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October 31, 2023
Extreme heat is the silent killer out of all climate-related disasters. Fatalities from extreme heat typically do not receive as much attention as those from other severe weather events like hurricanes, floods, blizzards, or wildfires, and yet heat is the top weather-related public health hazard in the United States. For today’s episode, Dan and Alison are joined by Kurt Shickman, the newest member of EESI’s Board of Directors, to hear his perspective as an expert on policy solutions for extreme heat. Kurt details many different strategies to combat heat that are both affordable and attainable, and how the right policies can bring these solutions to life.
Show notes:
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Episode Transcript:
Dan Bresette: Hello and welcome to The Climate Conversation. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And with me is my co-host, Alison Davis. Hey, Alison.
Alison Davis: Hey, Dan. So it may be getting cooler outside now that autumn is here, but extreme heat is still being discussed in the news, as scientists release data from the summer months. In fact, NASA recently announced that the summer was the hottest on Earth since record keeping began in 1880.
Dan: That kind of heat can have dangerous consequences for public health due to heat-related illness, as well as an extended wildfire season. Certain groups of people are actually more vulnerable to extreme heat than others. For example, the elderly and pregnant individuals tend to be more sensitive to extreme heat, while outdoor workers are more exposed to it, and low-income communities may lack access to things like air conditioning, which we may take for granted.
Alison: But the impacts of extreme heat go beyond the summer. Rising surface temperatures in the ocean result in changing weather patterns during the winter, and weather forecasters are busy at work trying to predict what Americans can expect in the months ahead. Our guest today, Kurt Shickman, is an expert in policy solutions for climate-driven extreme heat.
Dan: Kurt Shickman is the former director of extreme heat initiatives at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht–Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center. Previously, Kurt was the executive director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance, which he launched in 2011 and built into a global network of over 70 cities implementing passive cooling solutions to combat rising urban heat. He has led projects for the World Bank, the Department of Energy, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, and the Clean Energy Ministerial. He is the lead author of Primer for Cool Cities: Reducing Excessive Urban Heat, a World Bank publication. And Kurt is one of the newest members of our board of directors. Kurt, Welcome to The Climate Conversation podcast! It's great to have you.
Kurt Shickman: Thanks, Dan! It's great to be here.
Dan: Kurt, you've worked on extreme heat and resilience for a long time. What first motivated you to study these issues and engage in policy and advocacy to advance climate solutions?
Kurt: Well, it's interesting, I really entered this space through energy efficiency and working on trying to improve energy efficiency in buildings, multi-family residences and commercial buildings. And that was really motivated by just a sense of this very simple, very easy-to-undertake policies and technologies, which just weren't being done, when all the common sense would say they should be getting done. And that's what led me to working on some of the solutions that are not just energy efficient solutions, but also urban heat island-mitigating opportunities. So things are cool roofs, cool walls, cool roads, things that reflect sunlight, rather than absorb sunlight. And I had that same feeling of, this is a no-brainer, it doesn't cost any more to do it, and it has all these societal comfort benefits, resilience benefits, adaptation benefits, and yet, we're still, you know, scraping to get this stuff as part of our regular way we build buildings. And that excited me is an issue and the more you dig into the issue of heat, the more you realize there are a thousand ways to enter this issue. There's a thousand different ways experts need to be at the table to do it. And so for me, just personally, it's a very exciting place to learn every day, because you're really seeing this issue through different eyes every day if you if you want to, whether that be from an engineer’s perspective, or an architect’s perspective, a building scientist’s perspective, a climate scientist’s perspective, a community member’s perspective, health practitioner’s perspective, there's really a million different ways you can approach it. So it's a very exciting and dynamic space to be in and utterly essential right now. So it hits a lot of the boxes for me.
Dan: Most of the country experienced record-breaking heat over the summer, and not just in terms of daily temperatures being hotter than normal, but also the number of consecutive hot days for longer periods of time. What does this tell you about where we are in the fight to avoid the worst impacts of climate change?
Kurt: Well, it tells me that we really need to focus on adaptation as much as we focus on mitigation, and that those things aren't separate, that those are mutually beneficial, and mutually reinforcing. And so I think that what we're seeing now in terms of weather—and I want to back up and say it's not just the temperatures, although I really appreciate that you highlighted it's not just the maximum highs. It's the number of days that we're dealing with high temperatures, even if they're not the highest highs. It's the overnight temperatures, where you can't reset your body and come into a new day fresh and ready to go. It's also a societal issue. So a 90-degree day for you and I sitting in our air-conditioned offices is very different than it is for an outdoor worker or an ag worker or someone who lives in a home without air conditioning or where they can’t afford to run it. So it's not just the temperature. It's how those temperatures are experienced by people. And I think what we're seeing is increased exposure to the risks of heat across the board in the U.S. We have some of the high profile examples—in the Pacific Northwest, in Texas this year, in Arizona—and Arizona, obviously with with high temperatures—but the fact of the matter is, every city in the U.S. is going to be dealing with this or is already dealing with this, if not at a mass scale, certainly in individual homes and individual blocks. You don't have to go far to find it.
Alison: You are a policy-minded person and no doubt Members of Congress heard from plenty of their constituents about the very hot weather over the past several months. What should policymakers understand about extreme heat and resilience beyond what's already reported in news coverage and weather reports?
Kurt: I love that question, Alison. I think the devil’s in the details on this one, I think they're what we're seeing is a real attention to this issue by the Biden Administration. We've seen it in the Inflation Reduction Act. We've seen it in BRIC—in FEMA, BRIC [Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities] opportunities for grants to communities. Where the challenge is and where I think the real need for policy is, is actually in the details of how that actually moves out the door. Are the cost-benefit analysis tests that are done to determine which BRIC grants get made and which don't, or which grant opportunities are seen through which aren't—do they properly value investments in heat resilience? Or are they you know, capturing an older model? I think these sort of in-the-weeds type conversations are really important for moving money on this issue. Because in many cases, the cost benefit-analysis, as we have sort of traditionally done it, isn't capturing enough of the benefits that accrue when you invest in heat resilience in our cities. So I think that's a really important aspect that policymakers need to think about. And the other is, there are particular things that we do when we—especially when we're using solar reflective surfaces, like cool roofs, for example—the way we value that is really as an energy efficiency play, and sometimes as a benefit to the local temperature, but very rarely. But there's actually a third way that we could value that, that would tie directly into the way we finance climate now, which is the, you know, the mitigation potential of it. And that is the idea that if you have solar energy hitting a roof, and it's reflecting rather than being absorbed, and that energy is reflected out into space, that's a cooling effect that offsets the warming effect of greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere. So it's a new way to think about it, it's a benefit you get no matter where that roof is installed. It's a global scale benefit. We would love to see policymakers capture that benefit—which is quantifiable in terms of greenhouse gases—capture that in the way we fund and finance these investments. And that would I think bring scale to this. And that's something that policymakers in the private sector can also contribute to.
Alison: That cooling effect that you just talked about for the atmosphere, that's something that I've never heard about, never knew about, but it makes so much sense when you think about it. So thank you for sharing that.
Kurt: Good science around this right now. I mean, it goes back, you know, decades. And what's really—I wouldn't call it new—but over the last 10 years or so, what's really what they really drill down on is, we know that effect has been there, we understand that effect. But the quantification of that effect in a sophisticated way to understand that it's not just turning off a power plant and not having more emissions, there's emissions in the atmosphere that will be there for decades affecting the temperature of the planet—we can actually offset that with this. So it's a new way to approach this. But we're not valuing that appropriately in the mechanisms that we have available to us. And I think that is a great role for policy to play.
Alison: Turning now to actually reflecting on an episode earlier from this season in the podcast, we had climate law scholar Rob Verchick, who pointed out that extreme heat is statistically more deadly than any other type of weather-related disaster. He also explained that heat waves legally cannot be declared as a major disaster, at least not one that would allow for assistance from FEMA or other federal agencies. So in the absence of that qualification, what can be done to protect public health for communities in the midst of a dangerous heatwave?
Kurt: Alison, that's a great question. I think, you know, first of all, that relates to the Stafford Act (P.L. 100-707) and a change to the Stafford Act to allow FEMA to declare heat as a natural disaster would be very welcome. It has, as you mentioned, intangible impacts in many cases, you know, it kills more people than any other weather-related disaster, but it doesn't show up in cities physically and tangibly the way other disasters do. Although we do see that, we do see rails buckled, we do see roads melting, we do see airports disabled in different places because of heat. So it's not a completely intangible thing. That said, I think that there are a number of things that we can be doing at a local level. And that's really where this has to happen. The first is to—and we talked a little bit about this earlier, that it's not just that temperature or weather phenomenon—heat is a social phenomenon, and it's a health phenomenon. So recognizing it as such in our warning system is important. So the first thing I would say is, we need to get away from a weather-only warning, a procedure and get into health-based warning systems that reflect the weather’s impact on that local community. And there are some pilots of that from my previous life at the Arsht Resilience Center tying the local health outcomes of weather to a categorizable warning system. So it's not just looking at the maximum daily temperature and saying, “This is in the 95th percentile of hot days, therefore we're gonna call a warning.” It's looking at, “The weather of this type historically has caused elevated mortality in this place.” And, you know, let's say it's a 30 percent increase in mortality, historically, we're going to call that a category three, and we're going to warn people and prepare people differently than we would if it's, you know, a regular hot day, if you will. So I think making that clear linkage to the health outcomes of weather is really critical to capturing the broader social inputs that go into risk exposure to heat, not just weather alone. So I think that's the first piece of this. And then the second piece is, you know, we still have a big gap between risk—what the actual risk of heat is—and people's awareness or perception of that risk. And so I think we need to, we need to do a better job of not just blanket warnings for the average person, but really starting to drill into, you know, warnings that go to specific communities. If you're an outdoor worker, this is a day to be taking extra precautions, you know, maybe this is a day to not do a two-day football practice, you know, really specific warnings to groups that are going to be at elevated risk is another way that we can really help people prepare and take these these events more seriously, and for the sort of dangers that they are.
Alison: That's such a good point. And that would be so helpful for people in communities where maybe historically, it just doesn't get that hot. So there might be days that are really hot to them that might not seem hot to other folks in other places in the country. But that warning system would still be more effective in say, Seattle, they're not used to 85 degree days, which in Arizona 85 degrees is nothing. But they still need to have those warning systems in place. So unfortunately, we are probably due for many more summers of record-breaking heat and warmer autumns, winters, and springs as well because of the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. That means that we have to learn how to adapt and improve our resilience to these climate impacts. Are there any pilot programs, projects or other work being done in communities around the United States or abroad that might prove to be good examples to follow in federal policy?
Kurt: Well, there's quite a lot going on right now, at the city level, let's say. And I think a lot of it could be adapted or at least encouraged at the federal level. So the first is rethinking what our existing assets provide us. So in a city, looking at the museums, the libraries, other places of potential respite, and creating signage, and other you know, access support, so that people can find their way to cool spaces or areas of respite quickly. Paris, for example, has a program called Cool Islands, and that allows a Parisian to be within a five- to seven-minute walk of a cool spot on a hot day. These are the types of things that don't require a whole lot of investment. It's really just really looking at our existing assets and infrastructure through a different lens. And I think that's a really important starting place for a lot of the work we're doing. And it doesn't have to just be a big city. This is something that small communities, rural communities, and others can actually do and quickly understand and sort of take a new lens on the existing assets that they have. So that's number one. The second is really looking at the technologies that are out there now and encouraging their use, both in terms of encouraging their use through grant programs for cities, but also frankly, using the power of procurement that the federal government has. GSA [U.S. General Services Administration] is one of the largest procurers in the country, what they do drives markets. And we know it doesn't take much to drive markets for heat resilience solutions. We've seen policy in cities like LA bring the cost curve down on some high-technology roof products from 30 percent premium over a standard product down to like seven or eight percent. And that's one market in the U.S., so imagine if GSA is involved with this, what the opportunities are. So procurement of materials, but also procurement of services. So it's the materials—things like requiring cool roofs as a minimum standard for a GSA property, for example, or GSA-leased property, and then going up from there to green roofs if it's appropriate, things like that, cool walls as a requirement. But also, as I mentioned, services. For any service provision, there should be a question that says, “Does this does the mode of the provision of this service, does it increase heat adaptation? Is it neutral? Or does it support adaptation to heat?” And making every contractor, every bidder, answer that question is a way to start bringing that thinking into the business lines that are that are making that happen. So that may not always be appropriate or seemingly appropriate, but forcing that question to be answered is, I think, critical to bringing some forethought and some some thinking around this and understanding that this is going to be valued, and therefore I need to have an answer for this. I think it’s important. And that's another piece of this, I think, as a real opportunity for the federal government.
Dan: Yeah, knowing the answer to those questions before something is constructed, that's the time to know it, not afterwards, and then you're stuck with it for decades and decades and decades, and you have to do something else to mitigate it. Kurt, I mentioned this in my introduction of you, but you're a member of our board of directors. And typically, I think that tends to indicate a certain amount of optimism about our ability to avoid the worst outcomes of climate change. But it can be hard to maintain that optimism when we feel the heat and when our senses are telling us that something is very, very wrong. What makes you hopeful for our future?
Kurt: Well, let's be hopeful. Well, there's a couple of things here that make me hopeful for our future. I mean, the first is that if you look out at where we are in this moment for heat resilience, we are not flat-footed and wondering what the heck to do. We know what to do. This is not a challenge of innovation. This is a challenge of access and accessibility. That's an exciting place to be. We have hundreds if not thousands of examples of what I call heroic opportunism, you know, cities that are taking this challenge on, that are driving it, bringing folks together, creating inclusive plans that they're acting on, there are many, many examples of this. The challenge now is, how do we make the tools that they need to do this in a data-informed way accessible to as many communities as possible? Again, the technologies are there, the tools are there, it's a matter of getting them out to people. I think that's a solvable problem. I also think that you know, because we often think about heat in the negative sense, where this is a challenge that affects just about every human system, just about every urban and rural way we live from womb to tomb in terms of health—well, the flip side of that is when you start to address this challenge of heat, we're going to uncover all kinds of benefits that we weren't originally anticipating. It’s the sort of unintended consequences in a good way that I think as we start to really focus on this and bring scale to this, we're going to see benefits that stretch into the health of communities, improvement in educational attainment. We already know the heat drags on these things, so addressing them, for whatever reason we're doing in the first place, we're going to see a huge amount of externalities that are positive from doing so. And being able to capture that, I think, is exciting. So I think we have a lot of good news here. We don't have to, you know, it's not a moon launch, or moonshot we're doing here. It's really just getting the tools that we have in the hands of people that want to use them. And I think that's an entirely practical and solvable issue. That's why I'm excited and hopeful for the future.
Dan: Thanks, Kurt. Thanks for making time to join us to look back at our really, really hot summer and talk a little bit about what we can do to hopefully make things a little bit better in the future. It's great to see you and talk with you. This is an audio medium, I always say it's great to see you. But it's great to talk with you. Thanks so much for joining Alison and me.
Kurt: Dan and Alison, it was great to talk to you both. And thanks for this platform to talk about this really critical issue. I'm really excited to be able to work with you on this. Thank you.
Dan: Well, Alison, I thought that was really a lot of fun. Kurt has been on our board for actually not that long. But he brings so much to the table in terms of expertise and experience with these issues. But also, as I think his interview made clear, he's a get-things-done person. And he I think has a really clear eye when it comes to strategy for getting things done. So our board was certainly well-represented in this episode. And I think the other thing that I would emphasize, or that I would call out from Kurt's remarks, is the idea that a lot of what we need to do to mitigate or adapt to climate change, we actually already have, we may not be making the most of it and may not be at scale. We may be lacking financing. We may be lacking other things. There might be other hurdles or other barriers that are preventing us from doing it. But we actually have a lot of the technologies and techniques that we need. We just need to put them in place and we have to make sure that we have policies that encourage the greater use and greater adoption of what we already have.
Alison: It's always fun to have people from within the EESI family on the podcast, and it was just a joy to have Kurt here. First, I'd like to emphasize his point about climate change mitigation and adaptation being interconnected in ways that demand a more holistic approach to policies dealing with extreme heat and other impacts of climate breakdown, too. I think a lot of folks—and I'm including myself here—tend to think of mitigation and adaptation as being separate from each other, or sometimes maybe even at odds. And that type of siloed way of thinking could result in less effective climate policy. I also liked what Kurt was saying about health-based warning systems as opposed to temperature-based warning systems for a heatwave, because that type of measure is something that would be especially helpful for communities that have a higher sensitivity or greater vulnerability to extreme heat and heat-related illness. If you liked this story and want to learn more about EESI’s work related to extreme heat, head to our website at eesi.org. Also, follow us on social media @eesionline for all of our recent updates. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/signup to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time!
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