America’s Doublethink on Working Through the Heat

4 comments

1. Zoë Schlanger: Each year in the U.S., “heat kills more people overall than do tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods combined—and heat deaths have been increasing over the past three decades. Heat is dangerous for the body, and it’s more dangerous when you’re exerting yourself—as millions do each day on the job. Yet few if any enforceable rules exist that could protect workers from what is becoming a widespread occupational hazard. The federal government sometimes issues citations to businesses when their workers die from heat, under its general duty to keep workplaces free from hazards, but at present, no federal regulations address heat specifically. The choice in a hotter world is clear: Either we do more to protect workers, or more workers die. But right now, the country is engaged in a line of doublethink, in which we act as if we have time to put in place these protections—or even roll them back—and yet expect the center to hold in the meantime.”

   Read more here: [https://theatln.tc/DCKIL1h8](https://theatln.tc/DCKIL1h8)

2. We don’t recognize the danger that heat poses.  This is a huge liability for us in a warming world.  Things are destabilizing *fast* and that involves a lot of dangerous heat waves, we really need to get a lot better about this. 

   Removing legal protections like water. breaks for people working out in the sun is obviously clownish cruelty.  But we need more than just to undo stuff like this. More than anything, I think we need to realize that what we’re facing today isn’t like summer was 20 years ago.  The world has changed. 

   We really need to adapt as a society to mitigate threats like extreme heat.  And we need to stop adding greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere.

3. I’ve noticed the weather media isn’t helping either, with heat-wave headlines like “sizzling week ahead!” “Coming in hot!” like it’s a joke. And less of, “dangerous weather incoming.”

4. Soon enough we will be forced to sleep during the day in whatever hole you can afford (find) and work during the cooler night hours. It will be a nightmare or daymare for unhoused and elderly but if we want a functioning society it will be our only hope.