After a scorching heat dome gripped the eastern U.S. last week, placing 160 million people under heat alerts and catapulting heat index values into triple digits, the country is yet again bracing for more infernal weather.
The country is yet again bracing for more infernal weather.
The National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center predicts a high likelihood of swaths of the West being saddled with above-average temperatures in July. About 130 million people live in areas where temperatures were predicted to top 90 degrees the first half of this week. From Spokane, Washington, to Missoula, Montana, to Summit, New Jersey, local coverage is already encouraging residents to prioritize heat safety this Fourth of July by staying cool and hydrated.
After all, heat causes or contributes to an average of more than 1,220 annual deaths in the country; within just the first week and a half of July 2024, 37 heat-related deaths had already been tallied.
But as the country boils, climate action remains on thin ice. This summer’s backdrop of searing heat is a tragic reminder of how much President Donald Trump’s administration has stripped away climate tools and protections built precisely for moments like this.
From the outset of his second term, Trump has leveraged the full weight of the presidency to crush climate and environmental initiatives. Among his first executive orders on inauguration day was initiating the U.S.’ withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, a repeat of his damaging actions in 2017.
Within the first hundred days of Trump’s second term, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin proclaimed “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history” by unveiling 31 environmental rollbacks with detrimental implications for clean air and water and public health. Among the stunning standouts are the “reconsideration of wastewater regulations for oil and gas development” and the “reconsideration of multiple National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants.”
Of course, the Trump administration’s decision to scoff at established climate science and long-standing policies safeguarding the environment and human health was predictable. However, the no-holds-barred, scorched-earth approach and rapid-fire rollout of these rollbacks have been a sight to behold, even for environmentalists who had been bracing for the worst.
Obama-era EPA head Gina McCarthy condemned the agency’s recent actions as “absolutely illogical and indefensible,” warning that “the most vulnerable among us, our kids and grandkids, will suffer the most.”
Indeed, the Trump administration’s indefensible climate stances cast a shadow over our ability to manage extreme heat. At the Department of Health and Human Services, sweeping staff reductions have hampered both the funding pipelines that facilitate state- and local-level heat wave responses and digital educational resources. Many heat specialists working across the federal government have been let go.
Promising initiatives, such as UCLA’s Center of Excellence for Heat Resilient Communities, have been financially gutted. A federal initiative that kept air conditioning costs affordable for under-resourced households has lost all its personnel. Former President Joe Biden’s novel National Heat Strategy, a comprehensive six-year framework to confront the country’s extreme heat problem, now leads to a discontinued webpage. Heat waves are on track to grow longer, more severe and more frequent. Why? This destruction is necessary to maintain the climate denial narrative. Much of the programs that are now in tatters centered on climate adaptation, which involves reshaping and strengthening our systems to withstand the reality of heat events. But if we acknowledge that we must adapt to live with extreme heat, then wouldn’t that imply — by extension — a parallel urgency to mitigate the problem at its source? The literature indicates that heat waves are on track to grow longer, more severe and more frequent under climate change, a trajectory that demands we reckon with our perilous reliance on fossil fuels and catalyze a meaningful shift toward renewables. Unfortunately, this sensible path remains elusive so long as the Trump administration engages in the willful rejection of climate responsibility, an approach that promises lasting harm as the planet unyieldingly swelters.
Henna Hundal
Henna Hundal is an MD candidate at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where she researches the impacts of climate change on human health. She frequently appears on international television and radio to provide analysis on climate news. Views expressed in this article are her own.
