Extreme heat is going to be a new normal for much of America. Just look at the data: June was the hottest June on record; May was the hottest May on record. Last year was the hottest year on record, and this year looks poised to be the same.
With heat-related deaths increasing yearly in the United States, and with the economic impacts of heat in the billions of dollars and rising, our ability to respond effectively to rising temperatures is clearly of paramount importance.
How can we better keep our cities and communities cool, then, amid these new normal temperatures? The big long-term fix, of course, requires us to stop burning fossil fuels since that’s what’s overheating the planet. But there are other short-term pathways that can help today and ultimately save lives.
Natural infrastructure
There’s plenty of low-hanging fruit here. Many cities—and especially disadvantaged communities—don’t have sufficient tree canopy to keep residents cool, compounding the environmental injustices they’ve already experienced. Tree cover can offer critical help by cooling temperatures nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit, which can be a lifesaver for many.
For some parts of the U.S., like in Washington, D.C. and New York City where it’s incentivized, adding green to roofs can help cool a city while simultaneously reducing energy demand. Channeling wind flows and utilizing existing water sources like lakes and rivers can also make a huge difference. Green infrastructure paired with bike and pedestrian infrastructure—like Denver’s Green Continuum and the extensive greenway systems in Knoxville, Boston, and Frisco—can double these benefits.
Built infrastructure
There’s already much that can be modified to lower outdoor temperatures. Installing so-called “cool roofs” to better reflect sunlight, and painting paved structures a lighter reflective color can help curb the urban heat island effect. It’s already something that cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix are encouraging and implementing. Turning libraries, schools, and recreation sites into cooling centers and stations and keeping swimming pools open longer are easy ways to offer immediate cooling for communities. So are building water splash parks in public spaces.
More and more cities are also creating resilience hubs to help communities survive the warming climate. These hubs, which can be housed in libraries, churches, schools, nonprofits, and local businesses, serve communities throughout the year, providing essential emergency response but also social and community connection. None of this is all that costly, it just takes some creative thinking and partnering to get it done.
Human infrastructure
Cities around the world are creating chief heat officers to focus efforts on heat response while educating every department and their staff on how their work intersects. That means ensuring that every city department—from housing and health to economic development and transportation—has a heat strategy. Most southern U.S. cities already have some kind of heat relief network or heat safety protocol, and in the many different languages their residents speak, but increasingly northern U.S. cities are developing them, too, as heat creeps northward.
This whole-of-city response is essential, as no department goes untouched by heat. In Denver, for example, the city has been hosting heat summits, first with community leaders from heat vulnerable neighborhoods, then with city staff from every agency, and finally with the broader community. Solutions identified in these summits will be implemented later this year. Denver is also tapping into existing human infrastructure by working with nonprofits and community groups, where local trust is high, to distribute air-conditioning units and air purifiers to those most in need of heat relief. Building on these relationships in a second phase, the city will focus on heat pumps in these buildings and homes to provide efficient, low-carbon cooling solutions.
Policy infrastructure
There’s much more we can do nationally. There are efforts to create a national heat standard for worker safety at the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which proposed a rule this month to protect indoor and outdoor workers from extreme heat. Several U.S. states already have their own standards established, but it’s clear a national standard is needed. Too many outdoor workers’ health and safety are unprotected and imperiled by rising heat. Additionally, there are efforts to create disaster declaration capacity for heat at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. That would free up federal resources to respond to extreme heat across the U.S., similar to how FEMA responds to floods and fires. All of this is necessary at the federal policy level.
What’s important in all of these responses is cities’ understanding that heat waves are here to stay, and that we’ll need to adapt as quickly as possible while doing everything we can to prevent the heat waves from worsening. That means ratcheting down to zero our burning of fossil fuels as soon as possible while scaling up ways of cooling our climates as quickly as we can.
There’s a lot riding on the line with heat. And before more lives are lost and economies undercut, it’s critical that we respond aggressively without waiting for yet another record to be broken.