Ottawa The calendar says June, so in New Orleans that means it is already summer. It’s way pass that in India, where heat for gig workers and food vendors has been a huge issue already for months. Talking to organizers in Paris this week they were caught in an early season heat wave at a time where spring is usually still lingering throughout Europe. Comparing Celsius to Fahrenheit, the temperature was in the mid-80s when I arrived in Ottawa, but where New Orleans was built for days like this, there were many cities that were not. Ottawa was short pants city and to many was unseasonably warm.
Outside of some dark caves in conservative offices and the White House, most of the world knows viscerally, as well as a matter of policy, that climate change is real and the world is getting hotter. ACORN affiliates in Canada and France have led our fight, particularly for tenants, to get landlords to modify housing arrangements to deal with temperature increases and the way it threatens the health of residents. Many cities, especially in the northern hemisphere, were built more for cold than for heat, making retrofit adaptations an urgent need. Canada, particularly in cities like Toronto and Hamilton, has made progress on winning heat bylaws that increase requirements and regulations creating cooling areas in buildings along with winning and installing air conditioners. French teachers’ unions broke ranks with the normal antipathy to air conditioners in their country by issuing a report that 90% of the high schools and middle schools there were not suited to deal with the heat. India and New Orleans have led our efforts to protect workers.
Even though changes in the weather have forced a growing consensus about heat and as ACORN prepares for a second global Beat the Heat Day in mid-July, two critical issues are blocking progress. One is the shifting and uncertain definitions of “extreme heat” as a standard. Climate variations do exist of course between countries and cities. In the US, for example, federal rules in areas like public housing and Section 8 mandate cooling requirements to deal with extreme heat, but don’t define it, making it toothless. In other areas, the slight differences between 80- and 90-degrees Fahrenheit or a couple of degrees Celsius could either mandate change or create loopholes for property managers and landlords. This is also true for protecting outside workers in determining cooling breaks, water access, and other ameliorations.
The other issue, we constantly confront, especially in housing, is “Who is responsible?” The automatic default should be the property owner, but their self-interest tilts more towards sweat than relief. Without mandates and enforcement from governments at all levels, it’s just not going to happen. Some governments have primed the pump with financial and tax incentives for retrofits, and in Canada we have won governmentally supplied air conditioners in increasing numbers from cities like Toronto, but building standards need to be changed. Warrants of habitability need to reflect climate awareness. Programs providing heating and cooling assistance, like LIHEAP, attacked and targeted for defunding by Trump, need to be expanded and funded fully.
In preparing demands for Beat the Heat Day, affiliates mentioned requiring cities to name a “heat czar” within local emergency preparedness offices and public health departments. Some cities already have someone designated in these roles. We’ll demand more of them on July 15th, but we all know that heat now is less an emergency, like hurricanes or tornados, but a definition of the reality of our climate, so not one-off, but every day. Actions in this area need to move from emergency offices to across-the-board regular policy reflected in every area of housing, welfare, transportation, health, recreation, parks, and more.
We may have to do these annual actions for years, but no one can doubt that we have to move in that direction.