“When people move to Arizona, they don’t think we have any climate crisis,” Carrillo, a school teacher, says. “No, we don’t have hurricanes. We don’t have tsunamis. But what we do have is the heat, and the heat kills out here.”Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is known as the Valley of the Sun by the 4.5 million people who call it home. The name fits. Phoenicians braved 22 days above 110 degrees in 2022. Brutal heat is nothing new here, but it’s only getting worse: The number of days above that dangerous threshold is projected to double by 2060. “Phoenix is very much on the front lines of climate change,” says city councilmember and Grist 50 honoree Yassamin Ansari, who has made climate central to her platform.  Maricopa County recorded339 heat-related deaths in 2021, continuing an upward trend that started in 2014, when 61 people died, and has climbed 70 percent since 2019. As the body’s core temperature rises, the risk of heat stress or heat stroke increases. Once the body’s internal temperature hits 103 degrees, the brain, lungs, heart, and key organs can’t function properly. Phoenix established a $2.8 million Office of Heat Response and Mitigation — the first, and so far only, publicly funded office of its kind. Most cities spread such responsibilities across departments, but heat is the agency’s sole focus. Its four employees are charged with preventing deaths and lowering urban temperatures, which they hope to achieve through initiatives as simple as handing out bottled water and as ambitious as doubling the city’s tree cover.  “Our ultimate goal,” says Ansari, “is to save as many lives as we can.” Heat is not felt equally....... Take a look at Maricopa County’s annual heat death reports and a consistent pattern emerges. “The people most likely to die from heat exposure are disproportionately likely to either be unsheltered or live in mobile homes,” says Lora Phillips, a sociologist at Arizona State University.  Those in lower-income communities of color that have facedhistorical disinvestment also tend to live with fewer trees and more concrete, which traps heat. With every $10,000 increase in a neighborhood’s annual median household income, Phoenix residents enjoy a decrease of .50 degrees Fahrenheitin daytime surface temperature. “You don’t even need to read reports. You can just drive around and you see what neighborhoods are 10 degrees warmer than others,” says Melissa Guardaro, an expert in sustainability and resilience at Arizona State University. https://grist.org/solutions/phoenix-heat-equity-office/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=beacon .                                                      ....and heat is killing worldwide!....Extreme temperatures kill 5 million people a year with heat. More than 5 million people die each year globally because of excessively hot or cold conditions, a 20-year study has found – and heat-related deaths are on the rise.The study involving dozens of scientists around the world found that 9.4% of global deaths each year are attributable to heat or cold exposure, equivalent to 74 extra deaths per 100,000 people. The study found more people had died of cold than heat over the two-decade period. But heat-related deaths were increasing, while cold-linked deaths were dropping. Monash University’s Prof Yuming Guo, one of the study’s lead researchers, said this trend would continue because of climate change, and total mortality rates may go up. “In the future, cold-related mortality should continue to decrease, but because the heat-related mortality will continue to increase, that means there will be a breaking point,” Guo said. He said in Europe there had already been an overall increase in the rate of deaths associated with temperatures. “If we don’t take any action to mitigate climate change … more deaths will be caused.” The study, published in the journal the Lancet Planetary Health, took into account the differing optimal temperatures for people living in different regions.    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/08/extreme-temperatures-kill-5-million-people-a-year-with-heat-related-deaths-rising-study-finds

 A System Ill Prepared for Shocks-  nearly 26 million people in the Horn of Africa are facing extreme hunger, with some areas already reaching catastrophic famine levels, according to the United Nations. The situation here is unfolding as a food crisis threatens a record number of people around the world, with nearly 345 million at acute levels of hunger and nearly 50 million people on the brink of famine. “We are on the way to a raging food catastrophe,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres tweeted recently. This year’s droughts and severe weather diminished or decimated crops across the world—in parts of the United States, Europe, China, Australia and the Indian subcontinent. The current emergency foreshadows what researchers call “multiple breadbasket” failures, which will likely occur more often and with greater intensity as Earth’s atmosphere warms. Battered by more climate-induced weather shocks or chronic conditions like drought, the world’s farmers are projected to produce less food in coming decades as the global population rises toward 10 billion. “It’s hard to look at the global agri-food system right now and say this is working,” said William Boyd, a professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “Putting climate disruptions on top of it just creates more stress.” The global food supply is dependent on four major grains and vast quantities of fertilizer. Much of this is controlled by a handful of corporations and exported by a few countries that dominate production. Over decades, the movement of these grains and fertilizers across borders has created a vast globalized trade network in which many countries are dependent on a few. Grain traders, shippers and speculators in this interconnected food economy often make big profits off disruptions in the market, driving up prices and putting food out of reach for millions of the world’s poor.              https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11122022/kenya-somalia-africa-famine-hunger-climate-change/   

Over 20,000 died in western Europe’s summer heatwaves, figures show. This year’s temperatures would have been virtually impossible without climate crisis, scientists say. More than 20,000 people died across western Europe in this summer’s heatwaves, in temperatures that would have been virtually impossible without climate breakdown, figures show. Analysis of excess deaths, the difference between the number of deaths that happened and those expected based on historical trends, reveals the threats posed by climate change-induced global heating, scientists said. During the summer heatwaves temperatures exceeded 40C(104F) in London, areas in south-west Francereached 42Cand Seville and Córdoba in Spain set records of 44C. Analysisfrom the World Weather Attribution group of scientists found that such high temperatures would have been “virtually impossible” without the climate crisis. In England and Wales, 3,271 excess deaths were recorded between 1 June and 7 September, according to the Office for National Statistics – 6.2% higher than the five-year average. The analysis does not estimate heat-related deaths specifically, but the number of deaths was higher on average for heat-period days than non-heat-period days. Covid-19 deaths were excluded. In France, there were 10,420 excess deaths reported during the summer months, according to data released by Santé Publique France, the government health agency. One in four of these deaths, or 2,816, happened during one of the three intense heatwaves that hit the country. The excess deaths were 20% higher in regions where extreme temperature red alerts had been issued. In Spain, the state-backed Carlos III Health Institute estimatesthere were 4,655 heat-attributable deaths between June and August. The Robert Koch Institute, the German government health agency, estimates 4,500 people died in the country during the summer months specifically due to extreme temperatures.                https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/24/over-20000-died-western-europe-heatwaves-figures-climate-crisis?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20221125&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily