In the United States, extreme heat kills more people than hurricanes, floods, and wildfires combined. Yet, it’s often dismissed as an inconvenience rather than a public health emergency. As climate change intensifies, heat waves are growing more frequent, more widespread, longer, hotter, and deadlier, particularly for disadvantaged communities.

If you’re on the East Coast right now, you’ve felt the full force of this June’s oppressive heatwave. It would be impossible not to notice sweat dripping down your back on a crowded subway platform, forced blackouts and brownouts from strain on the electricity grid, and that desperate feeling you get when you just need to find somewhere cool to escape. While heat waves are getting worse every year, primarily driven by climate change, we need to reevaluate and reframe how we communicate the major threat they pose to public health.

As with all impacts of climate change, the effects of heat waves are not distributed equally across society. According to research from the ICF Climate Center, extreme heat is particularly dangerous for disadvantaged communities, as they are least able to prepare for and recover from its impacts. In the U.S., residential segregation in the aftermath of redlining means that people of color are more likely to live in areas with higher summer heat intensities compared to their white counterparts.

Take the example of day laborers. This group often finds themselves on the front lines of climate risks due to a combination of structural inequities and occupational hazards. Laborers working in agriculture and construction are disproportionately affected by extreme heat, often working in environments with minimal access to cooling and medical resources, increasing their vulnerability to heat-related illnesses.

According to data from 1991 to 2006, agricultural workers in crop production experienced heat-related deaths at a staggering 20 times the rate of all U.S. civilian workers. Day laborers face similar challenges, often taking on physically demanding jobs with limited access to shade, water, or cooling breaks. They are also less likely to have employer-provided health benefits or sick leave, compounding their vulnerability to extreme heat events. Without these basic protections, the risk of heat stroke and other heat-related conditions increases dramatically.

So let’s get one thing straight: the rise of extreme heat coincides with an increased danger to human health, particularly for those who are already disadvantaged in society, and who have done the least to cause planet-heating emissions. “Heat kills more people than any other kind of weather event, and as our country has gotten hotter, the number of workers dying from heat has doubled.” said Jason Walsh, Executive Director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor and environmental groups. When we talk about heat waves, we’re really talking about the impacts of climate change. And who’s to blame for climate change? It isn’t a mystery. The answer is fossil fuel companies.

These mega-corporations, which have done everything in their power to continue profiting at the expense of everyone else (including obscuring climate science that they initially paid to conduct!), are directly responsible for countless deaths, primarily in communities that are already disadvantaged. But the vast majority of discourse on heat waves, whether in the news, on social media, or between friends and family, typically doesn’t focus on this fact. Imagine reporting on a crime without identifying the perpetrator. That’s what much of today’s extreme weather discourse is doing.

The climate journalists at Heated investigated this very phenomenon in an edition of their newsletter from last summer (I highly recommend subscribing if you haven’t yet). They analyzed 133 regional, national, and international news articles about record-breaking weather in the U.S. in June of last year. Only 44 percent of those articles mentioned the climate crisis or global warming. Coverage about heatwaves specifically was slightly better, but still dismal, with only 52 percent linking to climate change.

Even fewer of these stories spelled out why the climate crisis is happening to begin with. Of the 133 articles, only 15 (11%) mentioned fossil fuels, the largest source of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions by far. Not only is clear attribution important from a purely journalistic standpoint, there’s research backing up the importance of linking extreme weather events and climate change. A study from the Yale Program on Climate Communications found that when participants were exposed to messaging that clearly links extreme weather events and climate change, they were more likely to believe climate change caused the event.

Source: Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

Where do we go from here?

Language has power. When we talk about climate change, it’s imperative to clearly name its root cause. When we can attribute an effect–whether it's a heat wave, a flood, or a wildfire–directly to an individual or organization, we move closer to holding those responsible accountable. And as with all impacts of climate change, those who are most vulnerable in our communities will be hit the hardest. Check in on your neighbors. If you have a local mutual aid group, consider joining it (mine is Bushwick Ayuda Mutua!). Spread information about local cooling centers–your city or town should (hopefully) have some; they’re often libraries or community centers. And for journalists and members of the media, organizations like Covering Climate Now provide excellent resources for including climate stats and information in your reporting.

I was recently inspired to see that the first-ever wrongful death suit was just filed against a fossil fuel company for a woman’s death during a heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021. It’s the first time that fossil fuel companies have been sued over the death of an individual as a result of conditions caused by climate change. While it’s only a first step, I’m hopeful that this signifies the beginning of a societal shift in the way we think about climate change and its impacts. If I’ve piqued your curiosity about climate communications, I’d encourage you to check out the work of Potential Energy Coalition and the Yale Program on Climate Communication, both great organizations conducting research on the most effective climate messaging.

Heat waves are not just uncomfortable weather events. They are climate injustices. Every injury, death, and illness could have been prevented if not for the fossil fuel industry’s obfuscation of climate science. If we want to protect vulnerable people, especially in frontline communities, we must start treating extreme heat like the emergency it is, starting with naming the industries responsible.

Sources:

Heat Waves are the Most Common and Deadliest Climate Impacts. We Should Talk About Them as Such.

2025 Climate Tech Predictions