Extreme Heat Bakes US, Disproportionately Affecting Latinos
More than 100 million people in the U.S. were under excessive heat warnings or advisories Thursday as extreme heat broiled communities from California to Texas to South Carolina to Maine, with the dangerous temperatures expected to last through the weekend. Climate change, mainly caused by the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels is making extreme heat and heatwaves hotter and more frequent. The extreme heat disproportionately burdens Latinos, Axios reports, as there are large Latino populations in states with a history of dangerous power outages, and because Latinos comprise a majority of the country's farmworkers and day laborers. In one of those states, Texas, extreme heat is pushing the electrical grid beyond the most extreme expectations, breaking all-time demand records 11 times so far this year. Even in the most extreme scenario ERCOT, the state's grid manager, originally said there was just a 5% chance demand would ever exceed 80,000 MW this summer — it's already happened seven times, and it's still only July.
(Heatwave: Washington Post $, CNN, ABC, The Guardian, Reuters, The Hill, Axios, Democracy Now; Latino impact: Axios; Texas grid: Houston Chronicle)
(Climate Signals background: Extreme heat and heatwaves)
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