After a blazingly hot stretch of summer in early July 2022, the skies broke open over Buchanan County, Virginia. Floodwaters damaged almost 100 homes and destroyed miles of road in the rural, overwhelmingly low-income mountain towns that dot the region. In the wake of the devastation, local officials spent $387,000 compiling a flood preparedness plan. The multistep blueprint analyzed inundation risks and recommended potential risk-reduction projects. 

To develop the proposal, the county tapped the Community Flood Preparedness Fund, a state program that makes hundreds of millions of dollars available for disaster risk analysis and mitigation. They were among the first to do so after money for such things became available in 2021 through proceeds from a carbon-offset program called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI. But those plans, and the fund, are now in doubt because Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin wants to withdraw from the initiative despite the fact it has provided $657 million for flood preparedness and energy-efficiency programs and reduced the state’s carbon emissions by almost 17 percent.

Critics of such a move say that, beyond curtailing the significant emissions reductions RGGI has already incurred, pulling out will reduce the funding available to help communities prepare for increasingly common extreme weather. It is, they say, a huge mistake and, what’s more, illegal. A group of four Southern environmental nonprofits, led by the Southern Environmental Law Center, filed suit on August 21 to stop it.  

“Repealing this regulation is just outside of their authority,” said Nate Belforado, a senior attorney with the center. “If they disagree with it, they have to take it to the General Assembly, and they’ve tried to do that and it hasn’t been successful.”

RGGI, often pronounced “Reggie,” is a collaborative cap-and-invest effort that links 12 states stretching from Maine to Virginia. Power plants in those states must acquire one carbon-emission allowance for every ton of CO2 emitted, with the permissible level of emissions declining over time. Ninety percent of the allowances are sold through quarterly auctions, generating money states can invest as they choose. The program reportedly has slashed power plant emissions in participating states by half and raised nearly $6 billion.  

Virginia joined the program two years ago, following the legislature’s 53-45 vote to require participation. Of the $657 million Old Dominion has raised, 45 percent has gone toward the Community Flood Preparedness Fund to help communities with resilience planning and municipal projects. (At least a quarter of the fund’s annual allocations go to low-income communities.) The remainder has financed home weatherization for low-income residents, reducing their utility bills through simple, but often expensive, home improvements.  

But Youngkin says the rate increases utilities instituted to cover the costs of participation in the initiative create a financial burden for low-income Virginians. “RGGI remains a regressive tax which does not do anything to incentivize the reduction of emissions in Virginia,” his office told 13th News NOW. (The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.) “Virginians will see a lower energy bill in due time because we are withdrawing from RGGI through a regulatory process.”

The appointed Air Pollution Control Board, of which four of seven members were personally named by Youngkin, voted in June to withdraw from the program by repealing the Community Flood Preparedness Act that made Virginia a part of it in 2020. If the decision stands, the move would take effect December 30. Environmental groups said the proper procedure would have been to introduce a legislative bill and have lawmakers decide. One poll found that 66 percent of Virginians support staying in RGGI; to go against them, Youngkin’s critics argue, is a fundamentally anti-democratic move. A comment period for the withdrawal remains open until Wednesday.

Beyond that criticism, Benforado calls Youngkin’s move frustrating given the progress made under the initiative. “Virginia’s monopoly utilities are required to zero out their carbon by 2050,” he said. “RGGI is the tool that will help us get there.”

Municipalities all over Virginia have used the flood-resiliency funds to shore up infrastructure, draft evacuation plans, and restore blighted wetlands. “Local governments are on the front lines of the climate crisis,” said Mary-Carson Stiff, the executive director of the nonprofit Wetlands Water Watch, which worked with Buchanan County on its flood-resiliency plan. “And they are on their own, to come up with resources to come up with plans and to fund strategies to protect against losses.”

In a 2020 report, the organization noted that most of the state’s rural communities do not have any flooding or other climate resilience plans to speak of. Proponents of RGGI say that before Virginia joined, there was almost no money for disaster preparation and planning, which can be time- and labor-intensive, and requires hiring specialists and conducting environmental studies.

Stiff says Virginia’s use of funds raised through the initiative has been fairly forward-thinking. “We’re unique in the other participating RGGI states where our auction proceeds are being spent on grant programs that are actually reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” she said.  

Youngkin’s claim that Virginia ratepayers underwrite the cap-and-invest effort echoes an argument Dominion Energy, the state’s biggest utility, has made. It has said in public comments that the costs it had incurred under RGGI made it necessary to raise rates. It has proposed a rider of $2.29 on top of recent increases caused by fluctuating natural gas prices.

Mayor Justin Wilson of Alexandria, which has benefited from RGGI-funded flood-resiliency projects such as a redesigned downtown waterfront and storm drain expansion, says people were already paying dearly for the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, and that the Community Flood Preparedness Fund has been a godsend. Flooding costs Virginians $400 million per year, according to some estimates.

“I’ve stood in the homes of residents that have seen their livelihoods destroyed,” said Wilson. “The impacts of these storm events are a tax on the community.”

Youngkin has promised alternative sources of funding for flood preparedness and weatherization, and has proposed a $200 million revolving loan fund with a similar purpose. Wilson said he’ll believe there’s a contingency plan when he sees it. All the while, small floods that would have been unusual a couple of decades ago are happening with greater frequency, and the city struggles to keep up. “We have billions of dollars of investment we are gonna have to make,” the mayor said.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the state, Buchanan County’s flood-resilience planning may be complete, but officials must find money for the improvements it outlines. On the anniversary of last summer’s inundation, flood survivors were still fixing up their homes, mourning the woman who had died, wondering where the next resources for them were going to come from, and nervously looking at silt-filled and waste-dammed creeks as summer rain began to fall. 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Virginia is bailing on a carbon cap-and-invest program. Activists say that might be illegal. on Aug 28, 2023.

This story was originally published by The 19th and is republished with permission.

Extreme heat has already made pregnancy more dangerous. Now, it is also complicating efforts to control when and how someone becomes pregnant: Record heat waves across the country could threaten access to effective pregnancy tests, condoms, and emergency contraception pills. 

All of these items can sustain serious damage in extreme heat, rendering them ineffective when used. And all have become critical resources for people living in states with abortion bans and who are trying to avoid pregnancy. In those states, few options exist to terminate an unintended pregnancy other than acquiring abortion pills online or traveling out of state for care.

Many states that have banned abortion are experiencing broiling summers, including Texas, Louisiana, parts of Mississippi, and Arkansas. Florida — where abortion is banned after 15 weeks of pregnancy and a six-week ban could take effect later this year — has also recorded unusually high temperatures. 

“People aren’t thinking about the effects of extremely hot heat for all kinds of medical care,” said Rachel Rebouché, dean at the Temple University School of Law, who studies reproductive health law. “And, specific to reproductive health care, people aren’t thinking about condoms and contraception and reproductive health as essential health care.”

In some states that restrict or ban abortion, abortion funds — which typically aid people in paying for the procedure — have put more emphasis on distributing supplies to prevent pregnancy and to detect it early, even while noting that even the most effective contraception isn’t foolproof. Almost all of the supplies they ship are heat-sensitive.

The Yellowhammer Fund, which serves people mostly in Alabama and Mississippi, mails emergency contraception to people in those two states as well as in parts of Florida. Jane’s Due Process, a Texas-based organization, has for the past three years given people kits including emergency contraception, pregnancy tests, and condoms. The Lilith Fund, an abortion fund in Texas, recently began distributing “post-abortion” kits for people traveling out of state for care, which include pregnancy tests, condoms, and thermometers. 

Pregnancy tests generally should be stored at a temperature between 36 and 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Emergency contraception pills should be kept between 68 and 77 degrees, per the Food and Drug Administration, though they can be transported in temperatures ranging between 59 and 86 degrees. For condoms, the World Health Organization recommends an average shipment temperature no warmer than 86 degrees, noting that peak temperatures shouldn’t exceed 122 degrees and that condoms could be damaged if they are stored at above 104 degrees for an extended period of time. 

Extreme heat has already complicated efforts to disseminate contraceptive supplies. Last month, staff from the Lilith Fund reported heat damage to about $3,500 worth of pregnancy tests, thermometers and condoms, the result of a temporary air-conditioning outage at a storage facility in San Antonio. The organization was able to raise money from supporters to replace those items, but will be factoring heat risk in future budgets.

“It’s on our radar, and it’s on the radar of our partners as well,” said Cristina Parker, the fund’s communications director. “This definitely has an impact on our budget, no doubt.”

Other organizations haven’t experienced similar damage. But organizers and health scholars indicated concern that the unusually warm summer — with temperatures across much of the South consistently surpassing 100 degrees Fahrenheit at a higher frequency than usual — will undercut people’s ability to access heat-sensitive reproductive health supplies.

“One thing we’ve always stressed is do not keep kits in your car, especially in Texas heat,” said Graci D’Amore, who coordinates the distribution of reproductive health kits for Jane’s Due Process. “It’s 120 degrees in the car, and Plan B needs to be kept at below 80 degrees for it to maintain efficacy.”

Jane’s Due Process stores its supplies in an air-conditioned office building. But the fear of losing power is more pressing than it was even a few years ago, before a winter snowstorm — also unusual for the state — caused a massive power outage.

“The fear and threat of the [power] grid failing — I think it’s on everyone’s mind,” D’Amore said. 

Many organizations, including the Yellowhammer Fund and the Texas family planning provider Every Body Texas, distribute emergency contraception through the mail. But even if medications are stored in a climate-controlled atmosphere, they risk exposure to heat while waiting in someone’s mailbox, at their doorstep or in a delivery vehicle. In those cases, there is little health or reproductive rights organizations can do other than encourage people to bring mail in as quickly as possible.

“When I bring in packages, even when they have not been outside for very long, the contents have been hot to the touch,” said Elizabeth Sepper, a health law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “There’s no way to control what happens once it leaves your hand.”

The heat burden, Sepper and others noted, doesn’t fall equally. People who don’t have access to regular air-conditioning in their homes or cars are more likely to be exposed to extreme heat and to potentially risk damage to family planning and reproductive health supplies. Those who seek abortions and who have to travel out of state, which can mean several hours or even days’ worth of driving, could also suffer more. 

“Even people who have cars with functioning air conditioners will find their car engines or air-conditioning can struggle in long travel in this heat,” Sepper said. “If you’re in a car that doesn’t have functioning air-conditioning or that might struggle to make long distances in the heat — we will see for poorer people, the travel out of state will become even more onerous than it already is.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Extreme heat could impact the effectiveness of birth control and pregnancy tests on Aug 27, 2023.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A cutting-edge energy storage company is building its main manufacturing plant where a once-thriving West Virginia steel mill once stood in the city of Weirton. According to lawmakers, the much-lauded project was made possible by incentives from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed by President Biden one year ago last week.

For supporters, it’s a sign that climate policies can also breathe life back into deindustrialized coal and steel communities with green jobs. The symbolism is compelling but how much those communities benefit will depend on a wide array of factors.

Form Energy, a Massachusetts-based company helmed by a former Tesla vice-president, broke ground on its iron-air battery manufacturing plant this past May. Workers will produce batteries capable of storing electricity for 100 hours, which will run on iron, water and air instead of the more common but less-abundant metal lithium. The $760 million project will create 750 well-paying permanent jobs, the company said.

The plant is being constructed on the ashes of the old Weirton steel mill, once the beating heart of the steel economy in the Ohio River valley. At its height in the 1940s, the mill was West Virginia’s number one taxpayer and its largest employer, boasting a 13,000-strong workforce.

“You could literally graduate one day from high school and be hired at the steel mill making very good money,” said Mark Glyptis, president of the United Steelworkers Local 2911 and a third-generation steelworker from Weirton.

But Weirton’s economy began to wither in the 1970s. Local industry slowly declined as the market began to prefer cheaper foreign steel – and, Glyptis said, stopped enforcing regulations on the material.

The company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2003. The fallout, said Glyptis, has been “heartbreaking.”

“It changed the landscape and the community has suffered significantly,” said Glyptis. “Our children, many of whom were planning on staying and living in the valley, have had to leave the valley to seek employment somewhere else.”

After the decline of domestic coal and steel, West Virginia transitioned from a production-based economy to a service-based one. This was a major blow to residents’ economic wellbeing, said Ted Boettner, senior researcher with the Ohio River Valley Institute.

The Weirton steel mill paid an average of roughly $16 an hour in the 1970s, which was a “decent wage,” said Boettner. By contrast, in 2013, he found that Walmart, then the state’s biggest employer, paid half of its employees less than $15 an hour – a comparison that does not account for inflation, he said.

Glyptis is optimistic that the new battery plant will help revitalize the community where he grew up. “There’ll be significant opportunities for our children to prosper,” he said.

The IRA’s carbon-cutting incentives were touted as a way to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by 40 percent from 2003 levels while bringing manufacturing jobs back onshore. Since the law’s passage last year, manufacturers have announced 83 new or expanded major clean energy manufacturing facilities, including 14 battery manufacturing facilities, according to the American Clean Power Association.

“They’ve made the US the place for the private sector to invest in clean energy,” Samantha Smith, senior adviser for clean energy jobs at the AFL-CIO, said of the IRA’s incentives.

Form Energy has agreed to provide employees decent wages and working conditions. That is not merely a sign of the company’s altruism. The IRA incentivizes green energy developers to pay workers a prevailing wage and to have a certain share of labor done by workers in registered apprenticeship programs.

By meeting those requirements, companies can get a 30 percent tax credit on qualifying projects. If they fail to meet the standards, that percentage drops to 6 percent. “Those conditions … are great,” said Smith.

The landmark policy also sets aside a share of manufacturing tax credits specifically for facilities based in former coal communities, said Ben Beachy, industrial policy expert at the labor-climate group BlueGreen Alliance. “This law rightly recognizes that an energy transition that is fair for workers and communities will not automatically happen,” he said. “It needs to be a deliberate policy choice.”

Challenges to unionization

At the new battery plant’s well-attended groundbreaking ceremony in May, Form Energy also specifically committed to employing at least some unionized workers, said Glyptis.

But the IRA stops short of directly requiring companies to employ unionized labor. On the campaign trail, Biden indicated support for making union neutrality – wherein companies agree not to contest a union vote – a necessary condition for obtaining federal funding, but that requirement is not in the IRA.

Absent union representation, workers’ ability to protect their working conditions and advocate for better benefits and wages that exceed the federal prevailing wage would be severely muted, said Boettner of the Ohio River Valley Institute.

“I think in order for West Virginia to fully benefit from the clean energy economy, it has to be very focused on rebuilding the labor movement in the state and making it stronger,” he said.

Green industries are less unionized than fossil fuel sectors are. Changing that won’t be easy, said Smith of the AFL-CIO. The US labor movement has faced decades of attacks. And the majority of investment from the IRA has so far gone to states that, like West Virginia, are controlled by Republicans and have passed anti-union “right to work” policies.

“We’ve got some state governments that are determined to drive unions out of their state,” she said. “They even market themselves to employers on that basis.”

But she said the AFL-CIO and its affiliate unions are “pouring a lot of resources” into organizing green sectors. She feels optimistic that they’re up to the challenge.

One thing that could help: the US Department of Energy has issued guidance saying IRA investments for businesses that have a unionized workforce should sign binding legal agreements with unions.

“It’s critical that those rules be enforced,” Beachy of the BlueGreen Alliance said.

‘A pioneer’

The new battery plant alone likely cannot singlehandedly revive the Ohio River valley’s economy. While Weirton Steel employed thousands of workers, Form Energy’s plant will employ fewer than 1,000.

But Patrick Ford, a director at the Frontier Group, the firm that paid to remediate the former Weirton steel mill site and prepare it for new development with additional incentives from the IRA, said he expects the battery facility will spark further investment.

“You need a pioneer,” he said.

Seeing a developer break ground on a formerly contaminated site, he said, will encourage developers to come to the region, too. He noted that there are still more than 2,000 acres (810 hectares) of the old Weirton steel plant’s footprint available for new businesses. He estimated the site could support thousands of additional jobs and billions of dollars in further investment.

Boettner said the battery plant could lead to the creation of a cluster of battery plants in the Ohio River valley. However, the Biden administration has not required power grids to use batteries and absent such mandates, battery power will have to prove it can compete in the market, he said.

“That’s a question mark,” Boettner said.

Other battery developers have announced plans to locate plants in West Virginia, but there’s no guarantee they will all get built, said Boettner. Even if they do, the state won’t see the full benefits unless it taxes the new developments to pay for public services, he said.

Historically, West Virginia has not adequately taxed fossil fuel producers for extraction, Boettner said. “That’s the story of Appalachia: never fully benefiting from the rich natural resources that are there,” he said.

The state is at risk of repeating the same mistake, he said, noting that it has already poured more than $250m into the project and that Form Energy won’t have to pay any property taxes on it.

“I imagine at least for the first 10 years of this battery factory’s life, they’re not going to pay any state corporate income tax, very little state taxes at all,” he said.

Despite the many questions ahead, Glyptis of the United Steelworkers said he feels hopeful that the battery plant could help hard-hit Appalachian communities recover from years of disinvestment. He said the Weirton steel mill is an attractive site for developers, located close to highways, a river and an airport, and within a community of skilled tradespeople.

“I think we’ll see this community reinvent itself,” he said.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline A renewable energy battery plant will rise in West Virginia where a steel mill once stood on Aug 26, 2023.

What is the role of buyers in scaling high-quality carbon dioxide removal? In this webinar, experts from Carbon Direct and Microsoft will discuss the challenges in the voluntary carbon market and the unique role that buyers have to play in helping to address those challenges.

In a meeting of the Global Environment Facility (GEF)’s Seventh Assembly in Vancouver, Canada on Thursday, representatives from 185 countries agreed to launch a new global conservation fund, with Canada pledging 200 million Canadian dollars and the United Kingdom contributing 10 million pounds.

The United Nations is seeking contributions for the protection of 30 percent of terrestrial and coastal areas by 2030.

“The new Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) has been designed to mobilize and accelerate investment in the conservation and sustainability of wild species and ecosystems, whose health is under threat from wildfires, flooding, extreme weather, and human activity including urban sprawl,” a press release from the Global Environment Facility said.

The GBFF is seeking monetary support from governments, philanthropic donations and the private sector.

As a trustee of the World Bank, the GBFF has not yet raised the $200 million it needs to get up and running by the end of the year, reported Reuters.

“The time for half-measures has passed,” said Oscar Soria, director of global activist nonprofit Avaaz. “Surely donors can come up with the paltry $40 million” still needed, as Reuters reported.

The GEF Assembly was attended by 1,500 people, including representatives of government, academia and business, Indigenous Peoples and environmental leaders.

The meeting, which is held every four years, comes during what is predicted to be an active hurricane season and the record wildfire season in Canada, which have been influenced by global heating and rising ocean temperatures.

“Countries have come together in Vancouver to turn things around for the health of the planet and its people. This is a hugely positive moment that will be remembered far into the future. We have shown at the Seventh GEF Assembly that even in difficult conditions – with wildfire smoke as our backdrop – we can move forward to build a more biodiverse planet for everyone’s benefit,” said Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO of GEF, in the press release.

The GBFF was set up in order to fund the implementation of the Kunming-Montréal Biodiversity Framework — ratified in December of 2022 — in order to tackle the intertwined biodiversity and extinction crises.

“Biodiversity is the critical foundation of our well-being and the health of our planet. The new Global Biodiversity Framework Fund will play a key role in addressing biodiversity loss. It will address it in developing countries, where the impacts of nature loss are highest; it will address it in a gender-responsive manner, including through cross-sectoral partnerships; it will address it in collaboration with Indigenous Peoples, the original guardians of the lands and seas. Canada is making a significant contribution to this new fund and continuing to show our support for the GEF’s eighth replenishment to ensure the protection of our planet’s biodiversity for generations to come,” said Canada’s Minister of International Development Ahmed Hussen in the press release.

Contributions to the GBFF will go toward stopping and reversing biodiversity loss globally by 2030, as well as placing nature on a path to recovery by 2050.

“As we confront the critical challenge of halting and reversing biodiversity loss around the world, working together has never been more important. Our initial contribution to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund showcases the United Kingdom’s ongoing dedication to protecting our planet’s natural diversity – and through vital international cooperation we are paving the way for a more sustainable future for our planet,” said Trudy Harrison, UK environment minister, in the press release.

Up to 20 percent of the GBFF’s resources will be dedicated to supporting initiatives led by Indigenous Peoples, as well as to protecting and preserving biodiversity. More than one-third of its resources will go to supporting Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.

“The creation of this fund and its commitment to supporting Indigenous Peoples and local communities is an important and clear recognition of the fundamental role they have had for generations protecting biodiversity. We will only achieve the shared vision of a healthy planet and healthy people with collective, inclusive actions, and a human rights approach where we all hold hands together,” said Lucy Mulenkei, co-chair of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, in the press release.

The post Environmental Leaders From 185 Countries Launch Biodiversity Protection Fund appeared first on EcoWatch.

The first tribally nominated marine sanctuary has been proposed by the Biden administration in collaboration with the Chumash tribe. The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary would span 5,600 square miles off the coast of central California. The project is now undergoing a public comment period.

The sanctuary would include an area off a 156-mile stretch of coastline between Cambria in San Luis Obispo County and Gaviota Creek in Santa Barbara County. The area includes Lisamu’, a sacred Chumash site, along with a 3,000-meter-deep submarine canyon and feeding and migration areas for 13 whale and dolphin species.

“Sanctuaries uplift local participation in ocean management, and this sanctuary will put Indigenous communities in partnership with NOAA,” Violet Sage Walker, chairwoman of the Northern Chumash Tribal Council and a nominator of the sanctuary, said in a statement. “The collective knowledge of the Central Coast’s First Peoples, as well as other local stakeholders, scientists, and policymakers, will create a strong foundation to have a thriving coast for generations to come.”

The Northern Chumash Tribal Council first began preparing a proposal in 2013 and submitted a finalized proposal for a 7,600-square-mile marine sanctuary in 2015. But as NPR reported, the application didn’t receive attention for years. Walker explained that her father, Fred Collins, had initially submitted the proposal. Collins died one month before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced it would consider the proposed region for dedication in 2021.

The proposal was reduced from 7,600 square miles to 5,600 square miles, because NOAA said the original proposed area may be used for wind energy development. The sanctuary protections would prevent energy and oil development within the boundary, but commercial fishing would still be allowed. 

The Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary may be managed via the Intergovernmental Policy Council, a group including federally-recognized tribes and potentially the California Natural Resources Agency and NOAA. This management plan was based on the IPC developed for the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary.

“This sanctuary has support from the federal and state governments, but most importantly from the communities that have lived on its shores for thousands of years,” said Steve Palumbi, professor at Stanford Hopkins Marine Station who is working with the Northern Chumash Tribal Council for conservation efforts in the proposed sanctuary. “Combining Traditional Ecological Knowledge with new data from western science is a journey that enriches our view of the ocean and ourselves.”

NOAA has opened the project to public comment through Oct. 25, 2023 and is targeting the finalized designation in 2024.

The post New Chumash Heritage Marine Sanctuary Proposed off California Coast appeared first on EcoWatch.

The European Union recently passed the Deforestation Regulation, a groundbreaking law that requires companies to…

The post Europe’s Law Will Protect Forests. Can It Help You Do the Same? appeared first on Earth911.

Today’s inspiration is from writer, biologist, and environmentalist, Rachel Carson: “The more clearly we can focus…

The post Earth911 Inspiration: Wonders and Realities of the Universe appeared first on Earth911.

This story is part of Record High, a Grist series examining extreme heat and its impact on how — and where — we live.

A massive heat dome covered the central part of the United States on Thursday, stretching  from Omaha down to New Orleans, putting 143 million people in 19 states under heat alerts. 

In Chicago, temperatures reached 100 degrees F with a heat index of 120 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, which is the highest heat index the city has recorded, according to CBS Chicago. Hot weather that dangerous hasn’t roasted Chicago since its infamous 1995 heat wave, which killed more than 500 people over five days. This comes after a record-breaking hot day on Wednesday at 98 degrees F with a heat index of 116 degrees F. 

It feels as if most of the United States has been under a heat advisory at one point or another this summer, with Arizona and Texas especially hard hit. Temperatures have been breaking records all over the world, with July setting records as the hottest month that the planet has seen in 120,000 years. 

The past few days have seen heat creep up into uncharted territory, with places like Lawrence, Kansas recording a heat index of 134 degrees F, earlier this week. An analysis of data from the nonprofit research organization, the First Street Foundation, found that the next few decades will see the emergence of an “extreme heat belt” stretching from Northern Texas up through Illinois and parts of Wisconsin. By 2053, these areas will experience temperatures above 125 degrees F, according to the research.

In pockets of Chicago though, the heat is bringing people together with neighbors who are looking out for one another and offering water, fans, and information about the city’s cooling centers. This is despite the fact that cooling centers have been historically underutilized. 

In Pilsen, a Latino neighborhood on the city’s Near West Side, a bookstore offered up their space as an unofficial cooling center. 

Mandy Medley, a co-owner and worker at Pilsen Community Books, said that it was intrinsic to the bookstore’s mission to provide resources in a city which has few public restrooms and rest areas. 

“I think it’s a natural extension of the role we try to play in the community,” said Medley. “We’re open to the public, we have one of the very few public restrooms available in the neighborhood.” 

Medley also mentioned that the store regularly tries to remain open to community members — even when there isn’t record-breaking heat outside. 

“In general, the store is a place where people can come hang out, it doesn’t have to just be doing extreme weather,” said Medley. “We don’t force people to spend money or stay here only a certain amount of time. It really is open anytime.”

Elsewhere in Pilsen, Rabbit Schoen, an organizer with Rising Tide Chicago, an organization focused on fighting climate change, helped hand out frozen water bottles to people who were unhoused living under a highway underpass. 

“So the main things are just getting items to people who are in our neighborhoods and communities that are unhoused, who are at most risk of heatstroke, or heat exhaustion, or even heat death,” said Rabbit Schoen. “The simplest way to do that is give people cold water.” 

Additionally, Rising Tide volunteers have been working with homeless people to allocate necessary resources beyond the heat wave, since people who are unhoused remain vulnerable to other climate events, like wildfire smoke, long after the heat has subsided.

While scientists are hesitant to say that individual climate events like this one are tied to climate change, heat waves in general are highly correlated with the global warming caused by burning fossil fuels, according to Jonathan Patz, a professor of health and environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“The climate crisis from burning fossil fuels that’s heating the planet, this is exactly what you expect: more frequent and more intense heat waves, said Patz. “All these extremes have been anticipated from human-induced climate warming for decades, you know, so we’ve been talking about this for a long time.”

During the scorching hot temperatures, a community group called My Block, My Hood, My City had volunteers that were crisscrossing the city’s neighborhoods on the South and West sides to pass out cases of water bottles and box fans to elderly folks who were in need. 

“Our main thing is, taking care of people no matter what. And we know that some of the most vulnerable people in our communities are the senior citizens.” said Stephen Gilbert, Director of Youth and Community Development at My Block, My Hood, My City. 

The group had nearly 400 requests for water and fans across the city, which they pivoted all their resources to try to meet. 

“We don’t have a capacity to drop off 400 fans and waters today alone, we dropped off as many as we could,” said Gilbert. “And we’ll be back out there tomorrow doing the same thing.” 

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline As Chicago broils, neighbors find ways to keep each other cool on Aug 24, 2023.