{"id":1228057,"date":"2023-09-26T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-26T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/radiofree.asia\/?guid=a2573fc04eacfc70084965cef7584b13"},"modified":"2023-09-26T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-26T13:00:00","slug":"the-heat-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/09\/26\/the-heat-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"The heat gap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hello, and welcome to the last issue of Record High. <\/strong>I\u2019m Zoya Teirstein, and today, we\u2019re going to talk about the elephant in the room: heat inequity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his book Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History,<\/em> the physician and medical anthropologist Paul Farmer explains, unflinchingly, why the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak killed more than 11,000 Africans while almost every single Westerner who contracted the illness survived. The difference between life and death came down to, quite simply, access. In clinics in Guinea, Libera, and Sierra Leone, equipment and fluids that would have saved countless lives were nonexistent. A few simple interventions would have made all the difference. \u201cHow many of these deaths were caused more by the virulence of social conditions than by the virulence of the pathogen?\u201d Farmer asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was reminded of Farmer\u2019s book recently while interviewing a researcher about an unrelated topic, a study on the temperature thresholds<\/a> at which the human body can no longer keep itself cool. That researcher, a scientist at the University of Oxford, found that parts of the world have already become too hot for human survival. As climate change accelerates, more portions of the globe will approach this threshold, what the study calls \u201cthe danger zone.\u201d Whether someone dies in that zone depends in large part on their access to cooling strategies \u2014 such as fans, cold drinking water, and, of course, air conditioning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate reporter Jeff Goodell writes extensively about this divide between the \u201ccooled and the doomed\u201d in his new best-selling book The Heat Will Kill You First.<\/em> \u201cThere\u2019s a profound gap in every city, everywhere, between people who have air conditioning and people who don\u2019t,\u201d Goodell told me in July<\/a>, as Phoenix was experiencing what would become a 31-day stretch of 110 degree days<\/a> \u2014 the hottest month in any U.S. city on record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“There\u2019s a profound gap in every city, everywhere, between people who have air conditioning and people who don\u2019t.”<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Heat is swiftly becoming one of the most formidable climate-fueled health threats of our time. It kills more people than any other extreme weather condition. Like Ebola and other deadly outbreaks in global history, it kills unequally. Finding this inequality in the United States is appallingly easy \u2014 just follow the racial boundaries that divide many cities and towns. Wealthy, white neighborhoods are less likely to experience deadly heat than non-white areas. A lot of these segregated communities are clustered in Southern states, among the hottest in the nation<\/a>, and big cities that lack green space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent paper<\/a> published by the Department of Energy\u2019s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found that the average Black urban resident is exposed to markedly higher heat stress than the average white urban resident. On average, Black people are exposed to temperatures that are a little more than half a degree hotter than the city average, while white people live in areas that are a little less than half a degree cooler. Much of this temperature imparity \u2014 which leads to more hospitalizations and deaths within minority communities \u2014 is due to segregation and redlining<\/a>. \u201cThe findings reveal pervasive income- and race-based disparities within U.S. cities,\u201d the study\u2019s authors wrote. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \n\n

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\n Wall mounted air-conditioning units adorn a building in Hong Kong.<\/span>\n Andrew Aitchison \/ In pictures via Getty Images<\/cite><\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

This newsletter may be winding down, but heat isn\u2019t going anywhere. It\u2019s likely that in the future, we\u2019ll remember the summer of 2023 \u2014 the hottest on record \u2014 as among the coolest summers of this century. There are as many right ways to approach the challenge of a hotter world and its health impacts as there are wrong ways. Successfully mitigating extreme heat also necessarily means fighting inequalities in health, the built environment, and local and national government policies, which will determine who lives and who dies as the planet continues to warm. Any effort to address the impacts of extreme heat that doesn\u2019t take that into account the \u201cvirulence of social conditions,\u201d as Farmer wrote, isn\u2019t much of a solution at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today concludes our run of Record High, but our team still has a few big stories in the works. We\u2019ll be using this newsletter to (very occasionally) let you know when those new projects publish over the next few months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for sticking with us this summer. We\u2019ll see you next time.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

P.S. If you\u2019d like to keep seeing Grist content in your inbox, sign up for our flagship newsletter \u2014 10 of our newest stories delivered to you once weekly \u2014 here<\/a>. And if you want to play a role in shaping next year\u2019s extreme weather newsletter, fill out this audience survey<\/a>. It takes just a few minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By the numbers<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Data Visualization by Clayton Aldern<\/a><\/cite><\/p><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In the U.S., non-white populations are exposed to higher temperatures than white populations. Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders experience this disparity most acutely, but all non-white people are subject to elevated temperatures, while white populations experience cooler-than-average temps. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What we\u2019re reading<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The strange connection between alcohol and heat: <\/strong>A new study found short-term temperature spikes lead to marked increases in the rate of hospitalizations for alcohol-related disorders. Even a slight increase in temperature, say from 15 degrees Fahrenheit one week to 20 degrees F the next week, or from 60 to 65 degrees F, led to more hospitalizations for substance use.
\".\"\/ Read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

South America\u2019s hot winter comes to a close: <\/strong>And it\u2019s 110 degrees in parts of Brazil. It looks like an enormous heat dome afflicting much of South America isn\u2019t going away anytime soon. My colleague Max Graham writes about what the beginning of summer following a record-breaking winter means for the continent and the rest of the world.
\".\"\/ Read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This summer\u2019s record-breaking heat in charts<\/strong>: Heat this summer has broken previous records \u201cby a truly staggering margin,\u201d Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Breakthrough Institute wrote in a blog post. Hausfather said there\u2019s a chance 2023 will \u201cemerge as the first year exceeding 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
\".\"\/ Read more <\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The worst heat wave ever recorded happened in \u2026 Antarctica? <\/strong>A new study shows the most intense heat wave on the planet took place in Antarctica in March 2022, when temperatures on the continent spiked 70 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. Kasha Patel writes about it for the Washington Post.
\".\"\/ Read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another victim of extreme heat:<\/strong> recess. Schools across the country closed early, trimmed recess, and canceled outdoor after-school activities altogether due to sweltering heat this month. This isn\u2019t the first year kids have suffered at school due to rising temperatures, and the trend has experts worried. NPR\u2019s Sequoia Carrillo and Beth Wallis have a great segment about the issue on All Things Considered.
\".\"\/ Read more<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline The heat gap<\/a> on Sep 26, 2023.<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Grist<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What we learned from a summer of reporting on extreme heat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228057"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228058,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228057\/revisions\/1228058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}