Shickman of the Arsht Center, which has helped to establish heat officers around the world, said such mortality rates are frightening.
“Our bodies disregulate around 101 degrees, so this kind of weather is imposing a fever on people,” he said. “And those temperatures can go much higher, way beyond what a body can withstand. But we often don’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late.”
Heat deaths are rising even in moderate summer temperatures, in part because the number of unsheltered people has spiked during Covid and its economic aftermath, but also because heat island cities in the Sunbelt continue to grow rapidly without planning for worsening heat.
Experts say more public money should be invested in home upgrades and retrofits, tree planting, restoration of natural landscapes that have a cooling effect on the earth and, in urban areas, using lighter colors on heat-absorbing surfaces like roads and roofs to reflect the sun.
Nancy Grimm, an ecosystem ecologist at Arizona State University who studies climate adaptation, said those solutions are often overlooked or not fully understood.
“What people don’t realize is that it’s not a foregone conclusion that we have to accept the heat, at least not the heat island component of it,” she said in an email.
Beyond the immediate threat to human health, extended periods of extreme heat can zap regional economies as workers and consumers hole up in their homes and offices. The same is true of military bases and ranges, where training and other activities stop during extreme heat, officials say.
Steve Cohen, director of Columbia University’s Research Program on Sustainability Policy and Management, said that in affluent societies where air conditioning is ubiquitous, officials may view it as the primary solution to extreme heat. But it raises issues of access and affordability for individuals and families,
“It’s an issue of resources as much as anything else,” Cohen said. “If we can afford the energy and the air-conditioning [technology], we can survive these things. But these are all assumptions that may prove to be false in the future.”
In fact, heavy reliance on air conditioning can run counter to broader adaptation and resilience goals because it places more stress on electricity grids, raising the risk of blackouts.
Under such scenarios, houses and apartments equipped with air conditioning can become death traps.
Studies and historic heat waves — such as the catastrophic 1995 heat wave in Chicago — have shown that lower-income people, including the elderly, sometimes forgo air conditioning to avoid high power bills. Homeless people sometimes choose to stay outdoors in extreme heat because shelters are inaccessible, overcrowded or unpleasant.
“There are huge swaths of our population that can’t afford air conditioning or have to be outside to earn the money they need for food,” Shickman said. “And just because you see an air conditioner in a window doesn’t mean it’s running.”
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Daniel Cusick covers climate change adaptation and resilience. He joined E&E News in 2003 and has filed news stories from South Florida to Northern Minnesota. He has reported from more than a half dozen hurricane recovery zones and documented climate change impacts, resilience and energy transitions in East Africa. He lives in Minneapolis.
