![]() Among households in the lowest-income quintile in America, about 85 percent have air conditioning, including more than 60 percent who enjoy central air. Though many news accounts on rising heat threats point out that the poor are at greatest risk, there’s not much inequity in the dispersion of AC, either. has been declining, thanks largely to air conditioning, which has become widely available since then.Īir conditioning is so widespread in America today that 91 percent of all households have it-and many of those who lack units don’t need them because they live in temperate areas. For most of the past five decades, moreover, the heat-related death rate in the U.S. For one thing, heat-related deaths make up only a small percentage of climate-induced fatalities each year, though CHOs will tell you that heat deaths are “undercounted,” and that their mission is to find the missing ones. Athens, for instance, may try to “tap into the ancient Hadrian Aqueduct built by Romans in 140 A.D., a 12-mile tunnel system that runs deep in the ground, and use the subterranean network to help cool the city.” Here in the U.S., with no Roman-like aqueduct systems to exploit, CHOs are exploring other interventions like linking up with municipal communications systems to “increase public awareness of heat danger” and getting city agencies to “work together to prepare and address heat risk holistically,” whatever that may mean.Īs with much government policy having to do with climate change, there’s lots of foolishness in all of this, including a hefty contribution from a credulous media. To do so, they are returning to the past-“looking backwards,” as they call it-to the age before air conditioning, when humans had to fight the heat through means other than AC. In fact, Syracuse is spending $2 million in federal grant money to survey its tree canopy and increase natural shade in underserved neighborhoods, with the apparent intent of righting past shading wrongs.ĬHOs are looking at other natural interventions of this sort. CHOs are looking to expand their cities’ tree canopies, though they will have to do so judiciously-studies show that tree shade is not evenly distributed in many municipalities, where poorer neighborhoods have apparently been shortchanged. Unfortunately, that’s not an exaggeration.” (Actually, it is.) Consumed by the report’s warnings, CHOs plan a series of initiatives, one of which revolves around a popular new phrase in urbanism: “tree canopy,” referring to how much tree shade exists in a neighborhood. Much on the minds of the CHOs assembled in Washington was a new alarmist report on the impact of heat on cities, which begins, “The world is burning. The rise of the CHO has just reached a notable milestone: heat officers from cities around the world recently gathered for an Extreme Heat Resilience Conference in Washington, D.C.-a place that, before the invention of air conditioning, was so uncomfortable in the summer that British diplomats assigned there could draw tropical-assignment bonus pay. So instead, it seems, the job of these new bureaucrats will be to find carbon-neutral solutions to summer in the city. But air conditioning demands electricity, most often powered by fossil fuels or nuclear energy, two increasingly unseemly phrases within government circles in places like California, where cities are rushing to hire CHOs. One phrase that you’re unlikely to hear much from these new bureaucrats: “air conditioning.” Warm-weather-related deaths dropped precipitously over the last century around much of the industrialized world largely because what we fondly term AC became widely available. These newly minted bureaucrats will make it their business to enumerate the impact of heat on the local population-an effect certain to increase now that government is counting it-and seek ways to mitigate it. They’ve helped turn the CHO, a job barely a year old, into a new staple of local government. If you’re surprised by these seemingly ludicrous titles, you haven’t been paying attention to the extent to which mainstream media run alarmist stories of soaring temperatures and their impact on urban life. Now add to that list what is likely to be the hottest (pun intended) new job title at city hall: chief heat officer (CHO), also variously known as the extreme-weather coordinator or chief weather-resilience officer. Recent examples: the algorithms management and policy officer, the director of digital equity, and the building decarbonization incentives manager-all real jobs. As the size and scope of government in America grows, cities are rapidly inventing new job titles.
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