Commentary: The heat is high, yet in my household we haven’t used our central air conditioning in several years. Like most families in our town, we have adapted to the more limited relief of a swamp cooler and a few fans even though central air provides far greater relief. It comes down to costs.
There are environmental costs: running central air for just part of the day triples our normal consumption of electricity, and we don’t want to increase demand for coal-fired electricity nor introduce more hydrofluorocarbons into the atmosphere if we can help it. Prolonged reliance on air conditioning can also exacerbate health problems, and so it is prudent to limit that reliance if possible. (Let me pause here to acknowledge two readers who responded when this column originally went to press, asking me why I am advising air conditioning. I’m not doing any such thing. A word of caution about over-reliance on air conditioning hardly makes one a luddite.) Finally, there is the economic bottom line: an electric bill in the hundreds of dollars is not sustainable for us. We would have to live on popsicles and take turns sleeping in the refrigerator.
We are, nonetheless, fortunate that we can joke about that. For many American families, it is no laughing matter.
Heat is a silent killer. Deaths involving heat are trending upward and spiking in many urban areas. This is not just because heat waves are more frequent and intense, with a third of the world’s population experiencing dangerous climate conditions at least 20 days per year. In urban areas, the heat is magnified by concrete sidewalks, buildings that retain heat long after sundown, and “heat islands” – high-density populated areas hotter than their surroundings. As the Environmental Protection Agency warns on its website: “Heat islands can affect communities by increasing summertime peak energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, heat-related illness and mortality, and water quality.”
The heat wave in the Arizona desert is so intense this week the U.S. Border Patrol warned, “It is physically impossible for the average person to carry enough water to survive several days of walking through the desert.” The same day it released that statement, the Border Patrol raided a humanitarian aid camp providing drinking water to migrants attempting to cross the desert on foot in 120 degrees. This brings us to a related, equally silent killer: economic disparity.
Those of us who are better off can insulate ourselves from the worsening heat, while those who have less suffer more and incur more expenses. In cities, heat intensifies in zones where natural cooling from tree cover and lawns is not available, where cheaper houses packed with more people provide little or no relief from outdoor swelter. Lower income people with poor health insurance or none at all pay more out of pocket health expenses, just one serious nosebleed or asthma attack away from missing work and spiraling into financial crisis and worsening health.
The heat crisis story is also an economic story. It is economic just as last week’s deadly fire in London - a flash fire tearing through a residential tower where low-income residents were packed closely together in a building with poor electricity, inadequate and defective fire controls, all wrapped in flammable decorative cladding - was a mass execution of poor people.
So, for that matter, is ripping drinking water out of migrants’ hands so they can die in the desert rather than face a legal process alive. Funny how our “pro-life” politicians struggle to offer humane responses to such cases.
Heat is an invisible killer, an actor behind the scenes; and so are the economic arrangements that leave some to die when greater comfort is available for those who can buy it.
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Algernon D’Ammassa writes the Desert Sage column for the Deming Headlight and Sun News papers. Write to him at adammassa@demingheadlight.com.