by Rachel Tang
HOUSTON, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- The scorching heat is forcing her to change her exercise routine, said Julie, a resident in Sugar Land, a suburb southwest of Houston, U.S. state of Texas.
"I have this habit of taking a walk after dinner. It's getting so hot since June that I had to stop doing it in early July," Julie, who wanted her last name withheld for privacy, told Xinhua this week.
After stopping taking her daily walk for a week, Julie felt restless and itchy for her regular walk. "Then, I decided to go to the nearby mall to take a walk. It's a few minutes' drive from my home. I am now taking a walk every other day. It's not ideal, but it's better than not doing it all," she said.
While Julie tries to maintain her active lifestyle amidst the relentless heat, many other Texans and people in other southern states simply choose to stay indoors as much as possible. As a result, outdoor associated economic activities saw a big drop due to the prolonged heatwave.
According data analysis by Gusto, a payroll processing company, outdoor-dependent SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) that are associated with tourism, arts, entertainment, sports and recreation, had experienced a 20 percent drop in average employee's weekly working hours in Texas as of July 15. Arizona SMBs saw a 10 percent drop in weekly working hours, while the nationwide drop was 4 percent.
If the heat persists through August, Texas' gross state product this year could be reduced by roughly 9.5 billion U.S. dollars, Ray Perryman, an economist and president at the economic research and analysis firm the Perryman Group, told Wall Street Journal.
While the official data of July temperature are not yet available for the United States, record high temperatures have been observed in many places from California, Arizona to Texas, mostly in the Southwest. And persistent heat has been forecast for August.
A 2021 study by the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center estimates that excessive heat costs the United States 100 billion dollars a year in GDP output as workers and infrastructure systems become less productive, more people get sick, more wildfires happen, and people are less inclined to participate in outdoor activities.
Such loss will get worse if the global warming trend continues, and the study projects that the GDP loss from extreme heat could reach almost 200 billion dollars by 2030 and 500 billion dollars by 2050 "without meaningful action to reduce emissions and/or adapt to extreme heat." The estimated number didn't include decrease in tourism and rising health and energy costs.
The heatwave is also killing people. Halfway into the summer, at least seven hikers have died from the heat in state and national parks in Southwest United States, including two in Big Bend National Park in Texas, a woman in Grand Canyon, and two people in Death Valley where temperature approached 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
Phoenix, Arizona, has experienced a record of 31 consecutive days with temperature above 110 degrees Fahrenheit this summer and counting. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, 39 people have died of heat complications this summer, and more than 312 other heat deaths are waiting for confirmation due to workload backlog, according to county health officials.
Last year, 425 people died of heat in Maricopa. Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that more than 1,700 people died of heat in the country in 2022, a historical record. The heat deaths this year, experts say, is likely to make another record.
Gregory Wellenius, an expert in environmental health at Boston University, told The Guardian: "We are seeing the full spectrum of risks, from heat exhaustion to more injuries from dehydration to even new food or water-borne illnesses because bacteria can replicate faster in warmer weather. My guess is that 2023 will prove to be one of the years with the most heat-related excess deaths on record in recent memory."
Last week, U.S. President Joe Biden made a stop in Phoenix to address issues of "the existential threat of climate change." He laid out a few extreme examples of the current heatwave. Puerto Rico reached a 125-degree Fahrenheit heat index last month; San Antonio hit an all-time heat index high of 117 degrees Fahrenheit last month; Ocean temperatures near Miami topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
"And that's more like, as I said, jumping in a hot tub than jumping in an ocean to ride a wave," said Biden.
He announced new steps to protect workers, including heat hazard alert to provide federal heat-related protection, increasing inspections in high-risk industries like construction and agriculture, and providing more than 1 billion dollars in grants to help cities and towns plant trees that would help repel heat in the long term.
"And it hits our most vulnerable the hardest: seniors, people experiencing homelessness who have nowhere to turn, disadvantaged communities that are least able to recover from climate disasters," Biden said.
Indeed, the poor suffer more than the rich from heatwaves. A 2021 study by scholars from University of California, San Diego, which examined more than 1,000 counties across the continental United States, found that 75 percent of all counties have significant higher surface daytime temperature, by seven degrees Fahrenheit warmer, in lower-income neighborhoods due to higher density and less green space.
According to a study by the Brookings Institution, about 10 percent of American households have no air conditioning. It's often the minority that suffer the most. For example, in Detroit, less than 4 percent of the white households don't have air conditioning, while 15 percent of Black households don't.
Despite that the Biden administration's Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program offers utility subsidy to low-income households, only a small percentage of the eligible population, 16 percent, actually get it, and nearly half states don't even offer this federal program, according to an Associated Press report.
