Feeling the Heat

Notorious climate change denier James Inhoffe died a few days ago, just in time not to die of heat stroke. (Gift link to the NYT, AKA That Fucking Newspaper.) 

Around 2,300 people died from heat-related illnesses in the United States in 2023, triple the annual average between 2004 and 2018. Nearly 120,000 heat-related emergency room visits were recorded across the United States last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In part, those figures are because heat waves last longer now than they did decades ago, as an Environmental Protection Agency report released last week made clear.

 

We don't yet now what the final toll will be in the Houston area, where a million people remain without power in sweltering conditions. But the Gulf and southeast coasts are increasingly subject to one-two punches of tropical storms knocking out power, followed by heat waves. The fact is that much of the southern part of the country would already be nearly uninhabitable without air conditioning, but of course more air conditioning load, given the current mix of electric power generation, means more greenhouse gas emissions. 

 

As the Times article explains, hospitals are not equipped to deal with the increasing number of heat-related ER visits. People who work outdoors, old people who can't afford AC, and people who are frail for whatever reason, constitute vulnerable classes and we're going to need policies and programs to protect them. This is just one of the urgent problems that is largely absent from our political discourse. 

 

A side note:  In president Biden's news conference last night he was in solid command of issues, facts and policies. He properly took credit for an economy which is, in fact, the envy of the world, and he demonstrated that he is capable of making sound decisions. However, none of that mattered, at least in the big picture. His voice wasn't strong, his speech was sometimes halting, he made a couple of verbal gaffes (as he has always been prone to do) and he looked rather frail. The voters who will matter in November don't know or care about issues, facts or policies, they care about theater. He can do the job of president -- Ronald Reagan was much further gone by his second term, after all. But that's not the point. He has to be president on January 21, 2025.