EDITORIAL
Unlivable Heat:
Product of Capitalism

Sep 2, 2024

The world is going through one of the hottest summers on record. We just experienced the hottest June, and July 2024 was a close second behind July of last year.

Summer 2024 is also on track to become the most humid summer on record, in the U.S. and the world (hotter air can hold more moisture). Experts are warning that heat and humidity, combined, are pushing some parts of the world to the limits of survivability.

The effect of heat on the human body is cumulative—the body does not begin to recover until the temperature drops below 80 degrees. That’s why heat waves and sustained high temperatures are so dangerous. August 25 was the 91^st consecutive day in Phoenix where the temperature reached 100 degrees or more, making this city unlivable without A/C units running day and night—if you can afford the electric bill.

And people are already dying from extreme heat. In Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, 175 deaths were linked to heat in June, an 84-percent increase from June 2023. In 2023, the hottest year on record so far, there were at least 2,325 heat-related deaths in the U.S.—certainly an undercount, since many heat-related deaths are listed under other causes.

Then there are all those disasters fueled by heat—like the huge, fast, uncontrollable wildfires in the West, the powerful floods in the South that sweep away entire towns, and the smoke from Canadian wildfires that covers cities hundreds of miles away, like New York and Detroit. In 2020, during a 30-day streak of wildfires in Northern California, doctors reported a 43-percent increase in strokes and other cardiovascular illnesses in the region.

In many parts of the world, especially the underdeveloped world, it’s even worse, because there is less infrastructure there to provide people some measure of relief from extreme heat and weather-related disasters.

Climate change is here, there is no escape from it. Such a deep, global crisis requires a response at the level of the whole world, so that human beings can survive. But don’t expect that response under capitalism.

At the simplest level, when it’s extremely hot, you need cooling to survive. But under capitalism, it’s left to each family to find a way to cool its home. Perhaps buy an A/C unit. In underdeveloped parts of the world, a big majority of the population can’t afford that.

But in this country also, millions of people don’t have access to A/C for various reasons: landlords don’t provide it, electricity is expensive so people don’t turn it on—or, more and more commonly, utility companies simply cut off electricity because their grids, lacking upgrades and maintenance, are not able to sustain large power loads.

With surging temperatures and heat waves, that can be a death sentence for tens of thousands of people. But for the rest of us also, a life indoors 24/7, sustained by A/C—is this the kind of life we want?

The capitalist system, which organizes the economy to make individual profit-making easier, has no interest in organizing the whole society to protect human beings from peril—not even in the face of the deepest crises. Not from COVID, for example, which has killed over 1.2 million people in the U.S., and over 7 million globally. And not from climate change either.

It is workers who get sick, and die, from extreme heat in fields, factories and homes. It is in our interest to make sure everybody can survive the heat, so that we and our families can survive also. It is in our interest to make sure everyone has access to A/C when temperatures become unbearable—or to make sure that people in the hottest regions could be relocated.

But society also needs to address the underlying causes of climate change. Society needs to take effective measures to curb the emission of greenhouse gases in industry and transportation. Car engines should be built more efficiently, so that they produce less pollution. Reliable and efficient mass transit systems need to be built.

Scientists and engineers know how to begin to address these problems, and they can develop solutions. But the capitalist class, which today controls society’s resources, has never provided the funding necessary for such research. The capitalist class is interested only in its own profit.

But it doesn’t mean we are powerless against these crises. We can turn things around. The power to do that lies with the working class.

Organized together as a class, the working class can address and solve the crises facing the whole society, including extreme weather—if it wrests the power from the capitalist class and uses its control over society to make humane choices.