On September 7th, 2024, Eric Klinenberg, Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge, penned an opinion piece for The New York Times titled “The Killer Climate Disaster That Has No Name.” Read the excerpt below, then click for the full article.

In typical years, more Americans die in heat waves than in hurricanes, tornadoes and floods combined. Historically, though, the public, the media and politicians are quick to forget heat disasters — even where they happen most. It’s as if we have a will not to know about the brutal ways that extreme heat affects us.

Denial only makes us more vulnerable to the searing summers ahead. Between 1999 and 2023, heat deaths in the United States more than doubled. As the planet warms and lethal heat events become more severe and more frequent, there’s an urgent need to make dangerous heat more recognizable.

Fortunately, there is a low-cost and promising solution: naming major heat waves, giving each potentially catastrophic event its own identity and publicly acknowledging how extreme heat is changing our lives.

Read the full article here.

Photo credits: Gabriel Alcala/The New York Times