Opinion: It’s Time for NYC to Appoint a Heat Czar

Heat is an infrastructure predicament an economic challenge a program obstacle a locality concern and a healthcare difficulty It requires a coordinated approach on all these fronts An open fire hydrant in Brooklyn during a heat wave Photo by Jeanmarie Evelly New York summers are hot On average the city annually weathers days with temperatures above degrees Fahrenheit But setting change is heating our planet at an alarming rate making our city s heat waves hotter longer and more frequent The New York City Panel on State Change projects that in the next years we are likely to experience on average between and days above degrees Fahrenheit By in the worst-case scenario we could see as plenty of as The city s built circumstances magnifies hot weather This phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect increases urban temperatures from degrees Fahrenheit up to degrees Fahrenheit higher than suburban and rural settings The effect is particularly pronounced in densely built areas with limited green space and high concentrations of heat-absorbing surfaces function d u ac var s d createElement 'script' s type 'text javascript' s src 'https a omappapi com app js api min js' s async true s dataset user u s dataset campaign ac d getElementsByTagName 'head' appendChild s document 'u kmqsczew vunxutxmd' But heat exposure is unequal and highly inequitable According to the city s Heat Vulnerability Index low-income communities of color bear disproportionate heat burdens in neighborhoods undermined by historical disinvestment and environmental injustice Summer heat is a threat to community medical heat is the leading cause of climate- and weather-related death nationwide Unlike natural disasters such as floods heat hazards are invisible making extreme heat an often underestimated silent killer Around New Yorkers die each summer due to heat-related causes with Black New Yorkers twice as likely to succumb to heat mortality than white residents Heat requires short-term emergency measures to protect residents during heat waves heat response and long-term strategies to cool a city heat mitigation and prevention In Miami-Dade County Florida officers appointed the world s first chief heat officer CHO and Phoenix Arizona opened an office of Heat Response and Mitigation That same year leaders in Athens Greece appointed the first CHO in Europe Since then the United Nations and half a dozen cities worldwide have followed suit It is time for New York City to do the same In the Mayor s Office of Atmosphere and Environmental Justice MOCEJ published the Cool Neighborhoods NYC plan a coordinating vision for citywide heat response The plan deserves a heat czar The plan s mandate encompasses multi-agency programs with several critical responsibilities coordinating heat mitigation across city agencies ensuring equitable fund distribution and integrating heat response into broader state strategy But this plan is not the extent of the city s heat responses Our research shows that in city cabinet there are at this moment over specific heat-related programs in departments and agencies under four deputy mayors This work and the Cool Neighborhoods NYC plan are central and deserve the greater coordination dedicated focus and advocacy of a CHO It has been eight years since Cool Neighborhoods NYC debuted It is time to update and turbocharge Cool Neighborhood NYC with a CHO who can align efforts across leadership communities and the private sector A CHO would advise and advocate maintaining focus on the issues of heat and heat resilience With regulatory and budgetary power a CHO could accelerate and expand the impact of existing programs A CHO could coordinate across the city s full system of existing plans to reduce silos clarify responsibilities prevent cross-purpose policies and streamline financing A CHO should further advocate for new urban heat mitigation through nature and design not fossil fuels that add to the context predicament A CHO should also advocate for preserving urban spaces for communities we all need to be able to bear the heat outside While NYC of late appointed its first Chief Context Officer Rohit T Aggarwala his Department of Habitat Protection DEP is pursuing stormwater and coastal resilience as priorities According to Aggarwala heat and hurricanes keep him up at night but the DEP has yet to appoint a deputy commissioner dedicated to heat The City Council also in the past few days failed to pass a bill to codify and improve New York s cooling center campaign Summer is here and New Yorkers deserve a CHO Heat is an infrastructure challenge an economic predicament a strategy issue a region matter and a healthcare matter It requires a coordinated approach on all these fronts Extreme heat will increasingly impact general medical but also vitality and water use urban vegetation transportation economic productivity tourism and workplace safety standards New York already has plans and programs in place The city also has good evidence and spatial resolution on heat distribution and hazard But without clear management without sustained advocacy and without dedicated outreach in other words without a CHO we jeopardy failing to meet the size and scale of the challenge of hotter summers Dr Kara Murphy Schlichting is an associate professor of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center CUNY and a co-investigator of the Wellcome Discovery Award project Melting Metropolis Everyday Histories of Heat and Wellness in London New York and Paris since Selassie Mawuko is a Queens College CUNY graduate and former Melting Metropolis research intern The post Opinion It s Time for NYC to Appoint a Heat Czar appeared first on City Limits