For millions of Americans in the Southwest, the extreme heat due to climate change It is a literal matter of life or death. Ask Amy Dishion, whose husband Evan, 32, died unexpectedly from the heat while walking six miles with friends in Phoenix. Dishion was left in charge of raising their three-month-old baby.

“I lost my partner in life and my favorite person and the father of my child to extreme heat because he went hiking when it was hot,” Dishion told Salon. “My life will never be the same. It’s been incredibly difficult.” and I’m not sure how I’m going to recover from this loss. Evan is someone no one would have expected this to happen to. He was in very good shape, he was a marathon runner at the best age of his life. “My husband was exceptional: he overcame a lot to become a doctor and now, because of the heat, he can’t see his daughter grow up and I have to pick up the pieces.”

Even when it’s not deadly, heat has a way of diminishing the quality of life for people in the desert. Hazel Chandler, 77, an Arizona field organizer for the climate advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force, lives in Phoenix with stage four cancer and has many other health problems that make her especially sensitive to heat. As a result, when she goes out she has to wear oven gloves in case she is forced to touch the metal railings, as the metal will burn her hands.

“My internal metal spinal fusion gets hot when I’m outside for even a minute or two and it feels like someone is holding a hot poker up my spine,” Chandler said. “Two summers ago, the air pollution was so bad that I coughed so much that I fractured my spine. “We must take thermal safety seriously and do everything we can to clean the air we breathe.”

There is no doubt that there are many other stories like those of Dishion and Chandler that are simply not known to the general public. The American Southwest has been experiencing Unprecedented heat waves throughout 2024due in large part to human-caused climate change. Even when the heat is not at its peak, it can be cruel to those caught in it.

Lisa Materna and her husband moved from one Arizona city to another in July — specifically, from a third-floor apartment in Goodyear to a single-story home in Glendale — and they weren’t expecting an arduous move because they hadn’t yet reached the maximum temperatures in Phoenix. West Valley of the metropolitan area. However, they moved right at the beginning of monsoon season, with high humidity and 100-degree temperatures.

“We didn’t have an elevator and I couldn’t help much because I had just discovered that I was pregnant and the nausea of ​​the first trimester had attacked me a lot,” Materna remembers. “My husband, God bless him, walked 90% of our apartment down those three flights of stairs by himself. There were times of exhaustion and dehydration, but all you can do is take your time, schedule a good time of day to move (preferably early in the morning, since it’s still over 90 degrees at night), and have tons of water. by hand”.

Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to the Salon’s weekly newsletter Laboratory notes.

Four months later, the Maternas still find it too hot to comfortably unpack their house. “Our goal is to get everything done in the next few weeks, now that it has cooled down,” Materna recalled.

Between June and August 202426 major American cities suffered at least one dangerous extreme heat wave. According to the Climate CentralAnthropogenic climate change is so extreme that one in four people on Earth received no relief from the heat caused by climate change in the summer of 2024. On August 13, global exposure peaked when half of all people alive (4.1 billion humans) were forced to suffer “unusual temperatures that are at least three times more likely due to climate change.”

This problem is especially prevalent in the Southwest, as epitomized by the Phoenix metropolitan area. Maricopa County, the most populous in the state, has 4.5 million residents and is the Fastest growing county in the United States. Approximately 400 Arizonans died of heat throughout 2023, many in Maricopa Countywith some climate activists urge that fossil fuel companies be legally responsible for these deaths. As humans continue to burn fossil fuels for transportation, manufacturing and agriculture, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions trap heat and unnaturally warm the planet.

If you live in the Southwest, you’re probably well aware of this. According to Juan Declet-Barreto, a social scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, this is because living in a desert while the Earth warms unnaturally creates many logistical problems.

“Climate change is a threat water resources, increasing challenges to food and fiber production and compromising human health in the Southwest through droughts, wildfires, heavy rainfall, sea level rise and marine heat waves,” Declet-Barreto said. “These changes are affecting ecosystems, infrastructure, agriculture, fishing and other economic sectors. “Effective adaptation will require flexible decision-making and the incorporation of technological innovation with indigenous and local knowledge.”

Declet-Barreto explained that as extreme heat increases in the southwest, there is a high probability of “droughts, floods and wildfires,” as well as climate change “shaping the demographics of the region by stimulating the migration of people from Central America to the southwest.

As a result, poor, elderly, and outdoor-working people will be especially vulnerable to health problems.

“This year, during what we (the Union of Concerned Scientists) call season of dangerwe saw a lot of heat events and wildfires in the (southwest),” Declet-Barreto said. “Rescue helicopters could not fly rescuing motorcyclists in Death Valley because it was too hot”, almost 130º F.)

Because humans have failed to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissionsThese conditions are only going to get worse in southwestern states like Arizona.

A sign shows the current temperature above 100 degrees on June 5, 2024 in Phoenix, Arizona. According to the National Weather Service, Phoenix will experience record temperatures of over 100 degrees as a high pressure pattern builds over the region. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)Even people without serious health problems suffer from intense heat. Jackie Grinder, a 48-year-old marketing professional who lives in central Phoenix, told Salon that she has “seen things getting hotter and hotter and has seen how little, if anything, the cities here have done to combat it or help.” citizens face it. In fact, they have contributed to it by doing nothing more than adding more concrete, removing vegetation, and allowing utilities to raise prices over and over again to the point where you can pay $500 to $700 a month just to maintain your house. a little below 80. in the summer.”

Grinder added that each year has seen less rain, more dust and skyrocketing electricity rates as residents try to stay cool.

“This is a ticking time bomb and no one is doing anything about it,” Grinder said. “Meanwhile, citizens pay taxes and suffer.”

The ticking clock may be more noticeable in the Southwest because it already experiences very high temperatures for much of the year, but there it has no limits. Peter W. Reiners, professor of geosciences at the University of Arizona, explained that this region is not actually warming faster than certain parts of the American Northeast and Alaska.

“The kind of temperature we normally associate with extreme heat (dry bulb temperature) is only part of the story and may be misleading us about where the worst warming threat really is,” Reiners said. “Although there is some debate about whether dry or humid heat (as measured by wet-bulb temperature) will kill more people in our warming world, it is clear and ‘scary as hell’ that high wet-bulb temperatures have the potential to cause large areas of the world (areas where enormous numbers of people now live) to be uninhabitable most of the time.”

From the northeast to the southwest and large areas in between, extreme heat will test human adaptability to its limits.

“The human cost and threat of massive geopolitical disruption due to its increasing frequency and intensity is a truly terrifying prospect,” Reiners said. “Even in the US, I think the fact that many areas of the country are projected to experience many more days of dangerous heat per year, as measured by wet bulb temperature, is underestimated. (They) are not in the Southwest, but in the Southeast, the East Coast and much of the Midwest.”

But people can still adapt to the rising heat. Reiners noted that narrow streets tend to reduce the amount of heat people experience, trees and vegetation can cool the environment through “evapotranspiration”At the same time that you provide shade and paint roofs and materials white, you increase the albedo (sunlight reflected in the space), so people there experience less heat. However, these mitigation measures cannot achieve much; Short of reducing carbon emissions, there is no way to turn back the clock on heat.

Similarly, it would be a mistake to assume that people can simply escape climate change by avoiding obviously hot areas like the Southwest. As Reiners noted, Climate change will affect you It doesn’t matter where you live.

“There is a danger of channeling all of our (very well-founded and legitimate) anxiety about climate change into some kind of comfort by disparaging the supposedly more ignorant people who live in places with extreme heat,” Reiners said. “The smug sense that only people in places like Phoenix are susceptible to the dangers of global warming is simply wrong. As climate disasters and wildfires fueled by warming increase around the world (and just look at Vermont, North Carolina, Canada as a few examples) it should become abundantly clear that there is no refuge from climate change.”

Materna understands this very well. She has already seen how her quality of life has changed because of the heat.

“There are laws that prohibit walking pets when temperatures reach 95 degrees,” Materna said. “Outdoor time is limited for students when it is too hot. Most people here have learned to avoid going outside during those hot days. You acclimatize. Find a friend who has a pool and carry water everywhere.”

He added: “My heart goes out to those who are homeless, as there is little to no relief when those temperatures rise.”