Mind the heat

As I write, I'm in a cool room in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, enjoying the way my skin feels after walking to the hotel from the restaurant next door. Just a few minutes in this weather made me dizzy, and tomorrow and Wednesday will be worse. For those of us who take public transportation, extreme heat and humidity is dangerous.

I spoke to Dr. Kenneth Gillingham, Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Yale School of the Environment, about why this "heat spell" is threatening. We also spoke last April about our state's "green" rating (#9).

"My primary concern about the heat is for low-income people who don't have access to adequate cooling. This will be exacerbated in the upcoming years," he wrote in an e-mail.

I had asked him if our current presidential administration is having an adverse bearing on climate change. He said, "A presidential administration can affect your carbon footprint by influencing the carbon intensity of electricity, making it more of less affordable to make choices to reduce your carbon footprint, and influence the carbon intensity of the products you buy, including food and other essentials."

I had reported on the Paris Agreement and was concerned that Trump pulled us out of it. Gillingham says this has little effect in the short run, but policy choices are much more important. "In the long run, it has an effect by sending a message to the world that the largest economy in the world is not on board with reducing emissions."

Right now, global temperature rise is accelerating at an "alarming rate" according to World Resources Institute. "Nearly a decade ago, the world rallied around the Paris Agreement on climate change and the goal of holding global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). Since then, the “1.5C goal” has become the world’s North Star for climate action — a critical benchmark against which policies are set and progress is measured. But an alarming wave of recent data underscores just how close we are to surpassing this widely cited threshold.

Atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide reached its highest level in 2 million years last year. 2024 also marked the first single year in which global average surface temperature rose more than 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. While the Paris Agreement goal refers to a long-term average, not a single year, scientists warn that we may be at the beginning of a full breach — and with it, increasingly dangerous floods, droughts, fires and other climate impacts.

The recent, tragic flooding in Texas that took the lives of over two dozens campers and staff is not going to be the last horrific national incident. We experience more flooding every year here in the Northeast than we did when I moved here in 2001. But what can the average person do?

The Yale professor says: "Readers can do their part by voting for candidates who support practical policies that reduce emissions. They can try to decarbonize their own lives by adding energy efficiency, getting solar and batteries, electrifying using a heat pump and hot water heater (replacing fossil fuel-based heating and cooling systems like gas furnaces and oil heaters). Of course, some of these actions are not possible for everyone.

It will be 96 degrees, 55 percent humidity in New Haven tomorrow as the entire state boils in this extreme weather. Be sure to hydrate and check on your elderly friends and neighbors.

Images: Mud cracks due to drought, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Klimawandel_003_2016_06_06.jpg#/media/File:Klimawandel_003_2016_06_06.jpg; Gillingham headshot used with permission. (Bold marks are the writer's, for emphasis.)