Extreme heat is on everyone’s lips. Too bad it can’t get political traction

By Alexander Nieves - Politico, August 16, 2023

Scorching summer temperatures have pushed extreme heat to the front of the nation’s collective consciousness. There’s just one problem: It’s hard to get politicians to care about it.

Even in California, home of the nation’s first outdoor heat standard for workers and a new law to create a ranking system for heat waves, the issue has yet to gain political traction. Advocates have struggled to secure funding to help residents adapt, and state officials have been slow to enforce worker safety rules.

California’s handling of extreme heat doesn’t bode well for the nation’s ability to address the effects of rising temperatures, which are most likely to harm people who can’t access air conditioning and who are already in poor health.

“Our focus has been on priorities where you can get people to buy in and, frankly, where it’s sexy. It’s new technology, it’s talking about electric vehicles and rooftop solar,” said state Sen. Anna Caballero, a Central Valley Democrat who represents rural communities that are among the poorest in the state. “We haven’t focused on the impacts of climate change on lower-income families.”

While President Joe Biden announced a federal effort last week to track heat-related illnesses, California officials began paying closer attention to heat deaths in 2021, after the Los Angeles Times estimated that high temperatures had killed nearly 4,000 people between 2010 and 2019 — more than six times higher than official state figures.

The data dwarfs fatalities from more dramatic extreme weather events like wildfires, floods and windstorms. Fewer than 300 Californians died from those events over the same period of time, according to data from the National Weather Service.

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