Cooling Communities in a Warming Planet: Policies for Extreme Heat Mitigation
By Anusha Narayan
The last eight years have been the hottest on record, with 2022 ranking as the fifth hottest since record keeping began in 1880. Climate change is creating extreme heat anomalies (periods of abnormally high temperatures that persist over a relatively long period of time) across the globe, putting large populations at risk. Extreme temperatures are especially dangerous in areas that are not equipped to handle them, including cold climate regions, communities lacking sufficient cooling infrastructure, and marginalized, disabled, and disenfranchised communities.
In July 2021 the Pacific Northwest, a region where lasting heat waves are historically rare, experienced a weeklong heat wave with temperatures reaching 116 degrees Fahrenheit. The extreme temperatures led to the deaths of 800 people across Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, with the majority of these individuals being elderly people who were living alone. Because the Pacific Northwest typically has a temperate climate, many people do not have access to air conditioning or cooling systems within their homes. In response to this heat wave, Oregon passed a law enforcing all homes built after April 2024 to have air conditioning (the top protective measure against heat-related illness and death) in at least one room of the house — a sign that even typically temperate states are waking up to the urgent need to adapt to a changing climate. The Pacific Northwest is not the only region facing the dangers of extreme heat. Fatalities related to extreme heat increased globally by 74 percent between 1990 and 2016, making heat the cause of more deaths than any other extreme weather anomaly. The consequences of extreme heat can be felt across the U.S., particularly by those who have disabilities, are elderly, and are experiencing housing insecurity. Structural racism — macro-level discrimination against people of color embedded into large-scale systems and sectors such as housing, education, and healthcare — also contributes to extreme heat disproportionately impacting Black and brown communities.
New Data for Progress polling of 1,199 national likely voters finds that 67 percent of voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about extreme heat impacting the health of their community. Voters are most concerned about the health of elderly Americans in extreme heat events, with 84 percent indicating that they are very or somewhat concerned about this population. A majority of voters are also concerned about the impact of extreme heat on the health of low-income (79 percent) and homeless Americans (77 percent). Widespread concerns about the health impacts of extreme heat on communities underscore the need for interventions that create safer and cooler conditions throughout the country.
The planet has already warmed by 1 degree Celsius since preindustrial times and, without intervention, is in danger of approaching the 1.5 C increase that scientists have long warned would have catastrophic ramifications for both society and the planet. As global climate systems continue to evolve, more frequent, intense, and unpredictable heat waves are to be expected, suggesting that policy and infrastructure need to be put in place to create a heat-resilient nation. In order to mitigate extreme heat and protect communities across the U.S., federal, state, and local governments should expand heat-mitigating infrastructure that serves the dual purpose of supporting community access to cooling systems and scaling down greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that exacerbate global warming.