The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - How Should We Handle Extreme Heat?

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and more intense in Canada. The public health risk of heat waves is growing, especially in cities where renters may not have air conditioning. How is this extreme heat affecting our lives, and what can we do to protect ourselves? For insight, we welcome How-Sen Chong, climate campaigner, Toronto Environmental Alliance; and Caroline Metz, managing director: Climate Resilience and Health, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From epic camping trips to scenic local hikes, spending time outdoors is a great way to create lasting memories to share with friends and family. This summer, TVO is celebrating the natural wonders that inspire unforgettable adventures with great documentaries, articles, and learning resources about beloved parks in Ontario and beyond. Visit tvo.me slash Ontario summer stories for all this and more. And be sure to tell us your stories for a chance to win great prizes. Help TVO create a better world through the power of learning. Visit TVO.org and make a tax-deductible donation today. Extreme heat events are becoming more intense and frequent in Canada.

The public health risk of heat waves is growing, especially in cities where renters may not have air conditioning. How is this extreme heat affecting our lives and what can we do to protect ourselves? Let's ask Hao-Sin Chong, Climate Campaigner for Toronto Environmental Alliance. And Caroline Metz, Managing Director of Climate Resilience and Health for the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo. Hi to you both. Hi. It's interesting we're having this conversation because if you live in the Toronto area, today's actually like a really nice day. But last week, whoa, you'd leave your home and it feels like you just like walked into like a heat wall.

Caroline, I want to start with you. Heat waves seem to be happening more often. What is happening? So our climate is warming. We've put a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and other greenhouse gases. They act like a blanket around our planet, trapping heat. So the air is warming. Our oceans are warming.

And this warming supercharges our weather systems and we get extreme weather. So that's the heavy downpours, the storms, the heat waves, and they're happening in places that never had them before. And they're happening more frequently and more intensely. And when we look at heat, it's really underappreciated, in my opinion. People have a positive association with heat. We go to warm climates on vacation. But heat is actually the leading weather-related killer of all climate hazards. More illnesses and deaths from extreme heat than all other weather hazards combined. And as you mentioned, with heat, recent heat in our area, we have had heat, record heat across many parts of the world and Canada.

In 2021, we had the heat dome in British Columbia, and very sadly, 619 people passed away. Two years ago in Europe, 61,000 deaths from extreme heat. And then just recently, the heat dome across Canada and the U.S. And this is really dangerous and oppressive heat. And the reality is, is that the warming that we have is here to stay. And we're going to continue to have these types of extreme heat events going forward. And we need to prepare. You said something that I think is really interesting. You said that heat is underappreciated.

Just this past weekend at Mecca, I think over 1,500 people died because of the heat. But I think for a lot of us, it's like, oh, this is summer. Can you define what's the difference between the hot weather that people might experience in summer as opposed to extreme heat? So extreme heat is elevated temperatures for a prolonged period of time. And there can be humidity. So when you add humidity to that, it raises the risk. And heat waves and heat domes, those terms can sometimes be used interchangeably. Sometimes we think of heat domes as having a high pressure system that traps air beneath it,

that air warms up and it can escape. But these type of events, regardless of what we call them, they convey a sense of this is a hazard, it's a hazard to our health, and it's a hazard to populations that are more vulnerable or more sensitive to heat. And we need to be taking those populations into account and caring for them. We're going to talk more about that.

But Haussan, is this something that we're going to be seeing for the foreseeable future? Yeah, the unfortunate reality in a city like Toronto, which is where I do most of my work, is that we're expecting the number of days where the temperature exceeds 30 degrees to more than triple. So right now we see about 20 of them a year. We're expecting by the 2040s anywhere between 60 or 70 of them. So it's a serious, serious issue. And we need to ensure that all Torontonians and tenants in particular,

and especially vulnerable populations, are protected from these extreme heats as we continue to do the work of actually cutting our greenhouse gas emissions from things like oil and gas and other fossil fuels. CBC reported that over 100 heat records were broken in Canada last week on June 19th. Yet there are still people who are still insisting that this is just normal hot weather. How do you convey to people the seriousness of what we're seeing right now, Caroline? So I think people need to recognize that even though, you know, we spend time outdoors and we enjoy being in warm weather, that if we're in a hot environment,

and that can be outdoors or indoors for a prolonged period of time, there can be negative health implications. And as Housen mentioned, indoor overheating can be a real problem. We saw in British Columbia during the heat dome in 2021, 98% of the deaths that occurred during that heat dome, very sadly, they were people who were indoors. So it really speaks to this kind of urgency around understanding indoor heat, indoor overheating, and taking measures to protect against that. And just generally, we set our thermostats at about 21 degrees. That's a really comfortable temperature for indoor environments.

And anywhere from 21 to 26 degrees C is considered safe. And then from 26 to 31 degrees, there's more risk. And you can have some general negative health consequences from that. And then above 31 degrees Celsius, for an extended period of time, it can be dangerous for almost everyone. You know, I have two kids in school, elementary school, and my daughter is in the portable, and it's been more than 26 degrees in her portable. Howson, who ends up being impacted the most when extreme heat weather events happen? It's typically folks like the elderly, people who are have on certain medications for example, people who don't have very strong social connections are

are at risk because people aren't necessarily checking in on them. So it's a series of people across the population that are seriously at risk when temperatures go up. And so we saw this again, as you said, in British Columbia, where most of the people who, most of the victims and people who perished were inside their own homes. And so we need to make sure that we have things like, you know, mechanical cooling and things like that because This is not going away, right? Like there was a point in time when Air conditioning and mechanical cooling was considered or indoor cooling in general was considered a luxury and it's just no longer the case anymore there used to be considered that indoor heating was a luxury,

and then at some point we, as a society, decided we need rules and regulations and things like that to ensure that there is heating indoors during the wintertime. So we need something for the summer as well. You're saying air conditioning is not a luxury, it's a necessity. Yeah, indoor mechanical cooling in general is, or indoor cooling, saying air conditioning is not a luxury, it's a necessity. Yeah, indoor mechanical cooling in general is, or indoor cooling, cool spaces is not a luxury. It is, it used to be considered that way.

It was marketed that way for the longest time, but it's important because as we've seen in British Columbia, you know, when a heat event occurs and extends for a longer period of time, what ends up happening is people end up having serious health issues and sometimes deaths. It's shocking to me to hear that for a lot of people who died, they were indoors. We think that if you're indoors, then you're probably a little safer. So when it comes to heat illness, what does that look like Caroline? So there's two types of heat illness. The first is heat exhaustion

and generally symptoms with that are headache, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, red hot skin, excessive sweating, you can have a rapid but weak pulse. And then if that is not treated and it's an extended period of time in a hot environment, that can progress to heat stroke. And that's more serious. And with heat stroke, you have an elevated body temperature above, a core body temperature above 40 degrees Celsius. And some of the symptoms would be confusion,

lack of coordination, again, red, hot skin, but now it's dry, so that sweating, the capacity to sweat has, it's not there. And the person can be, they can go into shock, they can have seizures, they can lose consciousness. And then in later stages, body systems can start to fail and then it can be fatal. I wanted to read some information from Canadian heat fatality study that shows Statistics Canada released a new study on heat fatalities, analyzing 12 cities in Canada from 2000 to 2020.

in Canada from 2000 to 2020. There is an elevated risk of death for Canadians during extreme heat events, a higher risk of death for people over 65, higher risk of death in cities with large numbers of renters. Now, Haussan, what are the rules for temperature regulation for people who might be renting in the City of Toronto? Right now, the rules within the City of Toronto when it comes to cooling is that

if your unit has air conditioning or if your building has air conditioning, that the landlord needs to ensure that that's available on hot days. But there's no rule that states that your building needs to have some sort of indoor or mechanical cooling at all. And so the rules currently only apply if there is existing air conditioning in the building or in the unit right now. And so what we've been doing is we've been working with a coalition of tenants and tenant advocacy groups, medical professionals, environmentalists,

and lawyers to come and say, hey, we actually need some rules in the city to ensure that indoor temperatures don't go above 26 degrees Celsius. Because, you know, if it goes above that, that's when some of these most serious, serious health impacts occur. We want to make sure that people are safe

when we have more of these heat events, which unfortunately we are going to get. You mentioned that you're working with a coalition, the Toronto Heat Safety Coalition. What are some of the measures that you're trying to put into place? So we're calling for a series of different measures, both short term and long term, to ensure that people are safe indoors. So that includes a maximum heat bylaw and it also includes things like mechanical cooling access for people who are renters and and Torontonians across the city access to

transit so that you don't have to walk 20 minutes in the blazing Sun in order to get to a cooling place and also things like emergency preparedness for for example something that occurred this this past week during the heat event is one of the coalition partners that we work with, their building, their electricity went out. And because their electricity went out, water could not be pumped up past the seventh floor and there was no air conditioning and no elevator service. And so that was happening in the middle of a heat wave. And so we need to make sure that communities like that are protected as well. I used to live in a building where you weren't even allowed to put in an AC unit in your building.

There's so many rules throughout the city of Toronto that people can just have those stationary fans. Caroline, you know, sometimes it's like that's all you can do is get this fan. What can people do to protect themselves during extreme heat events? So as Halsan mentioned, mechanical cooling is really important. It can be a matter of life and death to have access to that cooling. But in addition to that, other methods for cooling, there's a really innovative method called passive cooling, and it requires no power. It's quite simple to implement, relatively inexpensive, and it'll get us a few degrees of cooling. And we can think of it as kind of baseline or frontline protection against heat. And what's great is that you can combine it with mechanical cooling,

and it reduces the load. So it means that those systems don't have to work as hard. And then you have a buffer in place in the event of a power outage. And what passive cooling is, is it's simple techniques like learning to use natural ventilation in your space. So opening windows and doors, having ventilation across a room, that helps. Even on those hot days where it feels like nothing is moving? Well, you need to have some airflow and you would do it at night. You would open windows at night and ideally the temperature at night would drop.

So you could move air through a space easily at night and get a little bit of cooling in the evening hours. And then shading on windows. So on the inside of a building or an apartment, having blinds or heat-resistant curtains. And then on the exterior, having shutters or awnings that protect the sun's rays so you don't get the solar radiation coming in through the window. And interestingly, shading on the outside of a building provides five times as much

solar protection as an interior blind. So any kind of retrofitting on the exterior of the building is really, really helpful. And then also insulation and weather stripping, upgrading that so that the cool air that's in the room stays in the room or the building and doesn't leave. We only have about 30 seconds. I think we have to continue this discussion at another date. But Howson, New York State has a program where eligible residents can get up to $1,000 to install an air conditioner. Do you think that's a model that Canadian cities should follow? And why? Yeah, I think that's something that we need more of

in places like Ontario. There are a lot of people who need this, but they're unable to afford either buying an air conditioner or maybe even running an air conditioner. And so having these types of programs to support tenants who are doing some fantastic things to keep themselves cool and keeping their neighbors safe. And we just need to make sure that these systems are available for them and to listen to what their needs are as well, because it's very, very clear

that this is a huge problem. It's only going to get worse, and we need to ensure that people are safe as we continue fighting this challenge of climate change and cutting our emissions. Thank you so much for being here. I think you've helped us understand why this is something that we need to take more seriously. Really appreciate your time, both of you. Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

The Agenda with Steve Paikin is made possible through generous philanthropic contributions from viewers like you. Thank you for supporting TVO's journalism.