Scholars like Schalder are calling for more research on how people respond to extreme heat. With more data, they hope, they’ll be able to target even better interventions. Already we know that education and public health communication will be essential to help people understand their individual risks and how to manage them. Older adults, young children, people with certain preexisting conditions, and people of lower socioeconomic status (who may live in shade deserts, work outdoors, or face other obstacles to cooling) must be a priority in the response.
Working up from the individual level, programs to supply people with air conditioners and alleviate the burden of their electricity bills can help. So can smaller-scale solutions, like providing people with abundant shade (natural or artificial), water to drink, water to spray on their skin, and electric fans, wherever they go. Workplace regulations are also urgently needed, not only to ensure outdoor workers have regularly scheduled reprieves from the heat but that they have the autonomy to honor their body’s unique experience of heat and take breaks as they need. In these conditions, pushing through is increasingly not an option.
At the same time as we work on reducing the harms of extreme heat, we must also seek to decarbonize, to prevent future warming. Jim Hansen, the climate scientist, recently wrote that the world is “headed into new climate territory, not seen in the past million years.” Much of this warming is already locked in—the long tail of earlier generations’ carbon emissions. But there is still reason to hope. Every degree of warming counts and, with concentrated effort and bold political action, we can still work to secure a habitable future.