymore.
It's become a summer trend that just won't seem to stop our beloved saguaros toppling to the ground.
And it's leaving many neighbors.
All across the city, saguaros were keeling over in the heat.
These massive stately cacti can grow up to 60ft tall and weigh thousands of pounds.
And they were coming down left and right, crushing cars and denting roofs.
I just started hearing a loud crack.
So I looked up and I just saw the cactus falling over a good amount of the roof, like the drywall fell off.
Our next door neighbors thought it was.
Like a minor earthquake.
The saguaro is a master of desert survival.
There's literally nothing about its physical being, from its waxy skin to its spongy interiors, that isn't adapted to Arizona's furnace blast temperatures.
And yet here they were dying.