No Phoenix Envy!

 

It’s a city in the Arizona desert where temperatures hold above 100 degrees for most of the summer. There’s always been a rumor about being able to cook on the sidewalks in Phoenix, but most locals deny that anyone ever does that. The enduring symbol of that searing heat: The seven-acre "Tent City Jail" in Phoenix (pictured above), created by “get-tough” Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in 1993, closed after he lost the election in 2017… following lawsuits, federal investigations, a conviction for criminal contempt of court followed by a pardon by then-President Donald Trump. Temperatures in that outdoor facility routinely reached 120 degrees and even soared well beyond that threshold. 140 degrees in some tents.

Life in Phoenix and environs slows to a crawl with temperatures soar, but it is a city very familiar with being the hottest in the nation. OK, some might argue that Washington, D.C. is hotter, but that’s political dysfunction, not a thermometer-driven reality (it certainly is more humid in D.C.). The bad news is that global warming is pushing Phoenix from bad to badder to worse. Degree-by-degree, hot is getting steadily hotter. So hot, in fact, that the city has just appointed David Hondula as the city’s first director of its new Office of Heat Response and Mitigation.

“[Creating that office is just] one part of Phoenix’s response to a major challenge: Climate change is making America’s hottest city even hotter. Earlier this month, temperatures rose above 110 degrees for five days in a row; nighttime temperatures also stayed dangerously high. Average temperatures in the city are now 2.5 degrees hotter than they were in the middle of the last century. It isn’t just uncomfortable; it’s deadly. Last year, in Maricopa County, where Phoenix sits, there were 338 deaths associated with extreme heat. One hundred thirty of the people who died were homeless. The problem will get harder to address; by 2050, as climate change progresses, Phoenix could feel more like Baghdad, with some summer days hotter than 120 degrees.

“The heat office, launched last fall to focus both on immediate responses to extreme heat and longer-term solutions to help cool the city down, is bringing together work that was previously happening across departments and didn’t have a single point of accountability. ‘It’s very important to have a citywide look so that we can find solutions, whether it be in the built environment or how we manage open space,’ says Mayor Kate Gallego, who was elected in 2019 after campaigning on a sustainability platform. She also sees the opportunity for the city to become testbed for new technology to help with heat. ‘I want Phoenix to be the place where innovative companies with a solution to climate change come,’ she says.” Adele Peters writing for the June 27th FastCompany.com. As other red states are mired in denying or minimizing the impact of greenhouse gases causing climate change, Arizona is being hit so hard that looking the other way is not an option.

Indeed, as a tractor trailer with undocumented migrants, who paid a coyote for them to cross the border, produced 50 dead bodies cooked to death in late June, unable to open a locked door… That was in San Antonio, Texas… where it’s hot but not as hot as Phoenix. That Arizona city is beginning to implement specific goals to make life there a bit more livable: “The city now has dozens of miles of ‘cool pavement,’ streets treated with a reflective coating that an Arizona State University study found could lower the temperature of the surface by as much as 12 degrees compared to asphalt, and make the air above the ground cooler at night. Another program adds reflective coatings to roofs, which also helps reduce the need for air conditioning. Phoenix is also beginning to plant more trees in neighborhoods that have the least shade now, using a tree equity tool from the nonprofit American Forests to target the places most in need. ‘We’re trying to map ‘cool corridors’ in the locations where they’ll benefit the most people,’ says Gallego. In April, city workers and volunteers planted 259 trees in the first of these corridors, on a route that students use to walk to school. A $6 million allocation from the American Rescue Plan will be used to plant more trees.

“A combination of these changes can have a measurable impact. Climate modeling studies ‘suggest that with widespread deployment of cooling strategies, like cool roofs, and increasing the urban tree canopy, we can have a Phoenix of the future that is cooler than the one we have today, even as global warming continues,’ says Hondula. ‘So the opportunity is very, very significant.’ Some other factors can also help, he says, including a shift to electric cars or bikes, since gas cars generate heat. Everything is interrelated: If streets are shaded and comfortable enough for walking or waiting for public transit, people may also be less likely to drive short distances.

“To deal with blistering heat now, the city has a network of cooling centers that open in May and stay open throughout the summer; as the hot season lengthens, some advocates are pushing to keep them open through October. (In other cities, cooling centers typically only open during heat waves.) If someone walks into a public library, they can get a bottle of water and a cooling towel while they sit in the air conditioning.” Peters.

Tent City may be gone, but it remains a poignant symbol of the cruelty that grows from continuing to treat the symptoms and results of climate change… but doing little more than far-less-than-necessary efforts towards the reduction and elimination of the underlying the causes. Phoenix might seem extreme to many, but death from excessive heat, severe water shortages, crop failure from desertification (we really need to stop calling it “drought,” a temporary condition) are everywhere and increasing. We need to stop politicizing nature and the laws of physics; climate change cannot be a blue or red state choice. Neither nature nor physics care about the will of the people, the outcome of an election or the unpopularity of the pain. They started with nothing… and whether or people or like it or not… they have no particular issue starting over again.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we all need to open our eyes and just look at how the world is changing for the much worse because of unrelenting and expanding death and disaster from man-induced climate change… and act accordingly!