The Dangers and Deaths Due to Extreme Heat are Rising, More Support and Policies are Needed

“Scorching summer temperatures have pushed extreme heat to the front of the nation’s collective consciousness. There’s just one problem: It’s hard to get politicians to care about it.

Even in California, home of the nation’s first outdoor heat standard for workers and a new law to create a ranking system for heat waves, the issue has yet to gain political traction. Advocates have struggled to secure funding to help residents adapt, and state officials have been slow to enforce worker safety rules.

Lawmakers last year directed the state’s public health department to build a system for collecting real-time data from emergency rooms, but it’s not up and running yet. Officials don’t know when it will be operational, telling POLITICO that it’s still in the planning phase.

Meanwhile, Cal/OSHA, the agency tasked with developing the state’s workplace regulations, has yet to finalize rules for hot indoor job sites like warehouses and restaurants, despite lawmakers originally setting a 2019 deadline. And while California established the nation’s first outdoor heat standard for workers in 2005, enforcement has proven difficult. More than a third of Cal/OSHA’s 349 enforcement positions are currently unfilled, according to the latest figures published by the state.

A survey of 1,500 farmworkers conducted by the UC Merced Community and Labor Center earlier this year found around half of those interviewed said their employers didn’t always provide required rest breaks, and a quarter said they didn’t always have access to clean drinking water.

And while Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, touted some $865 million in last year’s budget for multiyear extreme heat programs, like grants for local governments and funding for planting trees, he and lawmakers cut nearly 40 percent of that money this year to close a deficit. Advocates argue that even before the cuts, heat spending represented a tiny fraction of a $54 billion climate package.

Advocates are feeling disheartened by what the cuts portend for California — and the nation’s — willingness to pony up for extreme heat.

Groups are hoping to get more funding via a bond proposal that could appear before voters next year, which would allow the state to finance environmental programs with borrowed money. They’re pushing lawmakers to include more than the $500 million to $1.6 billion currently envisioned for extreme heat programs.

Environmental justice and public health groups are hoping that the prospect of retrofitting housing and installing heat pumps will entice politically powerful labor unions to get involved. They’re looking to groups like a relatively new coalition of 13 unions, including SEIU California, the California Federation of Teachers and United Steelworkers, which is planning to release a policy platform this fall that will include extreme heat.

There’s a lot of work — and potential profit — to go around.”

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Originally published by Politico California Pro