Connecticut Green Living

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 ele...

During 2004–2018, an average of 702 heat-related deaths (415 with heat as the underlying cause and 287 as a contributing cause) occurred in the United States annually, according to the CDC in its "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report". In it the CDC states that natural heat exposure was a "contributing cause of death attributed to certain chronic medical conditions, alcohol poisoning, and drug overdoses." But it is not 2018 anymore, and heat deaths along with extreme heat, are accelerating. (As if on cue, a few hours after I published this the BBC and CNN reported that 1,000 persons have died from the heat on a Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.) At least as importantly, areas with high humidity such as ours - particularly over the past several days - are fraught this time of year. The higher the humidity, the less we are able to sweat and cool ourselves. CDC's health scientist Ambarish Vaidyanathan, of the Climate and Health Program with the National Center for Envi...