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Lourdes Cárdenas spends eight hours a day picking tomatoes near Fresno, Calif. She works on a flat, open field in heat that can reach 45 C. The closest shade from the blazing sun is about five kilometres away. The farm’s overseers don’t always provide water.
In 20 years as an agricultural worker, Ms. Cárdenas has noticed the heat grow steadily worse. On one recent day, it was so intense that she became dizzy and nauseous and had to go home early. She missed out on half her day’s wages, about US$62.
“It’s been really hard and physically gruelling. There is pressure to work fast in demanding conditions. You get dehydrated,” Ms. Cárdenas, 60, told The Globe and Mail. “There is nothing between you and the sun.”
Climate change has been hitting the United States hard this summer. In a country used to seeing the worst effects contained to specific regions at specific times, the crisis is now cutting a wide swath.
Heat and flood warnings and advisories
Issued on July 14, 2023
Excessive heat warning/watch
Heat advisory
Fire weather watch
Flood warning/watch/advisory
Severe thunderstorm watch
Seattle
New York
Denver
Phoenix
Atlanta
San Diego
Houston
New
Orleans
Miami
Maximum temperature forecast
for the next three days
Issued on July 14, 2023
Celsius
20
51°C
Seattle
New York
Denver
Phoenix
Atlanta
San Diego
Houston
New
Orleans
Miami
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL,
SOURCE: NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Heat and flood warnings and advisories
Issued on July 14, 2023
Excessive heat warning/watch
Heat advisory
Fire weather watch
Flood warning/watch/advisory
Severe thunderstorm watch
Seattle
Boston
New York
Denver
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Atlanta
Dallas
San Diego
Houston
Tampa
New
Orleans
Miami
Maximum temperature forecast
for the next three days
Issued on July 14, 2023
Celsius
20
51°C
Seattle
Boston
New York
Denver
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Atlanta
Dallas
San Diego
Houston
Tampa
New
Orleans
Miami
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL,
SOURCE: NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Heat and flood warnings and advisories
Issued on July 14, 2023
Excessive heat warning/watch
Heat advisory
Fire weather watch
Flood warning/watch/advisory
Severe thunderstorm watch
Seattle
Minneapolis
Boston
Detroit
New York
Chicago
Denver
Washington
D.C.
Saint Louis
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Atlanta
San Diego
Dallas
Houston
New
Orleans
Tampa
Miami
Heat and flood warnings and advisories
Issued on July 14, 2023
Celsius
20
51°C
Seattle
Minneapolis
Boston
Detroit
New York
Chicago
Denver
Washington
D.C.
Saint Louis
Los Angeles
Phoenix
Atlanta
San Diego
Dallas
Houston
New
Orleans
Tampa
Miami
MURAT YÜKSELIR / THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
Homeowners in Florida, Louisiana and California can’t get insurance amid increasingly severe hurricanes and wildfires. The power grid in Texas is coming under serious strain. Smoke from Canada’s burning forests has blanketed east coast cities. Drought conditions pervade the Southwest while Vermont is swamped with flooding. And outdoor workers everywhere, such as Ms. Cárdenas, are struggling with the health consequences of trying to make a living on the hottest days in recorded history.
These are problems that are only going to get worse. While governments are taking some steps to prepare, many on the front lines say the country is far from ready.
Volunteers clean up a downtown area on the banks of the Winooski River, in Montpelier, Vt. on July 12, following a storm that dumped nearly two months of rain in two days.Charles Krupa/The Associated Press
Droughts and flooding rains
In Montpelier, Vermont’s state capital, two months worth of rain fell in a 48-hour period last weekend. A torrent of water submerged the entire downtown, filling up basements and crashing through the main floors of shops. Businesses solicited volunteers to frantically move inventory and equipment to safety, while residents used canoes to navigate the streets.
Mayor Jack McCullough said the flooding was the state’s worst since 1927. But the city likely can’t count on another century before this happens again.
“That’s the big question: What can we do?” he said in an interview. “Will we have to expand the capacity of the dam upstream? Will we have to create more flood-prevention reservoirs? Those are long-term questions we’re going to need to answer.”
The desert regions of the country’s west, meanwhile, are facing a more familiar foe. A megadrought has extended into its 23rd year, believed to be the longest such dry period in more than a millennium.
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Major reservoirs, including Lake Mead in Nevada and Arizona, contain less than a third of their capacity. Stretches of the Rio Grande regularly run dry, the river reduced to a wide, twisting strip of sand.
“We know that the temperature has warmed because evapotranspiration has increased up to 15 per cent,” said Page Pegram, an official with New Mexico’s interstate stream commission. “That’s water for plants and crops and people that gets sucked up.”
The region is already taking measures to cut back on water use. A state program in New Mexico pays farmers to leave land fallow, while the federal government has committed US$1.2-billion to do the same for parts of Arizona, Nevada and California in the basin of the Colorado River.
Sarah Porter, director of the Kyl Center for Water Policy at Arizona State University, said that if such conditions continue the eventual solution will also necessitate changes to the current model of suburban sprawl. Many of these could also reduce carbon emissions.
“There’s an American dream of the single-family detached home with grass in front and a pool in the back. Over time, I think we’ll see communities transformed to have higher density and less grass, more embracing of desert landscaping, and not as many people enamoured with swimming pools,” she said.
A cyclist passes power lines during an evening ride on June 26 in San Antonio. Meteorologists say scorching temperatures brought on by a heat dome have taxed the Texas power grid and threaten to bring record highs to the state.Eric Gay/The Associated Press
The straining electricity grid
These sorts of dual measures – fighting both the cause and effects of climate change – may also be central to handling another problem exacerbated by extreme weather: the pressure on the U.S.’s aging electricity infrastructure.
Texas has repeatedly set new records for electricity use over the last month as a “heat dome” led residents and businesses to crank up their air conditioners. But the state’s notoriously shaky power grid has held up, largely thanks to new solar and wind generating projects. On the hottest days, renewable power has supplied nearly 40 per cent of the state’s electricity, up from 26 per cent last year.
Alison Silverstein, an Austin-based energy consultant, said solar and wind farms have proven more reliable in part because they are generally smaller than their fossil-fuel counterparts, can be built closer to where electricity is needed and meet newer, more resilient design standards. Unlike coal and natural gas-fired plants, these clean power projects don’t require buying and bringing in fuel, which has also made their electricity cheaper.
On the whole, however, the U.S. risks widespread power outages in the future if it doesn’t shore up its electricity infrastructure, she said. Grids aren’t prepared for either the increasing use that accompanies extreme weather or the direct hit from the weather itself.
Manessa Grady and her sons light their home with an oil lamp in Austin, Tex., on Feb. 16, 2021. Millions of Texans have gone days without power and heat in freezing temperatures after a winter storm, leading to several deaths as people struggled to stay warm.TAMIR KALIFA/The New York Times News Service
In February of 2021, for instance, 11 million Texans lost electricity after winter storms knocked out plants and powerlines. The system was largely designed using weather data from before 1980 that doesn’t reflect the volatility of a changing climate.
“We built this grid for Ozzie and Harriet,” said Ms. Silverstein, who has previously worked for U.S. federal and Texas state energy regulators, “but we’re facing Mad Max.”
Despite the yeoman’s work solar and wind are doing to keep the lights on, Texas’s government still favours carbon. Last month, the legislature voted to offer subsidies for gas plants but failed to pass a raft of environmental bills.
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The uninsurable
While they wait on their infrastructure to catch up to the crisis, many Americans are having a harder and harder time finding insurance that will protect them from the worst.
In the past year, three major insurers – Farmers, State Farm and Allstate – have announced either caps or complete freezes on new homeowner policies in California. Among other factors, the companies cited the escalating risk of wildfires.
It’s a state of affairs Florida and Louisiana already know well because of increasingly intense hurricanes and flooding. Floridians pay about US$6,000 annually in home insurance premiums, compared with a nationwide average of US$1,700. About 13 per cent of homeowners in the state have no insurance at all. Insurance companies have regularly gone bankrupt and state governments have had to step in.
These costs are already going far beyond people living in particularly vulnerable locations, and they could soon spread further. Louisiana taxpayers, for instance, are paying for government subsidies to private insurers in a bid to keep them afloat, as well as to compensate people whose insurance companies went bankrupt.
Destroyed homes, vehicles and boats are seen after Hurricane Ian caused widespread destruction in Pine Island, Florida, on Oct. 2, 2022.MARCO BELLO/Reuters
A skeleton in sits beside a sign reading: "Just waiting for the insurance check," outside the closed Kona Kai Motel on Sanibel Island, Fla., on May 11, 2023. Struggles continue for thousands in Florida eight months after Hurricane Ian caused massive destruction in the area.Rebecca Blackwell/The Associated Press
In Florida, the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, a not-for-profit that insures people who can’t get policies on the private market, warned last year that its reserves had been depleted by Hurricane Ian. If the public insurer cannot replenish its funds before the next major disaster, it said, it would have to impose an emergency assessment on every insurance policyholder in the state.
“Just as the U.S. economy was overexposed to mortgage risk in 2008, the economy today is overexposed to climate risk,” insurance broker Eric Andersen told Congress earlier this year.
Janet Ruiz of the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, said the solution will have to include strengthening infrastructure and houses against potential disasters and restricting development in the most vulnerable areas. Some of this is already happening, with California blocking development proposals that don’t meet wildfire preparedness standards.
“That climate risk is real and we have to think about where we’re going to live,” she said. “If we can move into a predict-and-prevent mentality rather than just prepare-and-restore, we’ll be better off.”
Worker Julio Cabellero takes a water break at a construction site in Prairie Village, Kan., in July 2019. U.S. workers performing construction, agriculture, and other outdoor jobs bear some of the most acute heat-related hazards of climate change in the U.S.CHRISTOPHER SMITH/The New York Times News Service
Workers at risk
The failure of companies and governments to prepare despite being able to predict has U.S. workers bearing some of the most hazardous effects.
For Matt Leichenger, a UPS delivery driver in Brooklyn, the conditions in his truck are often worse on hot days than they are outside. There is no air conditioning in the vehicle, he said, and the back compartment can reach sauna-like temperatures of 40 to 65 degrees. He gets a one-hour break in a shift that can run 12 to 14 hours some days.
“I consider myself in pretty good health. I’m young, I have a good diet, I drink lots of water and electrolytes,” the 27-year-old said. “But on days when the heat is that extreme, I often feel faint and dizzy. At times, my stomach feels like it’s melting.”
Add to that the smoke from Canadian wildfires that has periodically spread across the U.S. Northeast and Midwest this summer. On the worst day, New York City’s air quality was the most dangerous in the world. Mr. Leichenger’s eyes burned, his throat was dry and he began to feel ill. “I was in the back of my truck sorting the boxes and the numbers on the labels seemed blurry to me,” he recalled.
The heat-related hazards to people working in delivery, construction, agriculture, landscaping and other outdoor jobs are clear. According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, farm workers die of heat exposure at a rate 20 times that of the general population. Survivors can suffer brain, heart, kidney and muscle damage.
EMTs assist a person experiencing chest pain after working outside for hours in Eagle Pass, Tex. in June 2023. Local law enforcement and paramedics are responding to larger volumes of medical-related calls as temperatures soar across the region.BRANDON BELL/Getty Images
David Michaels, who spent eight years running the U.S. federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said the necessary labour regulations to prevent such situations are obvious: When temperatures are high, workers must be given more frequent breaks, easy access to shade and drinkable water. But the federal government has not implemented requirements that employers provide this.
Part of the problem is that the process for OSHA to make rules is so cumbersome, it can take two decades. Congress could step in to fix this, but he doesn’t believe the political will is there. Some politicians are even determined to go in the opposite direction. Last month, Texas passed a law striking down city ordinances in Dallas and Austin that require construction workers receive 10-minute breaks every four hours.
“The impact of heat is huge and underestimated. There’s a lot of illness, both acute and chronic, associated with extreme heat,” said Prof. Michaels, who teaches at George Washington University’s public health school. “The urgency is clear. This summer is so much worse than last summer and there is no reason to think next summer won’t be even worse.”
Even in places that have heat safety rules, such as California, they aren’t always enforced, said Antonio De Loera-Brust of the United Farm Workers.
An agricultural worker pauses to rehydrate while enduring high temperatures in a tomato field, as a heat wave affects the region near Winters, Cali., on July 13, 2023.LOREN ELLIOTT/Reuters
Agriculture, construction and landscaping in the U.S. all have high proportions of Latino workers, including many recent immigrants, undocumented migrants and people living on the poverty line. This makes it less likely anyone will report dangerous conditions, much less press lawmakers for tougher rules. In all but three states, farm workers are also forbidden from forming unions.
“There is one law on the books and another law in the fields,” Mr. De Loera-Brust said.
Ms. Cárdenas, the California farm worker, called for new federal laws with proactive enforcement to ensure she and others who must make their living outdoors can do it safely.
“It’s about putting greater value on our lives so we can keep putting food on everyone’s tables,” she said. “We know it’s going to get hotter.”