WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned voters in the battleground state of North Carolina that they could lose jobs if Republicans weaken a signature Biden administration law that encourages investments in manufacturing and clean energy.
Yellen said that Republican-dominated states like North Carolina are greatly benefiting from tax incentives under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and that eliminating them would be a “historic mistake,” in a Thursday speech a community college in Raleigh.
North Carolina has emerged as a key battleground this election cycle between Republican former President Donald Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, where Trump ultimately won North Carolina in the 2020 presidential election.
Yellen said Treasury data shows that 90,000 North Carolina households claimed more than $100 million in residential clean energy credits and $60 million in energy efficiency credits.
“Rolling them back could raise costs for working families at a moment when it’s imperative that we continue to take action to lower prices,” Yellen said. “It could jeopardize the significant investments in manufacturing we’re seeing here and across the country, along with the jobs that come with them, many of which don’t require a college degree. And it could give a leg-up to China and other countries that are also investing to compete in these critical industries.”
“As we see clearly here in North Carolina, this would be a historic mistake,” she said.
Some Republicans have called on their leaders to reconsider repealing IRA energy tax incentives.
“Prematurely repealing energy tax credits, particularly those which were used to justify investments that already broke ground, would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing,” the letter reads. “A full repeal would create a worst-case scenario where we would have spent billions of taxpayer dollars and received next to nothing in return.”
But Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, tweeted on social media site X that the lawmakers who signed the letter want to “preserve so-called ‘green’ handouts to Democrats’ corporate cronies.”
“The GOP must ignore K-Street lobbyists and refuse to fund the climate corporate cronies destroying our country,” he said.
The Republican case against the Inflation Reduction Act hinges on the argument that the spending is wasteful and benefits China.
IRS data released in August states that 3.4 million American families have claimed $8.4 billion in residential clean energy and home energy efficiency tax credits in 2023 — mostly towards solar panels and battery storage.
DETROIT – General Motors is folding its all-electric BrightDrop commercial vans into the Chevrolet brand in an attempt to increase sales, accessibility and recognition of the vehicles.
The change is expected to expand the selling and service points from a handful of dealers to Chevrolet’s large network of North American dealers, including more than 500 commercial-focused stores in the U.S., according to Sandor Piszar, vice president of the GM Envolve fleet business in North America.
“It’s got that strength of the Chevrolet brand behind it,” he told CNBC. “It’s absolutely going to drive volume. It helps our customers that choose to go into EVs to easily do so working with the Chevrolet dealer they know and trust now for their other fleet needs.”
The number of new dealers will be based on the amount that decide to opt in to selling and servicing the vans. To sell commercial EVs, dealers must have specific vehicle lifts, service bays and employee training, among other things.
GM declined to disclose the average cost for a dealer to become certified to sell the BrightDrop products, citing expenses will vary based on the store.
BrightDrop currently sells two all-electric commercial vans, called the Zevo 400 and Zevo 600, which are used for things such as package delivery. Starting later this year with the 2025 model year, those vans will be rebranded as Chevrolet BrightDrop 400 and 600 vans.
“Chevy’s our top-selling fleet brand for General Motors.” Piszar said. “This makes absolute perfect sense for GM Envolve and Chevrolet.”
The Thursday announcement is the latest change for BrightDrop, which GM launched in 2021 as a fully owned subsidiary before folding it into the company’s fleet business last year.
GM had high expectations of making BrightDrop into a new, lucrative growth business for the automaker, but sales and revenue are not believed to have met the company’s initial expectations.
BrightDrop was expected to generate $1 billion in revenue in 2023. GM declined to disclose BrightDrop’s revenue, but it’s highly unlikely the target was achieved.
The automaker only sold about 500 BrightDrop vans in 2023. GM reports BrightDrop’s sales through the first six months of 2024 were 746 units.
The vans are produced at GM’s CAMI Assembly plant in Ingersoll, Ontario.
The company I work for recently built a new ticket office at the base of Buttermilk Mountain in Aspen, Colorado. Environmentally, we killed it: argon-gas-filled windows, super-thick insulation and comprehensive air sealing, 100% electrification using heat pumps instead of gas boilers. All within budget.
Yet one of the first comments we received was from a famous energy guru: “Nice building. But why do you have a heating system at all?” Or more simply put: “Why didn’t you build a perfect building, instead of just a really good one?”
Solving climate change could depend on how we answer that question. My answer: Society needs the Prius of buildings, not the Tesla X.
The green building movement didn’t originate only from a desire to protect the environment. It often had elements of the bizarre ego gratification that trumped practicality.
Recall “Earthships” that used old tires and aluminum cans in the walls. Geodesic domes were interesting looking but produced inordinate waste to build. They also leaked. Rudolf Steiner’s weirdly wonderful Goetheanum was an all-concrete structure designed to unite “what is spiritual in the human being to what is spiritual in the universe.”
Early practitioners such as Steiner, Buckminster Fuller, and Bill McDonough, among others, were often building monuments, whose ultimate goal became the concept of “net zero.” Net zero was a building that released no carbon dioxide emissions at all.
Designers achieved that goal by constructing well-sealed, heavily insulated, properly oriented, and controlled buildings–but then they did something wasteful. They added solar panels to make up for carbon dioxide emissions from heating with natural gas. The approach zeroed out emissions, but at extraordinary cost that came in the form of added labor, expense and lost opportunity.
While net zero wasn’t a good idea even when most buildings were heated with natural gas, the rapid decarbonization of utility grids — happening almost everywhere — and advances in electrification make the idea downright pointless.
Instead, all you need to build an eventual net zero building is to go all-electric. It won’t be net zero today, but it will be net zero when the grid reaches 100% carbon-free power. So, all that really matters is that building codes require 100% electrification.
Yet many communities remain focused on that sexy goal of net zero, and therefore include requirements for solar panels, or “solar ready” wiring. Even apart from the issue of cost, many utilities don’t need rooftop solar because they increasingly have access to huge solar arrays, giving them more electricity than they need in peak times.
What utilities really need is energy storage and smart management.
That means home batteries and grid integration that allows utilities to “talk” to buildings and turn off appliances during peak times. The problem is that environmentalists haven’t evolved: Just like we can’t retire our tie-dyes, we think “green” means rooftop solar panels.
My company’s Buttermilk building passes the only test that matters: “If everyone built this kind of structure, would it solve the built environment’s portion of the climate problem?” The answer for our building is “yes.”
Still, aspirational monuments matter. We need the Lincoln Memorial, the Empire State Building. But if we’re going to solve climate change in buildings, which is about a third of the total problem, new structures will have to reconceive what we consider efficient and beautiful. And it doesn’t have to break the bank.
Electrification, for example, is getting cheaper every year. Years ago, I served on an environmental board for the town of Carbondale in western Colorado. The overwhelming interest there was ending dandelion spraying in the town park. But at one point, we worked on a building.
After a long conversation about the technical tricks and feats we could pull off, a Rudolf Steiner disciple named Farmer Jack Reed said: “We should also plant bulbs in the fall so colorful flowers blossom in the spring.” “Why?” I asked, stuck in my own technocratic hole. He said: “Because flowers are beautiful and they make people happy.”
So, too, are realistic solutions as we adapt to climate change.
Auden Schendler is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, an independent nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is senior vice president of sustainability at Aspen One. His book, Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul, comes out in November.
MADRID (AP) — In her new music video, Katy Perry pretends to be one of the thousands of tourists having the time of their lives on Spain’s Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean. But some parts, filmed in a protected natural enclave, could bring trouble.
The regional government is investigating the video for her latest song, “Lifetimes,” for the clips in which the 39-year-old American singer and songwriter appears jumping and running across dunes of the Ses Salines Natural Park, a protected area on the islands of Ibiza and Formentera, apparently without permission.
The images taken on the dunes of the private islet of S’Espalmador, “one of the most ecologically valuable sites on the islands” and in an area cordoned off from the public with sticks and ropes, sparked the controversy, according to local media.
The regional authorities have opened “preliminary investigation proceedings,” according to a statement released Tuesday, after the production company failed to apply for the appropriate permits. The filming wouldn’t have been an environmental offense, because this type of production can be authorized with a permit, the department of natural environment added.
Her label, Universal Music, said the local video production company had assured it that all necessary permits for the video were secured. When it learned one permit was still being processed, “we were given verbal authority to go ahead” a day before the shoot, which took place July 27, a label spokesperson said in an email to The Associated Press.
“We adhered to all regulations associated with filming in this area and have the utmost respect for this location and the officials tasked with protecting it,” the statement said.
The video, directed by Colombian-American photographer and director Matías Vasquez, Stillz, shows Perry sailing, swimming or clubbing on the islands, one of the most popular and crowded tourist resorts in the Spanish Mediterranean, especially during the summer.
Perry’s new album “143” will be released on Sept. 20.
NEW YORK, August 26, 2024 (Newswire.com)
– Climate Cardinals, one of the world’s largest youth-led climate organizations, has appointed Hikaru Wakeel Hayakawa as its first full-time Executive Director. Hayakawa is a founding director of the organization, which strives to expand access to climate education globally.
Hayakawa is a 23 year-old Guyanese and Japanese American climate justice activist from the New York Metropolitan Area. He has been with Climate Cardinals for four years, starting as a founding Partnerships Director in 2020 before taking on the role of Vice President and Deputy Executive Director in 2023. During his tenure, he established Climate Cardinals’ translation program, secured 30 partnerships, including with Translators Without Borders and Google Cloud, and managed over two million words of climate information translations. He also fundraised half a million USD and mentored 30 Directors.
Hayakawa led all of this work as a full-time student at Williams College and a visiting student at Exeter College at the University of Oxford, where he studied History and Environmental Studies with a focus on the global Indigenous rights movement.
In response to this announcement, Climate Cardinals Founder Sophia Kianni shared, “I’m excited to welcome Hikaru as our first full-time Executive Director. For those of you who know our work, this is not a surprise. I have consulted Hikaru as part of my decision-making processes since the beginning of Climate Cardinals, when he joined my founding team.”
Kianni is the founder of Climate Cardinals and was its first Executive Director, volunteering in this role since the organization’s formation in May 2020. Climate Cardinals was born out of Kianni’s realization that there is a lack of valuable climate information, especially scientific research, available in languages other than English. Kianni will remain President of Climate Cardinals.
“I’m excited to lead this organization in our aim to become one of the first youth-led and justice-focused environmental legacy organizations,” said Hayakawa.
Since 2020, Climate Cardinals has been a trailblazer in expanding climate accessibility, translating over three million words of climate information into 105 languages for organizations like Yale, UNESCO, and UNICEF. Over the past few years, Hayakawa has defined Climate Cardinals’ impact, and with his transition to this full-time role, he is set to accelerate the organization’s growth.
On a hot summer day in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, dozens of men removed pipes, asbestos and hazardous waste while working to decontaminate a nuclear facility and prepare it for demolition.
Dressed in head-to-toe coveralls and fitted with respirators, the crew members toiling in a building without power had no obvious respite from the heat. Instead, they wore armbands that recorded their heart rates, movements and exertion levels for signs of heat stress.
Stephanie Miller, a safety and health manager for a U.S. government contractor doing cleanup work at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, watched a computer screen nearby. A color-coding system with little bubbles showing each worker’s physiological data alerted her if anyone was in danger of overheating.
“Heat is one of the greatest risks that we have in this work, even though we deal with high radiation, hazardous chemicals and heavy metals,” Miller said.
As the world experiences more record high temperatures, employers are exploring wearable technologies to keep workers safe. New devices collect biometric data to estimate core body temperature – an elevated one is a symptom of heat exhaustion – and prompt workers to take cool-down breaks.
The devices, which were originally developed for athletes, firefighters and military personnel, are getting adopted at a time when the Atlantic Council estimates heat-induced losses in labor productivity could cost the U.S. approximately $100 billion annually.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
But there are concerns about how the medical information collected on employees will be safeguarded. Some labor groups worry managers could use it to penalize people for taking needed breaks.
“Any time you put any device on a worker, they’re very concerned about tracking, privacy, and how are you going to use this against me,” said Travis Parsons, director of occupational safety and health at the Laborers’ Health and Safety Fund of North America. “There’s a lot of exciting stuff out there, but there’s no guardrails around it.”
VULNERABLE TO HEAT
Wyatt Fischer, a furnace mason employee at Cardinal Glass, sits on an excavator while wearing a SlateSafety armband, Thursday, Aug. 22, 2024, in Menomonie, Wis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)
FILE – Construction worker Fernando Padilla wipes his face as he works in the heat on June 30, 2023 in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV, File)
At the Tennessee cleanup site, the workers wearing heat stress monitors made by Atlanta company SlateSafety are employed by United Cleanup Oak Ridge. The company is a contractor of the U.S. Department of Energy, which has rules to prevent on-the-job overheating.
But most U.S. workers lack protections from extreme heat because there are no federal regulations requiring them, and many vulnerable workers don’t speak up or seek medical attention. In July, the Biden administration proposed a rule to protect 36 million workers from heat-related illnesses.
From 1992 to 2022, 986 workers died from heat exposure in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Experts suspect the number is higher because a coroner might not list heat as the cause of death if a sweltering roofer takes a fatal fall.
Setting occupational safety standards can be tricky because individuals respond differently to heat. That’s where the makers of wearable devices hope to come in.
HOW WEARABLE HEAT TECH WORKS
Employers have observed workers for heat-related distress by checking their temperatures with thermometers, sometimes rectally. More recently, firefighters and military personnel swallowed thermometer capsules.
“That just was not going to work in our work environment,” Rob Somers, global environment, health and safety director at consumer product company Perrigo, said.
Instead, more than 100 employees at the company’s infant formula plants were outfitted with SlateSafety armbands. The devices estimate a wearer’s core body temperature, and a reading of 101.3 degrees triggers an alert.
Another SlateSafety customer is a Cardinal Glass factory in Wisconsin, where four masons maintain a furnace that reaches 3000 degrees Fahrenheit.
“They’re right up against the face of the wall. So it’s them and fire,” Jeff Bechel, the company’s safety manager, said.
Cardinal Glass paid $5,000 for five armbands, software and air-monitoring hardware. Bechel thinks the investment will pay off; an employee’s two heat-related emergency room visits cost the company $15,000.
Another wearable, made by Massachusetts company Epicore Biosystems, analyzes sweat to determine when workers are at risk of dehydration and overheating.
“Until a few years ago, you just sort of wiped (sweat) off with a towel,” CEO Rooz Ghaffari said. “Turns out there’s all this information packed away that we’ve been missing.”
Research has shown some devices successfully predict core body temperature in controlled environments, but their accuracy remains unproven in dynamic workplaces, according to experts. A 2022 research review said factors such as age, gender and ambient humidity make it challenging to reliably gauge body temperature with the technology.
The United Cleanup Oak Ridge workers swathed in protective gear can get sweaty even before they begin demolition. Managers see dozens of sensor alerts daily.
Laborer Xavier Allison, 33, was removing heavy pieces of ductwork during a recent heat wave when his device vibrated. Since he was working with radioactive materials and asbestos, he couldn’t walk outside to rest without going through a decontamination process, so he spent about 15 minutes in a nearby room which was just as hot.
“You just sit by yourself and do your best to cool off,” Allison said.
The armband notifies workers when they’ve cooled down enough to resume work.
“Ever since we implemented it, we have seen a significant decrease in the number of people who need to get medical attention,” Miller said.
COLLECTING PERSONAL DATA
United Cleanup Oak Ridge uses the sensor data and an annual medical exam to determine work assignments, Miller said. After noticing patterns, the company sent a few employees to see their personal physicians, who found heart issues the employees hadn’t known about, she said.
At Perrigo, managers analyze the data to find people with multiple alerts and speak to them to see if there’s “a reason why they’re not able to work in the environment,” Somers said. The information is organized by identification numbers, not names, when it goes into the company’s software system, he said.
Companies keeping years of medical data raises concerns about privacy and whether bosses may use the information to kick an employee off a health plan or fire them, said Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“The device could hurt, frankly, because you could raise your hand and say ‘I need a break,’ and the boss could say, ‘No, your heart rate is not elevated, go back to work,’” Schwartz said.
To minimize such risks, employers should allow workers to opt in or out of wearing monitoring devices, only process strictly necessary data and delete the information within 24 hours, he said.
Wearing such devices also may expose workers to unwanted marketing, Ikusei Misaka, a professor at Tokyo’s Musashino University, said.
A PARTIAL SOLUTION
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health advises employers to institute a plan to help workers adjust to hot conditions and to train them to recognize signs of heat-related illness and to administer first aid. Wearable devices can be part of efforts to reduce heat stress, but more work needs to be done to determine their accuracy, said Doug Trout, the agency’s medical officer.
The technology also needs to be paired with access to breaks, shade and cool water, since many workers, especially in agriculture, fear retaliation for pausing to cool off or hydrate.
“If they don’t have water to drink, and the time to do it, it doesn’t mean much,” Juanita Constible, senior advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. “It’s just something extra they have to carry when they’re in the hot fields.”
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This story corrects the spelling of Natural Resources Defense Council in last paragraph.
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Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo contributed to this report.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A 10-foot-long python was discovered in a vehicle during a bust of an illegal sideshow in the San Francisco Bay Area that attracted hundreds of people, authorities say.
The Vallejo Police Department said officials received multiple calls around 11:12 p.m. Friday of a sideshow involving roughly 500 vehicles in that bay area city. Drivers were blocking traffic, beaming lasers into the eyes of other motorists, and spinning their vehicles, according to a police statement.
The occupants of a Cadillac shined a laser into officers’ eyes, prompting the police to initiate a traffic stop, police said. But the driver led police on a 10-mile (16-kilometer) chase to the city of Hercules, where the driver and three occupants bailed out of the vehicle.
Inside the vehicle, police found the 10-foot (3-meter) python. The driver was arrested on multiple charges, including felony evading. The passengers received misdemeanor citations.
Vallejo is about 30 miles (5-0 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.
Moqadi Mokoena had been feeling uneasy all day. When he’d left his home on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa, for his job as a security guard, he’d had to turn around twice, having forgotten first his watch and then his cigarettes. He had reason to be nervous. His supervisor had assigned him to join a squad protecting an electrical substation where, just two days earlier, four other guards had been stripped naked and beaten with pipes by gun-wielding thieves. Now, on this day in May of 2021, Mokoena and a fellow guard were at that substation, peering tensely through their truck’s windshield as a group of armed men approached.
Mokoena pulled out his phone and called his wife, the mother of their 1-year-old daughter. He told her about the gang coming toward him. “I’m feeling scared,” he said. He didn’t have a gun himself. “I think they are the same ones who attacked our colleagues.”
“Call your supervisor!” she told him.
Minutes later, the men opened fire with at least one automatic weapon. Mokoena’s partner jumped out of the vehicle but was cut down by bullets. A third nearby guard dove for cover, shot back at the thieves, then ran for help. When he returned with the supervisor, they found Mokoena and his partner dead. Police later said the criminals made off with about $1,600 worth of copper cable.
“We face these dangers every day,” the surviving guard later told a local journalist. “You don’t know if you’ll return home when you leave for duty.”
In most places, power companies are a pretty dull business. But in South Africa they are under a literal assault, targeted by heavily armed gangs that have crippled the nation’s energy infrastructure and claimed an ever-growing number of lives. Practically every day, homes across the country are plunged into darkness, train lines shut down, water supplies cut off, and hospitals forced to close, all because thieves are targeting the material that carries electricity: copper.
The battle cry of energy transition advocates is “Electrify everything.” Meaning: Let’s power cars, heating systems, industrial plants, and every other type of machine with electricity rather than fossil fuels. To do that, we need copper—and lots of it. Second to silver, a rarer and far more expensive metal, copper is the best natural electrical conductor on Earth. We need it for solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles. (A typical EV contains as much as 175 pounds of copper.) We need it for the giant batteries that will provide power when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. We need it to massively expand and upgrade the countless miles of power cables that undergird the energy grid in practically every country. In the United States, the capacity of the electric grid will have to grow as much as threefold to meet the expected demand.
A recent report from S&P Global predicts that the amount of copper we’ll need over the next 25 years will add up to more than the human race has consumed in its entire history. “The world has never produced anywhere close to this much copper in such a short time frame,” the report notes. The world might not be up to the challenge. Analysts predict supplies will fall short by millions of tons in the coming years. No wonder Goldman Sachs has declared “no decarbonization without copper” and called copper “the new oil.”
As the energy transition gathers speed, the value of copper has also soared. In the past four years, the price of a ton of copper has shot from about $6,400 to more than $9,000. That, in turn, has made electrical wiring, equipment, and even raw metal fresh from the mines into juicy targets for thieves. All around the world, hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of the metal has been stolen—and countless lives have been lost. With the possible exception of gold, no other metal has caused so much death and destruction.
2024 has been hot. Like, record-breaking hot. Heat waves have affected every corner of the country and led to a wild July, which clocked in as the hottest month ever. This isn’t a new trend, either; the ten warmest years on record have all occurred during the last decade.
That’s not to say that hot weather isn’t enjoyable. Heat can be a welcomed change from the gloomy cold and rain of the winter. Spending a day at the beach, sipping some lemonade, and adventuring in nature are all much more fun in the warm summer sun. But it’s important to be prepared.
So whether you like cool weather and are looking for places to avoid, or love it hot and sunny and want some recommendations, Redfin has compiled a list of the hottest cities in the U.S. to help. Read on to discover if one of them is right for you.
How we measure the hottest cities
For our purposes of determining the “hottest” cities, this list will measure a city’s average summer temperature. This way, we can account for cities that see very hot summers but also have cooler winters, instead of favoring tropical locations that are warm year-round.We will also be including a city’s average annual temperature, but won’t use it for ranking purposes.
An average summer temperature combines a city’s average daily high and low temperatures from June-August. An average annual temperature combines a city’s average daily high and low temperatures from January-December.
Keep reading to see Redfin’s rankings of the hottest cities in the U.S. with a population of 100,000 or more.
Phoenix is the hottest city in the U.S. due to its extreme summer temperatures. The city gets so hot because of its location in the rapidly warming Sonoran Desert, incredible amount of sunny days, and the urban heat island effect. And it’s getting warmer. The average daily summer temperature in 2023 was 95.2°F, well above the 30-year average.
Heat has been center stage and widespread this year. And as of mid-August 2024, Phoenix has experienced an unprecedented 87 consecutive days with temperatures reaching at least 100°F, breaking the previous record of 76 days set in 1993. This extreme heatwave is expected to continue into late August and likely beyond. Phoenix is also one of the fastest warming cities in the U.S., with nearly 80% of properties facing extreme heat risk.
This new reality is forcing the city to adapt to a new normal of unbearable summer heat. Some recent measures to adapt have included expanding the use of cool pavement – a reflective street coating that helps reduce surface temperatures – and improving Phoenix’s Urban Tree and Shade Program. The city aims to cover 25% of the city with shade by 2030, using increased tree planting to naturally cool the environment and enhance livability.
Officially the sunniest city in the world, Yuma, AZ, is the second-hottest city in the U.S. Located in the heart of the Sonoran Desert, Yuma sees similar trends to Phoenix, with slightly hotter high temperatures and cooler low temperatures. The average summer low In Yuma is about 2°F cooler than Phoenix, which is why its daily average temperature is lower.
Yuma is also a bit more humid than other desert cities because it’s only 90 miles from the warm Gulf of California. This can make heat stress slightly worse.
Yuma is known for its agriculture, especially its lettuce and other summer vegetables that are difficult to grow in the winter. In fact, winters in Yuma are known for being sunny and pleasant, and the winter harvesting season is a beloved annual tradition.
An entertainment oasis in the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas is the third-hottest city in the country. Temperatures in Las Vegas are slightly cooler than Phoenix and Yuma, primarily because it’s farther north. It still gets very hot, though, and it’s been warming rapidly, especially at night. An additional month of 100°F temperatures are anticipated by 2050.
People have been experiencing this heat firsthand, too. 2024 has been exceptionally hot for most of the Southwestern U.S., but especially so Las Vegas. Sin City saw seven consecutive days of high temperatures above 115°F and three days above 118°F, both records. A temperature of 120°F was recorded during the heatwave, which broke the all-time record by an astonishing 3°F.
Las Vegas has also seen remarkable growth in the past 20 years. In fact, the metro’s population has nearly doubled since 2000, in part because it has been a top migration destination for people searching for warm, sunny weather.
McCallen is a melting pot of culture in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley. It’s also incredibly hot, boasting the hottest summers in Texas. McCallen gets so hot because of its southern latitude, proximity to the Chihuahuan Desert, and warming influence of the Gulf of Mexico. This makes humidity a major issue, compounding the effects of already extreme heat.
Like most cities, heat has been on display in McCallen in 2024. It began in Spring, with 115°F heat indexes (what the temperature actually feels like) in early May, and continued into July and August. The heat index reached a dangerous 124°F in July (100°F with 81% humidity), and remained very high in August.
Texas has warmed exceptionally quickly, with 2023 bringing the second-hottest year in the state’s history. 2024 is shaping up to be similarly hot. Relentless stretches of 100°F temperatures are common across the state and average temperatures sit 6-12°F above normal. In fact, in the past ten years, there have been 1,000 more days of record-breaking heat than in a typical decade.
Situated along the banks of the Rio Grande, Laredo is the fifth-hottest city in the U.S. Laredo sees very similar temperatures to its southern counterpart, McCallen, but with less humidity and slightly cooler summers. Laredo’s location on the hot, dry plains leaves plenty of room for heat waves to take hold, though, and extremely hot temperatures are common.
Like many cities in Texas, Laredo saw a record-breaking summer in 2023, with July posting the hottest month in the city’s history. 2024 brought little relief.
Brownsville, TX, is the sixth-hottest city in the country. Located on the warm Gulf Coast just north of Mexico and only a few hundred miles from Chihuahuan Desert, Brownsville benefits from both warm winters and hot summers. It’s more mild than many of the inland cities on the list, which is why it’s just number six.
Brownsville saw a record-hot year in 2023, with an especially hot summer. This warmth continued into 2024, with heat waves impacting the Rio Grande Valley in the spring and through the summer. The entire Gulf Coast baked for weeks, in part because the Gulf of Mexico has experienced record-high temperatures.
Tucson, known as the Old Pueblo for its 10,000-year long native history, is the seventh-hottest city in the country. The city is situated in the Sonoran Desert and gets very hot, but it’s actually about five degrees cooler than Phoenix and sees nearly four more inches of rain. This is because the city sits about 1,500 feet higher in elevation and is nestled among five small mountain ranges. The fall and spring are the best times to experience the city’s beauty.
Summer monsoons are common, and heat waves can be long and dangerous. In July 2024, Tucson logged two record-breaking days in a row, reaching 111 and 112. However, heat in Tucson is generally less dangerous than cities in the Salt River Valley to the north.
San Antonio is the eighth-hottest city in the country. The city is so hot because of its flat landscape, proximity to the warm and humid Gulf Coast, and heat waves from Mexico. The urban heat island effect is also a major factor.
San Antonio’s heat has been on display this year. The heat began in earnest in May, when the city saw a week of 95°F+ days. Then, in June, the heat index reached 117°F for an all-time record. San Antonio managed to escape more excessively hot temperatures until August, when a record-breaking heatwave pushed temperatures past 100°F for a week.
So far, this year’s heat doesn’t stack up to 2023, though, which saw 75 days above 100°F and will likely become the norm in the near future. 100 degree days are now three-times more common than they were 30 years ago.
College Station, located between Austin, Waco, and Houston, has a fairly similar climate to all three cities. It’s less humid than Houston, a bit hotter than Austin, and further south than Waco, giving it the number nine spot. Heat from the Gulf of Mexico and Mexico proper provide most of the heat, made worse by frequent southerly winds. The flat landscape means heat has no trouble flowing in.
As with most other Texas cities, August 2024 was very hot. Heat indexes of 110°F led to heat warnings and advisories for a lot of the month.
Adjacent to Fort Worth, Dallas is known for its football, cowboy culture, and great barbecue. It’s also a very hot city. The heat comes from southerly winds from Mexico and the Gulf, leading to wet, muggy air that central and southern Texas is known for.
The summer of 2023 was record-breaking. 2024 has been hot, but not nearly as hot. So far this year, the city has reached 94°F in February, a daily record, and matched historic highs in June. An August heatwave was even hotter, mirroring trends seen across the southern U.S.
Death Valley National Park is the hottest place in the U.S. The desert basin has an average summer temperature of 101.3°F (which includes low temperatures) and an average summer high of 114.8°F. And recently, the average temperature in July 2024 was 108.5°F – the hottest month ever recorded.
Not only is Death Valley the hottest place in the country, but it’s also seen the hottest temperatures on earth. The national park hit 134.0 degrees in 1913, which is recognized as the hottest temperature in history (although this has been disputed). It’s also seen the world’s second-hottest temperature of 130 degrees in 2021 (unverified), along with several similar highs recently.
The reason the desert gets so hot is because it sits around 280 feet below sea level and has some of the highest barometric pressure in the world. Higher pressure leads to more energy, which results in hotter air. The nearby mountains also trap the air, acting as a furnace.
How are temperatures changing?
2023 was the hottest year in history, and the past 14 months have been the hottest on record, capped off by a historic July. The effects of this heat have been widespread, often in the form of intense, long-lasting heat waves – the deadliest form of extreme weather.
Due to global warming and climate change, research shows that temperatures will get hotter more frequently across the globe, including the U.S., which will likely make some locations uninhabitable to humans within the next 50-80 years without extreme reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Tropical areas and places closer to warm water are most at risk of unbearable heat due to their higher humidity, which leads to extremely high heat indexes. This is why Southeastern and Eastern U.S. cities have the highest heat risks in the country. The Southwest isn’t far behind, either. In fact, 100% of properties in every city on this list have a major or greater heat risk.
Methodology
This list contains average annual temperature data for major cities with over 100,000 residents.
Data comes from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) and its parent administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Average summer temperatures are a three-month average based on data from June-August 1991-2020. Average annual temperatures are a twelve-month average based on data from 1991-2020.
NAPLES, New York (AP) — An organic seed company with national reach has surprised its supporters by announcing it will end sales and give hundreds of varieties away, declaring “we can no longer commodify our beloved kin, these seeds, or ourselves.”
The Cocozelle zucchini, now $14.25 per 100 seeds? No charge. Catnip, kale, the rampant mint? All free.
Petra Page-Mann and Matthew Goldfarb, the couple who run Fruition Seeds in upstate New York, said they’re letting go workers, stopping sales on Aug. 27 and relying on public goodwill — donations of money, talent and effort — to grow and distribute seeds on a $76,000 budget.
That’s a dramatic shift for a company with a budget of over $1 million in 2022 and a profile high enough that it’s among a handful of seed companies featured in the New York Botanical Garden’s shop.
“The call is simple enough: Seeds are gifts. Gifts are shared,” the couple said in a long and searching announcement weeks ago. They’ve thought about barriers to access and what they call the indignity of the dollar. Burnout, too, played a role. “We’re weaving a new fabric together, Friends.”
As ripe apples plunked into the grass at their farm in the hilly Finger Lakes region, and workers pounded together a bunkhouse for the volunteers who’ll now be crucial, Page-Mann and Goldfarb were open about not having all the answers.
Their parents are “terrified,” said Goldfarb, 48. “I’m concerned you’re freeloading, I’m concerned you’re gonna become a liability to this community,” he recalled friends and family saying. “And I think the potentially hard thing for people to hear is, yes, that’s actually how this is gonna work.” In a way.
Next year, instead of shipping seed packets, they plan to give away seeds by hosting events and visiting cities around the Northeast. It’s a radical extension of their work with seed libraries, seed swaps and community harvests.
The move has inspired some and bewildered others in their green village of Naples, where cyclists zip past produce stands and Black Lives Matter signs. Elsewhere, some customers have said they’re too far away to get Fruition’s seeds without shipping and will look to other sources.
The announcement noted Fruition’s decision during the COVID-19 pandemic to face painful economic losses and make their online growing courses, featuring the exuberant Page-Mann, 40, free for all. There was joy in giving.
A greenhouse shows past work with the garlic harvest at Fruition Seeds. (AP Photo/Cara Anna)
Now they hope others feel the same. They have begun listing their own needs, from financial donations and legal expertise to items like printer paper and Mason jars. “I trust, like air, what is present – though not yet visible – will carry us all,” Page-Mann wrote.
The Fruition founders said they were inspired in part by friend and mentor Adam Wilson, who runs a farm in Keeseville, New York, that he describes as an “experiment in neighborly farming and feeding,” with all food and events offered as gifts.
“And he’s still alive,” Goldfarb said.
But Fruition has been a much larger endeavor, partnering with nearby Cornell University and a number of growers in the region and as far away as Oregon and Idaho.
“They embark on an agri/cultural experiment many times the scale of the work here,” Wilson wrote after the announcement. “I am shaking with excitement, but also a tinge of responsibility.”
Already, Cornell has told Fruition that some of the seed varieties they had agreements for must be returned to Cornell or destroyed, Goldfarb told supporters last month. Conversations with the university continue.
Goldfarb and Page-Mann aren’t saying others should stop selling seeds. They’re looking into forming a nonprofit. They admire the collective work of the not-too-far-away Amish and Mennonite communities. But there is no definite plan.
“We’ll have different answers tomorrow. I hope,” Goldfarb said.
About 40% of the seeds that Fruition has sold have been produced by partners. One of them, Daniel Brisebois with Tourne-Sol farm in Canada, said he was excited to see what would happen now. Others didn’t respond.
Page-Mann and Goldfarb said the most excruciating part of their decision was taking it without the collective consent of their 12 employees.
“Simultaneously they were very gracious, like, ‘This makes sense for you and your lives,’ and also, ‘This sucks,’” Page-Mann said.
One worker told the AP that while they respect where Fruition’s founders are coming from, “so far this transition feels like a big missed opportunity to learn how to minimize harm in the process of trying to transform systems, especially harm toward workers.” The worker, who is looking for new work, spoke on condition of anonymity.
At the bunkhouse under construction on the Fruition farm, local mushroom producer David Colle, 49, said the thinking behind the transformation — a purpose bigger than the individual — drew him to help build.
Some in the community have said, “I won’t do business with these people anymore,” Colle said, but “you have to have people willing to explore the edges to learn what’s possible.” He’s as curious about Fruition’s future as anyone. He’s given away mushrooms but doesn’t see how to do it full time and still pay the bills.
And he wasn’t completely volunteering his time. “I need money,” he said, sweating in the afternoon heat, and acknowledged: “We’re all walking paradoxes.”
NEW YORK (AP) — A tiny South American deer that will weigh only as much as a watermelon when fully grown is making its debut at the Queens Zoo in New York City.
The southern pudu fawn weighed just 2 pounds (just under 1 kilo) when it was born June 21, the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs New York City’s zoos, said in a news release Thursday. It is expected to weigh 15 to 20 pounds (7 to 9 kilograms) in adulthood.
The southern pudu, one of the world’s smallest deer species, is listed as near threatened by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. It is native to Chile and Argentina, where its population is decreasing because of factors including development and invasive species.
The Queens Zoo breeds southern pudus in collaboration with other zoos in an effort to maintain genetically diverse populations, the conservation society said. Eight pudu fawns have been born there since 2005.
The newborn fawn will share a Queens Zoo habitat with its parents. There are two more pudus at the conservation society’s Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn.
WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump on Saturday repeatedly swerved from a message focused on the economy into non sequiturs and personal attacks, including thrice declaring that he was better looking than Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump wound back and forth between hitting his points on economic policy and delivering a smattering of insults and impressions of President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron as he held a rally in northeastern Pennsylvania.
The former president has seemed to struggle to adjust to his new opponent after Democrats replaced their nominee. Over the past week, he has diverged during campaign appearances away from the policies he was billed to speak about and instead diverted to a rotation of familiar attack lines and insults.
As he attacked Democrats for inflation at the top of his speech, Trump asked his crowd of supporters, “You don’t mind if I go off teleprompter for a second, do you? Joe Biden hates her.”
Joseph Costello, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, responded to Trump in a statement by saying, “Another rally, same old show” and that Trump “ resorts to lies, name-calling, and confused rants,” because he can’t sell his agenda.
“The more Americans hear Trump speak, the clearer the choice this November: Vice President Harris is unifying voters with her positive vision to protect our freedoms, build up the middle class, and move America forward — and Donald Trump is trying to take us backwards,” Costello said.
Trump’s rally in Wilkes-Barre was in a swath of a pivotal battleground state where he hopes conservative, white working-class voters near Biden’s hometown of Scranton will boost the Republican’s chances of winning back the White House.
His remarks Saturday came as Democrats prepare for their four-day national convention that kicks off Monday in Chicago and will mark the party’s welcoming of Harris as their nominee. Her replacement of Biden less than four months before the November election has reinvigorated Democrats and their coalition. It has also presented a new challenge for Trump.
Trump hammered Harris on the economy, associating her with the Biden administration’s inflation woes and likening her latest proposal against price gouging to measures in communist nations. Trump has said a federal ban on price gouging for groceries would lead to food shortages, rationing and hunger. On Saturday asked why she hadn’t worked to solve prices when she and Biden were sworn into office in 2021.
“Day one for Kamala was three and a half years ago. So why didn’t she do it then? So this is day 1,305,” Trump said.
To address high prices, Trump said he would sign an executive order on his first day sworn in as president “directing every cabinet secretary and agency head to use every power we have to drive prices down, but we’re going to drive them down in a capitalist way, not in a communist way,” he said.
He predicted financial ruin for the country, and Pennsylvania in particular, if Harris wins, citing her past opposition to fracking, an oil and gas extraction process commonly used in the state. Her campaign has tried to soften her stance on fracking, saying she would not ban it, even though that was her position when she was seeking the 2020 presidential nomination.
“Your state’s going to be ruined anyway. She’s totally anti-fracking,” Trump said.
What to know about the 2024 Election
But he also meandered, going from ripping the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 to doing impressions of Macron’s French accent.
Trump laced in attacks on Harris’ laugh and said she was “not a very good wordsmith” and mocked the names of the CNN anchors who moderated the debate he had with Biden in June.
When he began musing on Harris’ recent image on the cover of Time magazine, he commented on the picture’s resemblance to classic Hollywood icons Sophia Loren and Elizabeth Taylor and then took issue with a Wall Street Journal columnist remarking earlier this month on Harris’ beauty.
“I am much better looking than her,” Trump said, drawing laughs from the crowd. “I’m a better looking person than Kamala.”
He also took issue with the way his style is typically portrayed in news reports.
“They will say he’s rambling. I don’t ramble. I’m a really smart guy,” he said.
Trump’s Saturday rally was his fifth at the arena in Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in Luzerne County, where he has had victories in the past two elections. Biden bested Trump in neighboring Lackawanna County, where the Democrat has long promoted his working-class roots in Scranton.
On Sunday, Harris plans a bus tour starting in Pittsburgh, with a stop in Rochester, a small town to the north. Trump has scheduled a visit Monday to a plant that manufactures nuclear fuel containers in York. Trump’s running mate JD Vance is expected to be in Philadelphia that day.
Some of Biden’s loyal supporters in Scranton, a former industrial city of 76,000, were upset to see party leaders put pressure on the president to step aside.
Diane Munley, 63, says she called dozens of members of Congress to vouch for Biden. Munley eventually came to terms with Biden’s decision and is now very supportive of Harris.
“I can’t deny the enthusiasm that’s been going on with this ticket right now. I am so into it,” Munley said. “It just wasn’t happening with Joe, and I couldn’t see it at the time because I was so connected to him.”
Robert A. Bridy, 64, a laborer from Shamokin, Pennsylvania, traveled on Saturday to the rally to show support for Trump. He said the election feels tight in this state and added that his union and a close friend are trying to convince him to vote for Harris and other Democrats, but he has voted for Trump since 2016.
Bridy called Trump a “working class guy like us.” Trump is a billionaire who built his fortune in real estate.
“He’s a fighter,” Bridy said. “I’d like to see the closed borders. He doesn’t mess around. He goes at it right away and takes care of business the way it should be.” ___
Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Darlene Superville in Arlington, Virginia contributed to this report.
The world’s two hottest days on record happened in July and 2024 is on track to be the warmest yearever. Heat waves are more frequent, have been more acute, and often arrived earlier than anticipated. Factor in humidity, and extreme weather is already testing the limits of the human body. More than 1,300 people died during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia in June as temperatures reached about 52C (126F), while heat-related fatalities have also been recorded this year in locations including the US, Thailand, India and Mexico. Parts of Europe — where high temperatures contributed to over 47,000 deaths in 2023 — remain on alert for more extreme conditions this summer.
What makes extreme heat so dangerous?
There are many reasons. People are more likely to dehydrate in high temperatures, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke. Heat can worsen breathing problems, especially in places with elevated pollution levels. Heat stress makes it harder for people to work and increases the likelihood of injuries. It’s hard to know exactly how many people die from heat each year; most go uncounted. Europe likely experienced 61,672 deaths attributable to heat in 2022, though that number potentially underestimates the actual total, according to a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health. Emerging economies suffer more than developed ones, as there tends to be little respite from the sun; most people work outside and few have effective cooling at home. Concrete and asphalt in urban settings can trap the heat, increasing overnight temperatures and contributing to heat stress. Women and seniors have been found in studies to be the populations most affected by extremely hot weather.
How is extreme heat measured?
Forecasters are increasingly using measures of heat stress and discomfort — like humidex, heat index or apparent temperature — to understand the health risks posed by high temperatures. “Wet-bulb” is one of these measures. It accounts for the effects of humidity, which makes it harder for the human body to cool itself by sweating. For example, 42C with 40% humidity — think Phoenix, Ariz., in July — has a wet-bulb temperature around 30C. A lower temperature of, say, 38C, but with higher humidity of 80%, will give a wet-bulb reading around 35C. That’s high enough to trigger heatstroke even for healthy people with unlimited shade and water, and has already started to appear in coastal subtropical regions. In reality, shade and water are often limited, and heat can kill at much lower wet-bulb temperatures. A 2020 study published in the journal Science found regions affected by the 2003 European and 2010 Russian heat waves, which proved deadly for thousands, experienced wet-bulb values no greater than 28C.
How are wet-bulb temperatures measured?
Originally by wrapping a wet cloth around the bulb of a thermometer. Scientists would record the level after moisture’s vaporization cools it down, the way the body cools down by sweating. Now, wet-bulb temperatures are measured using electronic instruments at weather stations, with further studies of hot spots assisted by satellite data from sources including NASA and the International Space Station. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US also developed a tool to forecast a more advanced metric of heat stress, the wet-bulb globe temperature, which factors in wind speed, sun angle and cloud cover.
Where is this a problem?
Traditionally, heat and humidity have been highest in South Asia and subtropical climates. Some places in India have notched wet-bulb temperatures higher than 32C; the UN predicts it will be one of the first countries to surpass a wet-bulb temperature of 35C. Planetary warming and the impact of the El Nino weather pattern mean there’s a high chance temperature and humidity records will be set this year across a sweep of regions straddling the equator, including Florida, Texas, much of Africa, India, Australia, and Central and South America, according to the University of California, Berkeley. Increasingly, typically temperate places are also seeing incredibly hot days. The UK registered a record of 40.3C in July 2022, though relatively low humidity kept the wet-bulb temperature around 25C. Barcelona experienced its hottest ever day in late July. In the US, heat alerts covered about half the population on Aug. 1, the World Meteorologial Organization said. Japan, Greece, Hungary and Croatia were among nations to experience their warmest July on record.
What is the economic impact of heat?
In places with extreme heat, every aspect of life becomes more challenging, and inequalities become more acute, especially in cities. But even cooler places feel the effects, typically through higher food and energy prices. Coffee prices this year surged to a 45-year high as persistent heat and drought exacerbated a supply crunch in Vietnam, the world’s largest robusta producer. Dry conditions in Russia this year prompted analysts to cut wheat production forecasts, and supply of crops including rapeseed and chickpeas also remains susceptible to the impact of heat. Previous El Niños resulted in a marked impact on global inflation, adding 3.9 percentage points to non-energy commodity prices and 3.5 points to oil, according to Bloomberg Economics modeling. Power consumption also rises during peak heat, straining the grid and consumers’ pockets as prices jump. Natural gas prices advanced this summer as consumers grappled with blackout risks; Egypt, typically an exporter of the fuel, resorted to buying LNG amid higher demand. Heat also exacerbates drought, adding further stress to hydropower and nuclear power production. Extreme temperatures pose an increasing threat to outdoor activities, disrupting events including concerts, religious gatherings, and sporting events.
How is extreme heat related to climate change?
A new branch of science, extreme event attribution, connects global warming to severe episodes of weather with a degree of specificity. Heat waves are most directly linked to humanity’s greenhouse gas pollution. And heat, along with dryness and wind, fuels forest fires, which is why scientists are now confident that climate change is exacerbating wildfires in the western US, Australia and elsewhere. (The US fire season is two months longer than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.) Global warming is making tropical cyclones — also called hurricanes or typhoons — more intense. Warmer water and moister air — two results of global warming — provide added fuel to such storms, such as the record-breaking Hurricane Beryl in July that raged through parts of the Caribbean and US. In India and Pakistan, extreme heat is 30 times more likely due to a changing climate.
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WAYNESBORO, Ga. (AP) — Georgia’s largest nuclear plant declared an emergency alert Tuesday after an electrical transformer caught fire.
The fire, described as small by Georgia Power Co. spokesperson John Kraft, broke out about noon and could have threatened the electrical supply to the heating and cooling system for the control room of one of the complex’s two older nuclear reactors, Vogtle Unit 2.
The fire was put out by plant employees, Georgia Power officials said, and the alert ended just after 2:30 p.m. The cause of the fire hasn’t yet been determined, Kraft said.
Dave Gasperson, a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson, said the fire was contained and did not affect any of the plant’s operating systems, and a backup power system remained available for the heating and cooling system. Gasperson said the commission’s onsite inspector monitored the situation and the commission, a federal agency which oversees nuclear power plants, is determining whether additional follow-up inspections are needed.
Officials said the fire caused no injuries and didn’t threaten the safety or health of employees or members of the public. All four of the nuclear reactors onsite continued to produce electricity at full power, Kraft said.
An alert is the second-least serious category of emergency out of four categories designated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, an agency that oversees nuclear power plants. That category could reduce a plant’s level of safety but isn’t supposed to affect the public. The plant returned to normal operations after terminating the alert.
Georgia Power said workers are coordinating recovery with federal, state and local officials. Georgia Power owns the plant along with partners Oglethorpe Power Corp., Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia and Dalton city utilities. It supplies electricity to almost all Georgians, as well as some utilities in Florida and Alabama.
The two older nuclear reactors were completed in 1987 and 1989. If they lose primary electricity from the outside grid, as well as backup electricity from a diesel generator, the reactors can overheat and melt down. A diesel generator was never needed Tuesday, Kraft said.
Vogtle’s two newer nuclear reactors are designed to avoid a meltdown from a power loss. Those reactors were completed this year and are the first new reactors built from scratch in the United States in decades. They cost the owners $31 billion, finishing seven years late and $17 billion over budget. Add in $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid Vogtle owners to walk away from construction, and the total nears $35 billion.
Brandi Schmitt and her family pose for a 2018 Christmas card in front of their Maryland home wearing protective gear, alluding to the water and mold damage in their home. Each year, Schmitt said they try to capture the family’s situation through their Christmas card.
Courtesy: Brandi Schmitt
When a nor’easterstruck in 2018, intense winds blew shingles, gutters and siding off Brandi Schmitt’s home in Lothian, Maryland.
Her family waswithout electricity for three days, during which time all of their food in the refrigerator spoiled and water continued to leak into the home, Schmitt said.
As soon as the power came back on, Schmitt said she called her insurance company, USAA, to report the damage.
An adjuster visited the home a week later, anddetermined the 5,000-square-foot roof needed a total replacement. While she and the insurer debated points of the claim, Schmitt said, the unrepaired damage allowed snow and water from subsequent storms that spring to seep through into her home.
An independent specialist found no mold in the home on May 2018, according to a “review for fungal activity” investigation documents USAA provided to Schmitt that CNBC reviewed. Then in October, a follow-up investigation found and “observed visible moisture and an increased moldy odor.”
In the intervening months, Schmitt and her family had developed health issues, including rashes and coughs. Their yellow Labrador and four guinea pigs all died within months of each other.
An immunoglobulins test result from November 2018 provided to CNBC by Schmitt shows high levels of antibodies in her blood from exposure to aspergillus niger, a common mold.
“I called [USAA] and said, ‘Are you going to wait for it to kill us?’” Schmitt said.
The family moved out of the house for good that same month.
Despite paying for extra “fungus, wet or dry rot” coverage of up to $15,000 in her policy, Schmitt said USAA did not remove wet insulation from the attic where she believes the mold is growing. Air samples in the home taken in January 2020 found “problem mold concentrations,” according to fungal activity review documents USAA provided to Schmitt.
Schmitt and her husband, Joseph, sued the insurer in 2019. A unanimous jury on March 7, 2023, determined USAA materially breached the terms of their homeowner policy and awarded Schmitt $41,480 for interior repairs and $7,200 for additional living expenses. She is currently appealing the damages because of estimates that repairs will cost much more.
A spokesperson from USAA said the company is unable to address specifics due to that ongoing litigation, but said “USAA disagrees with the facts as characterized by Ms. Schmitt.” In a response to the suit filed in a Maryland court in March 2020, an attorney for USAA said the insurer did not breach its contractual obligations and the Schmitt family failed to mitigate damages.
Schmitt’s example may be extreme, but mold damage is not unusual. In 2022, water damage, including mold, represented 27.6% of homeowners insurance losses, according to data from Insurance Services Office, an industry group. And experts say these kinds of damages could become more prevalent as severe weather events, especially windstorms and flooding, become more common or more powerful.
Repairing mold damage is expensive and often left out or limited in homeowners policies, which can leave consumers without much help to cover a pricey problem.
Mold limitations and exclusions in policies became the industry norm after rulings in several high-profile lawsuits. One Texas case, Ballard v. Farmers Insurance Group, in 2001 initially resulted in a $32 million jury verdict, sending shock waves through the insurance industry. Despite the award for the owner of the mold-damaged home later being reduced to $4 million, companies still pulled back on mold coverage.
“We called it at the time a mold stampede,” said Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that advocates on behalf of consumers. Schmitt shared her experience with the group as she sought help with her claim.
“One carrier after another said, ‘We’re capping it, we’re limiting it,’” Bach said.
We called it at the time a mold stampede. One carrier after another said, ‘We’re capping it, we’re limiting it.’
Amy Bach
Executive director of United Policyholders
Along with high-profile lawsuits, the high cost of repairs, uncertainty around health outcomes and memories of hefty asbestos payouts drove insurers to exclude and limit mold coverage, experts say.
“That unknown risk of the development of losses over long periods of time, that’s the risk that the consumer is transferring to the company, and that’s why it’s so regulated,” said KPMG U.S. insurance sector leader Scott Shapiro.
Will Melofchik, general counsel for the National Council of Insurance Legislators, said the organization’s members haven’t come across an increase in mold claims specifically.
“As long as customers can get the coverage they need somewhere in the market, carriers should have the ability to exclude things as long as the exclusion is clear and customers are aware of it,” Melofchik said.
Today, standard homeowners policies typically do not cover mold, fungus, wet or dry rot, unless that damage is the result of a covered peril, according to Insurance.com. (In policies, you’re likely to see it referenced as “fungus, or wet or dry rot” coverage. Mold is a type of fungus.)
Homeowners may need to add a rider to their policy to cover removal of mold stemming from other circumstances, like water backup or hidden water damage.
Many of those changes took hold swiftly after the 2001 Ballard verdict. A 2003 whitepaper from the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, notes that “seeking to avoid becoming the next Texas, some 40 state insurance departments have now approved mold exclusions and/or limitations on homeowners insurance policies.”
Still, mold exclusions and limitations can come as a surprise to policyholders, according to Bach.
“Consumers reasonably expect coverage when there is property damage to their home,” she said. “And mold can clearly cause physical damage to the property that it comes in contact with.”
Unless the mold damage is a result of a sudden, covered peril — such as a bursting pipe or water heater flooding your basement — homeowners insurance typically won’t cover it, said Scott Holeman, media relations director for the III.
“In cases where mold has been around for a while, say several weeks or longer, it likely won’t be covered by your policy,” Holeman said. “Mold claims won’t be covered if it’s a result of neglect, such as pipe leaking for months resulting in water damage and mold.”
Peter Kochenburger, a visiting professor at the Southern University Law Center and professor at the University of Connecticut’s Insurance Law Center, says the policy language can be “convoluted.”
“You should always read your insurance policy and understand what you have, but no one’s going to do that,” Kochenburger said. “I do this for a living, look at insurance policies, and this is not easy.”
Insurance is regulated at the state level, which can cause additional confusion if some states have specific limitations and others don’t, he said. For example, in South Carolina, where hurricanes and flooding are common, there are no homeowner policies that cover all instances of mold, according to South Carolina Independent Agents. Instead, it’s determined by the peril.
Each company’s coverage is also different.
For example, USAA includes limited coverage — $2,500 for cleanup and $2,000 for additional living expenses — for mold resulting from a covered loss for no additional premium in most states, the company said in a statement. USAA also offers optional coverage beyond the standard policy in some states.
Nationwide covers up to $10,000 of mold damage caused by covered incidents, but that limit cannot be increased, according to a company spokesperson.
Of a sample of anonymized home insurance-related complaints made about Allstate and Nationwide, 8% were mold related, according to data provided to CNBC by the Federal Trade Commission through the Freedom of Information Act. CNBC requested complaints about “home insurance” for a sampling of some of the largest property and casualty insurance companies, including Allstate, Nationwide and State Farm. State Farm had no mold-related complaints.
Most complaints focused on insurers limiting coverage on mold, but a few people mentioned seeing consequences when it came time to renew their policy. One policyholder in Lindsey, Ohio, said Allstate chose not to renew their policy in 2020 because they made a mold claim the year prior.
“Any limitations in terms of non-renewal do vary by state and are part of the regulatory framework,” Shapiro said. “Generally speaking, insurance companies do have the right to not renew you for any number of reasons, including prior loss history, which is often a trigger event.”
A Nationwide spokesperson said the company does not comment on individual claims. An Allstate spokesperson did not respond directly to a request for comment about the complaints, but directed CNBC to the III. Mark Friedlander, director of corporate communications at the III, said the volume and frequency of claims activity can be one of the reasons insurers choose not to renew a policy.
Insurance experts and attorneys recommend carefully reviewing the details of your insurance policy and consulting a professional to make sure you understand what’s included in the coverage.
Shapiro said insurers assessing future risk aren’t homing in on mold specifically yet, but it falls under the macro-issue of how climate will impact insurance, which the industry is tracking closely.
“There will be a limit to what insurance companies can do where society needs to come and assist with either affordability, incentivizing behavior, changing behavior, and that, in our view, doesn’t fall exclusively on an insurance company,” he said.
Six years after the nor’easter struck, the Schmitt home still sits uninhabited.
Schmitt and her family return to stay at the home occasionally so it’s not considered vacant or abandoned — and she said she still gets sick during those brief visits.
“During all this process, we never got to enjoy this house,” Schmitt said. “My husband and I have been together for many years and working really, really hard to be able to afford a home like this.”
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Tourists visiting Copenhagen this summer are encouraged to participate in unusual kinds of vacation fun, including plucking floating trash from the Danish capital’s waterways, cycling to museums instead of going by car, or volunteering at an urban garden.
All these activities are part of a new, four-week pilot project called CopenPay that rewards tourists for “climate-friendly actions.”
“We must turn tourism from being an environmental burden into a force for positive change,” said Mikkel Aarø-Hansen, the CEO of tourist board Wonderful Copenhagen, which runs the scheme.
“We want visitors to make conscious, green choices and hopefully end up getting even better experiences while they visit,” Aarø-Hansen said in a statement earlier this month.
Among the over 20 attractions participating in the project is the environmental non-profit organization GreenKayak which offers water tours for tourist volunteers. They can paddle through Copenhagen’s 17th-century waterways aboard green-colored kayaks, plucking floating trash from the water. The reward? A free two-hour litter-picking cruise. One main sailing lane heads out to the Baltic Sea.
“When you are in the ocean, you get invested in the ocean. So, I hope that that will keep inspiring people to not leave trash in the ocean,” Elisabeth Friis Larsen, a spokeswoman for GreenKayak, told The Associated Press.
Elsewhere, tourists can trim flower beds, harvest coriander or feed chickens at Oens Have urban garden, then stay for a complimentary lunch. Or get free ice cream if they cycle or take public transport to the country’s National Museum instead of going by taxi or rental car to reduce emissions.
Visitors to SMK, Denmark’s National Gallery, can attend workshops where they’re taught how to transform plastic waste into jellyfish sculptures.
“The whole idea was that people should bring their own plastic waste. And out of that, the children will build a jellyfish,” explained workshop leader, artist Susanne Brigitte Lund.
Copenhagen’s climate-friendly vacationers’ project — which began on July 15 and is set to wrap up on August 11 — comes as the world’s top destinations are grappling with the burdens of mass tourism. Copenhagen also gets its fair share of tourists with more than 12 million overnight stays last year.
Amid demonstrations and protestors firing water pistols at visitors, Barcelona City Hall announced last month that it would not renew any tourist apartment licenses after they expire in 2028.
Italy’s Venice recently extended a pilot program charging day trippers a five-euro ($5.45) entrance fee to the fragile lagoon city.
And the town of Fujikawaguchiko recently constructed a large black screen to block the view of Japan’s iconic Mount Fuji. The reason: misbehaving foreign tourists.
On a recent busy summer weekend, tourists thronged Copenhagen’s historic Nyhavn harbor area, as sightseeing ferries squeezed down its narrow waterway, packed with smartphone-snapping passengers.
Tourist Fiona Veira from northwest Spain said the CopenPay scheme is a “really good idea,” but only if visitors have the time.
“It depends how long you’re going to stay in the city. But if you’re here for more than two days then yeah,” she said. “It’s also a really nice way of seeing, interacting with the city.”
Veira was aware of the city’s climate-supporting programs, but did not participate in any of them because she was visiting Copenhagen for one day only and didn’t have enough time.
Many others, however, admit to leaving their green principles at home, once summer holidays come around.
“I think about it when I’m at home, but when I travel, I do think about convenience more,” said Caroline Kranefuss from Boston.
University of Copenhagen researcher Berit Charlotte Kaae said the CopenPay scheme is interesting because it “puts some action to the concept of sustainability.”
“It’s interesting to give this hands-on experience,” she said. But In order to address the true environmental problems of mass tourism, tourism authorities must look to the source — transportation.
“We need to work more on aviation fuels, maybe better train service, to avoid the short distance flights,” she said.
Northern Florida, the coastal regions of Georgia and South Carolina and parts of North Carolina are bracing for severe rain and catastrophic flooding this week as the Debby storm system moves up and east.
Debby made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane on the Big Bend coast of Florida early Monday, first hitting the small community of Steinhatchee. It damaged homes and businesses, sent floodwaters rising, caused sweeping power outages across the state and Georgia and led to several fatalities. Debby was downgraded to a tropical storm midday Monday.
But experts say the worst is yet to come as the storm system is expected to stall over the Southeast region.
How much rain is expected?
Forecasters say the system could pummel the Southeast with widespread areas of up to 20 inches (51 centimeters) of rain and some totaling up to 30 inches (76 centimeters).
That would be a record-setting rainfall, shattering the record from a tropical system in 2018’s Hurricane Florence. More than 23 inches (58 centimeters) of rain was recorded in South Carolina after that storm hit the Carolinas.
Although Debby was classified as a Category 1, “It really is worthy of a Category 3 or 4 rating, if you want to talk about rainfall impacts,” said Jeff Masters, founder of Weather Underground, now with Yale Climate Connections. “That’s going to cause a lot of damage.”
What areas are at risk?
Northern Florida as well as low-lying areas including Savannah, Georgia, and Hilton Head Island and Charleston, South Carolina, are expected to see the most severe flooding. North Carolina could also be impacted.
Officials in Savannah warned the area could see a month’s worth of rain in four days if the system stalls. There were also flooding concerns for Tybee Island, Georgia’s largest public beach 18 miles (28.97 kilometers) east of Savannah. On top of any torrential downpours that Debby dishes out, the island could get even wetter from 2 to 4 feet of storm surge, according to the National Hurricane Center.
“We don’t know how much rain is going to fall. But we have to prepare for the worst,” Hilton Head Island Mayor Alan Perry said on a video posted to Facebook. “If that happens, we will see an event we have never seen on Hilton Head before.”
Meanwhile, Charleston County Interim Emergency Director Ben Webster called Debby a “historic and potentially unprecedented event” three times in a 90-second briefing Monday morning.
Few places in South Carolina are as susceptible to flooding as Charleston. Much of the city and surrounding areas founded in 1670 were built on land created by using fill dirt and other debris. Rising sea levels cause a number of minor flooding events even without a storm and like many coastal cities, Charleston can’t drain well.
The city doesn’t expect a massive amount of flooding from the ocean, but the storm is still dangerous. Heavy rain can back up into the city, also causing flooding.
What’s causing this storm to stall?
Some hurricanes make landfall and move quickly, experts say, while others slow substantially.
“Really what happened, and why the storm has stalled, is because there’s basically high pressure areas to the west of the storm and to the northeast, and that’s kind of pinned the storm,” said Phil Klotzbach, senior research scientist at Colorado State University’s Department of Atmospheric Science. “With a hurricane you always have wind problems, but when you have a storm moving at 3 to 5 miles an hour, it’s going to be over any specific location for a very long period of time, so flash flooding and just tremendous rainfall totals are going to be very likely.”
Experts say the warming atmosphere plays a role in the severity of storm surges such as Debby.
Warming water in the northeast Gulf of Mexico is increasing Hurricane Debby’s heavy rains, as more moisture evaporates from the waters, Masters said. Some research says climate change can impact the forward motion of hurricanes, he added, making them go slower.
“It’s something we’ve been seeing more of lately,” Masters said.
How long could this last?
The worst of the rain is expected during the first half of the week, but it could last through Saturday, forecasters said.
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St. John reported from Detroit. Jeffrey Collins contributed from Columbia, South Carolina. Russ Bynum contributed from Savannah, Georgia.
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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate solutions reporter. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
TOKYO (AP) — Nissan showed Tuesday what it called a “cool paint” to keep people inside vehicles cooler, although the coating is six times thicker, making commercialization still a challenge.
Nissan Motor Co. tested the paint on vehicles scuttling around Tokyo’s Haneda airport, where there are plenty of unshaded areas that make it a good place to assess the technology.
The vehicles with the special paint looked like ordinary cars, but felt much cooler to the touch.
The cool paint lowered the cars’ roof-panel temperature by 12 degrees Celsius (22 degrees Fahrenheit) and the interiors by 5 C (9 F), according to Nissan.
Toyota Motor Corp. has also been experimenting with paint that delivers lower cabin temperatures, mostly focusing on colors that refract the sun’s rays.
Nissan’s cool paint reflects sunlight better and also creates electromagnetic waves that block the rays, redirecting energy away from vehicles.
Nissan’s paint was developed with Radi-Cool of China, which developed a film, fabric and coating that cut heat. Radi-Cool works with various other Japanese companies, offering cooler-feeling hats and sun parasols. Nissan is the only Japanese automaker partnering with Radi-Cool.
Susumu Miura, a Nissan Research Center manager, said there were no discernable negative effects to people’s health from the electromagnetic waves emitted by the paint. Such waves are all around us, he said.
“My dream is to create coolers cars without consuming energy,” he said.
SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. (AP) — A fast-moving wildfire that swept into a Southern California hillside community this week destroyed five homes and damaged three others, authorities said Tuesday.
The flames erupted Monday afternoon and chased residents from the neighborhood in San Bernardino, about 60 miles (97 kilometers) east of Los Angeles,
One firefighter was treated for a minor injury but there were no reports of injuries to residents, said Eric Sherwin, spokesperson for the San Bernardino County Fire Department.
“How quickly this fire hit this community,” Sherwin said, “the fact that we have no civilians injured is truly a miracle.”
The fire was reported at 2:40 p.m. Monday and stopped progressing about three hours later after scorching 54 acres (22 hectares). Containment was holding at 75%, Sherwin said. All evacuations were lifted late Tuesday morning.
Investigators were working to determine the cause of the fire, which erupted amid very dry and hot conditions that have made swaths of California quick to burn this summer.
In Northern California, firefighters battled the reawakened Park Fire, a massive blaze that re-exploded Monday after several days of slumber and grew by as much as 20 square miles (53 square kilometers), mostly in about 12 hours.
The Park Fire, California’s largest so far this year and the state’s fourth-largest on record, had already scorched nearly 647 square miles (1,676 square kilometers) by Tuesday morning.
Firefighters were told during their morning briefing to focus on safety and to be mindful of extreme fire behavior including intense and rapidly moving flames.
The Park Fire was allegedly ignited by arson on July 24 outside the Sacramento Valley city of Chico, and has destroyed 640 structures and damaged 52.
PARIS (AP) — A test run meant to allow Olympic athletes to familiarize themselves with the marathon swimming course in the Seine River was canceled Tuesday over concerns about water quality in the Paris waterway.
World Aquatics made the decision to cancel the exercise at an early morning meeting, the organization said in a statement. Fluctuating bacteria levels in the long-polluted waterway have been a constant concern throughout the Games with the swimming portion of the triathlon and the marathon swimming events both planned in the river.
Another marathon swimming test event is scheduled for Wednesday, and organizers will decide early that morning whether it will go forward, the statement said. The women’s marathon swim competition is set for Thursday, while the men are scheduled to race Friday.
The cancellation of Tuesday’s marathon swimming test event comes a day after the triathlon mixed relay event was held in the river that runs through the center of the French capital. World Triathlon released data Tuesday showing that when the triathletes swam Monday, the levels of fecal bacteria E. coli and enterococci were within acceptable levels for the length of the triathlon relay course.
The swimming portion of the triathlon and the marathon swim both start and finish at the Pont Alexandre III, but the marathon swimming course extends farther down the river. Marathon swimmers do six laps on the 1.67-kilometer (1 mile) course for a total of 10 kilometers (6.2 miles.)
Water samples drawn early Monday showed E. coli levels ranging from “good” to “very good” at four collection points in the river, World Aquatics said.
It takes longer to cultivate enterococci samples, so the decision to cancel Tuesday’s test run relied on samples taken Sunday, organizers said. Monday’s enterococci levels were available by midmorning Tuesday and while they showed an improvement in the river’s water quality, one of four tests still fell short of World Aquatics standards.
Under both World Aquatics and World Triathlon guidelines, “good” water quality can include up to 1,000 colony-forming units of E. coli per 100 milliliters and up to 400 colony-forming units of enterococci per 100 milliliters.
A sample taken early Monday at Port du Gros Caillou, which is on the marathon swimming course but is beyond the point where triathletes turned around Monday, showed a level of 436 units of enterococci, data released Tuesday show.
Organizers said they “remain confident” that the marathon swimming events will happen in the Seine as planned based on “a favorable weather forecast and forward-looking analysis.”
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who took a highly publicized swim in the Seine last month to allay fears about water quality ahead of the Olympics, echoed that confidence.
“We will of course wait to get the results of the water quality but the event will take place because there’s been a clear improvement of the weather these past few days,” she said. “So I’m really proud and happy and to all those who want to continue saying it’s impossible to depollute a river, I tell them, ’Yes it’s possible, we did it.’”
With a few exceptions, swimming in the Seine has been prohibited since 1923 because the water has been too toxic. Paris undertook ambitious plan, including 1.4 billion euros ($1.5 billion) in infrastructure improvements to ensure that some swimming events could be held in the river. That included the construction of a giant basin to capture excess rainwater and keep wastewater from flowing into the river, renovating sewer infrastructure and upgrading wastewater treatment plants.
Belgium’s Olympic committee announced that it would withdraw its team from the mixed relay triathlon at the Paris Olympics after one of its competitors who swam in the Seine River fell ill.
Water quality in the Seine is closely linked to the weather. Heavy rains can cause wastewater and runoff to flow into the river, resulting in elevated bacteria levels, while warm temperatures and the sun’s ultraviolet rays can kill the germs and lower levels.
Four triathletes — of the more than 100 who competed in the men’s and women’s individual races last week — became sick in the following days, though it’s unclear whether the water was to blame.
Most strains of E. coli and enterococci are harmless, and some live in the intestines of healthy people and animals. But others are dangerous and even a mouthful of contaminated water can cause infections in the urinary tract or intestines. Several factors determine whether a person falls ill after exposure, chief among them a person’s age and general health.
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Associated Press video journalist Masha Macpherson contributed to this report.
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