Appointed officials have the life-saving solutions the public needs to stay safe from rising temperatures. But they don’t have political power. Zoya Teirstein . . . Once a month, roughly a dozen people enter a Zoom room to talk about what to do about this. They log on from their desks in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Jacksonville, San Antonio, and other cities across the country that are grappling with scorching temperatures. They have backgrounds in public health, nonprofit work, government, and corporate sustainability. For an hour, this motley brigade consists of municipal officers and government officials who respond to extreme temperatures in their respective cities. In their meetings they share stories, tips, and warnings from across the country.
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Appointed officials have the life-saving solutions the public needs to stay safe from rising temperatures. But they don’t have political power. Zoya Teirstein . . .
Once a month, roughly a dozen people enter a Zoom room to talk about what to do about this. They log on from their desks in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Jacksonville, San Antonio, and other cities across the country that are grappling with scorching temperatures. They have backgrounds in public health, nonprofit work, government, and corporate sustainability. For an hour, this motley brigade consists of municipal officers and government officials who respond to extreme temperatures in their respective cities. In their meetings they share stories, tips, and warnings from across the country.
Ten Across (10x) Senior Director Rae Ulrich of the climate resilience collaboration initiative is within the Arizona State University complex. Monthly she organizes the meetings where “They can share their vulnerabilities, the major issues they have, learn from each other, and be really open with one another.”
The sharing of knowledge amongst local government personnel sounds mundane. However, these people have taken on an unprecedented responsibility. City governments across the country rarely have someone dedicated exclusively to the issue of heat. This issue, despite the fact that dense, urban centers bear the brunt of extreme warmth.
Public health departments have historically shouldered the task of issuing warnings and advisories when heat waves descend. However, there is no codified response to the crisis, no tested playbook to follow, and no federal agency to turn to in the event of an emergency. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has never responded to a heat wave as a major disaster. The agency has said heat could technically qualify as such an event, but there is still no criteria governing how it responds or doles out aid.
As summers have grown hotter, the weight of responsibility the officers feel has also grown. Doug Melnick, chief sustainability officer in San Antonio, Texas.
“It’s a lot to bear. We’re the ones thinking about what’s happening, what the impacts are going to be, and what to do about it.”
The vast majority of the appointed rather than elected officials are the ones working on this issue. They have no authority to put the measures they develop into place. Neither can they require their respective governments to adhere to the recommendations they develop. The irony being:
America’s chief heat officers, and the other types of officers who also work on heat issues, can hold the key to protecting communities from rising temperatures. Again. there is absolutely no guarantee that mayors, governors, and lawmakers will listen. And, in most cases, their funding depends on the political priorities of the party in power.
Historian of medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wrote a book about extreme heat in Europe, Richard C. Keller. “There is little authority behind these positions. They can issue recommendations, they can help establish policy, but they’re going to have a very hard time enforcing those policies.”
Jeff Goodell, author of a seminal book on the health impacts of heat and heat politics called The Heat Will Kill You First. “They just don’t have power. What they can do is very limited.”
Extreme heat as driven by human-caused climate change, is creating a slow-moving public health disaster across wide swaths of the United States. Such should in theory spur immediate, bipartisan action. After all, heat does not recognize state lines or political identity and it kills indiscriminately.
Recorded fatalities from heat have been rising nationwide in recent years. Officially, extreme temperatures were a factor in 2,300 U.S. deaths last year, a record. The frustrating reality is mortality resulting from heat is almost always missing. No official figure comes close to capturing the actual public health impact of extreme heat because it is rarely registered as a cause of death by medical examiners. Despite myriad indications that the health repercussions of extreme heat are exacting an increasingly deadly toll, mounting a coordinated response to extreme heat in a country where everything is politicized has proven complicated.
Indeed, there has been much demonstrated resistance to any solution. Two stories . . .
Florida Governor DeSantis signed legislation approved by the Republican-controlled state Senate preventing local governments from requiring employers to implement heat protections for their workers. DeSantis said of the local initiatives seeking mandatory water breaks and other measures to protect workers from heat. “There was a lot of concern coming out of one county — Miami-Dade,”
“How much authority is a chief heat officer in Miami or Palm Beach going to have over a governor who is basically banning mandatory heat breaks for outdoor workers?” asked Keller, the historian.
On the other side of the country, a different story is playing out in California. The chief heat officer for the city of Los Angeles, Marta Segura is making recommendations in a political landscape friendly to climate action. There, the groundwork for more aggressive protections against extreme temperatures were laid in 2006, when the state passed heat standards for outdoor workers. California was the first state in the nation to do so. This summer, a California state board voted to establish similar standards for indoor workers, like warehouse employees and kitchen staff, many of whom also toil in dangerous temperatures all day. California is one of only three states in the U.S. to put such protections in place.
Marta Segura has a team of people who work with her under a million-dollar budget — not a huge amount of money, but a sum she puts to good use in her efforts across the city. Even so, Segura, when asked, did not say she has authority within the city government.
“I would call it more political influence. I see myself as an internal advocate.”
Research shows there is a limit to what the human body can bear. When high temperatures meet high humidity, and those conditions persist for days at a time, people tend to die en masse. Study after study has indicated that these types of mass mortality events could occur with regularity later this century, but isolated instances have already taken place.
The nation awaits more action to be taken with regards to workers and the environment.
“Can chief heat officers protect US cities from extreme heat?” Grist