One hundred and twenty-four degrees in Portland, Oregon; 107 degrees in Yosemite National Park; 88 degrees in Vermont — in April. The climate crisis may be a creeping threat at a global level, but on the local level, it’s playing out in big jumps.
And when it is uncomfortably, unseasonably, intolerably hot, those jumps inspire the thought: “Wouldn’t it be nice to skip the store and have that delivered?”
But for the workers making those deliveries, their jobs are getting more dangerous with every degree — and these temperatures are no longer confined to certain regions of the country.
The true toll of heat stress isn’t known, and there’s no simple fix to the risk it presents. Some of the best strategies to fight dangerous heat push against profits.
