Record High
EDITOR’S NOTE
As carbon emissions rise, communities across the globe are dealing with increasingly severe and frequent bouts of extreme temperatures. Scientists have observed an eightfold increase in record-breaking hot months over the past decade, and at any given time, extreme heat is now affecting about one-tenth of the Earth’s land area. Some 8 million Americans were exposed to “extreme danger” temperatures last year alone, defined by the National Weather Service as a heat index of more than 125 degrees Fahrenheit. By 2053, that number is expected to rise to 107 million.
These scorching temperatures are impacting public health, drought, agriculture, infrastructure, equity, ecosystems, and much more. But there are also innovative solutions, policies, and technologies being tested to adapt to this hotter future. Follow Grist as it delves into all aspects of extreme heat — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Featured
How to build a heat-resilient city
Grist designed a model metropolis for an era of high temperatures, using the coolest technology available.
Extreme Heat Newsletter
Wall mounted air-conditioning units adorn a building in Hong Kong.
The heat gap
Hello, and welcome to the last issue of Record High. I’m Zoya Teirstein, and today, we’re going to talk about the elephant in the room: heat inequity.
In his book Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History, 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. “How many of these deaths were caused more by the virulence of social conditions than by the virulence of the pathogen?” Farmer asked.
I was reminded of Farmer’s book recently while interviewing a researcher about an unrelated topic, a study on the temperature thresholds 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 hum... Read more
