In 2023, at least 2,325 people in the United States died from heat-related causes. This is the highest number on record, and represents a 117% increase from 1999.
Of these deaths, 48% happened in Arizona, California, Nevada, or Texas.
A quick search of Google lays out the blame. The search engine says that the increase in heat-related deaths is likely due to:
Rising global temperatures
The trend of increasing heat-related deaths began after 2016, which coincides with rising global temperatures.
Climate change
The summer of 2023 was a tipping point for many Americans, who began to directly experience the impact of climate change on their lives.
YA’ THINK!!!????
Google goes on to point out that heat is America's top weather killer on average each year, and it kills more people than hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes combined. Heat waves are especially deadly, as they can last for days or weeks. Unhoused people are at a particularly high risk of heat-related illness or death. I’m going to go out on a limb and says that little kids and the elderly are also at particular risk - as are poor people, who likely do not have sufficient air conditioning in their homes.
Heat - and not more dramatic and calamitous events like flash floods and hurricanes - may be the point of the spear that pierces the issue of climate change into the consciousness of average Americans. Grandma dying of heat stroke hits home. And there’s no special confluence of circumstances or geographical predicates required for that death to occur. Grandma just needs to be old, stuck without AC in a multi-day heatwave, and without access to cooling resources to help her survive.
Of course the temperature is not going down any time soon, so the Big Four Heat Death States will surely soon be joined by places like Vermont, Iowa, Maine, and Alaska.
It’s winter now, but summer is coming, and if past is prologue (pro tip - it is) there will be heat deaths again in the USA.
The rest of the world is also at risk, yes. In Europe last year, over 45 thousand people died because of the heat. Also in 2023 India recorded in excess of 40 thousand cases of heat stroke - but only 110 deaths, likely because of near-criminal under-counting.
But we are talking local here. LOCAL. So let’s go hyper-local, and find out if your town has a cooling center. And if not, is there one within a reasonable drive? If you care about this issue, have family or friends who might need a cooling center if there’s a heatwave in your neck of the woods this summer, do you want to find out what’s available?
I typed “find a cooling center near me” into my search bar and right below the obligatory AI paragraph was a link to the National Center for Healthy Housing’s website. Turns out that the AI scrape had consisted of copying the opening paragraph on the NCHH’s website, in its entirety. Here is that paragraph:
Cooling Centers by State
Cooling centers are an important resource during extreme heat events and are especially critical for houseless individuals or those without adequate cooling in their homes. Finding and accessing resources for cooling centers differs at the state and county level. Generally, contacting a state’s 2-1-1 and checking local news outlets are good ways of finding cooling centers. Visiting the website or calling a state’s 2-1-1 can connect individuals with resources for extreme heat, such as the location of extreme heat cooling programs. This information is sometimes located at the county or city level. Select local cooling centers may also open temporarily for extreme heat events. Information on these centers can often be found through local news sources.
Further down, I noted this:
NCHH has compiled resources at the state level that include a comprehensive list of cooling center locations. NCHH encourages additions to this list. Contact Christopher Bloom with proposed additions or changes.
Then there’s a list of states, with information for each state. For many, the only available advice is to, “Contact local 2-1-1 for assistance and referrals to cooling centers. Check with local news sources on openings of select cooling centers.
Other states have a single link to a robust website. For example, shout-out to Missouri, who showed me an excellent map (yes, that’s a dorky 3rd grade state motto joke).
Another subset of states, like Iowa, illustrate just how spotty the available online information is. Iowa has two links: one to the general 2-1-1 cooling center search, where you can tap in your town or zip code, and the other to the Polk County Daytime Cooling Centers and Aquatic Centers site, which is very robust. So, of the 99 counties in Iowa, only one apparently has their act together to put up a website for their citizens.
If the climate revolution needs to be waged at the local level, here’s a place to start. If this is a subject that interests you, and you’ve got a little time, check out the resources in your state. If there’s no central database displayed on an easy-to-access website, how could you help to make that happen?
I imagine this would start with figuring out who to approach to create a robust resource and make it available. Will that be at the county level? The state level? Does the information already exist, but has not yet been posted online? Are there other ways to disseminate the information to people who are less able to get online? (Local news - even the local Fox affiliate - posters at the senior center, an editorial or flyer or insert in church bulletins?)
I live part of the year in northeast Iowa. My county does not have any cooling centers to list. If there are no cooling centers at all in your area, how could that be remedied? Might your local library step up? How about the biggest supermarket in town - or a church?
And once we do have a cooling center established in your county, how do we get people there? A dedicated hotline? A call to 2-1-1? A text-based option?
My mother lives in a little “city” that bills itself as “America’s Hometown.” This tiny burg of under 8,000 souls has an ass-kicking bus service where, for something like two bucks, senior citizens and people with mobility issues can call for a ride that takes them not just anywhere within the city limits, but within the county, and even a little beyond. That’s a service with a mission and a big heart, and I’ll bet they’d jump at the chance to help folks get to cooling centers in the worst of the coming summer weather. But they have to be asked! And someone will need to set up access, and coordinate things! And - crucially - there must be cooling centers to go to.
This is hands-on work. It’s granular. It’s small and local and doesn’t feel “planetary” or grandiose, but good gosh darned if it is not VITALLY important. Getting the word out about local cooling centers could literally be the difference between life and death for people you know and love.
The climate is going to hell in a handbasket. In the USA, on the federal level, we’ve managed to elect intellectually unserious, greedy, rapacious buffoons who care nothing for us and everything for their bottom line. They will do nothing to help us. But your local government might be more amenable to persuasion. They might listen. Or you might be able to get elected and take up a transformative role in the effort to at least, at the very tragically least, keep more of us safe and healthy in the storm that is coming.
Let me know how it goes!
And remember:
