In the last post, we looked at some specific ways you can work to adapt your own home to the growing frequency and intensity of heat waves. In this post, we will look at ways that you can work locally and collectively to reduce heat in your community.
One of the simplest and most effective ways is to plant trees. Trees draw water and nutrients from the soil through a process called evapotranspiration. In this process, water evaporates from the surface of eaves, creating a suction effect that draws water up from below. The evaporation creates a cooling effect in the air around trees. Not only this, but trees create shade protecting everything underneath them from the intensity of the sun’s rays. The result of these two factors is that the more trees you have in an area, the cooler it is. I live in Mt Airy, which is full of trees and is one of the cooler neighborhoods in Philadelphia. A 15 minute drive away from me is Hunting Park, where I work a lot. It has far fewer trees and as a result experiences heatwave temperatures that are a full 22 F hotter than in my neighborhood.
In the last post, we mentioned planting trees in your yard as a way to cool your own property – but this is also a collective action, since those trees work with others to help cool the neighborhood as a whole. That being said, your yard space restricts significantly how much cooling you can offer your community – however there are some great programs in Philadelphia through which you can contribute to broader tree planting efforts around you.
Tree Tenders is a program run by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society. It has chapters in neighborhoods all over the greater Philadelphia area where it trains people for street tree plantings and organizes planting days. Street trees are shared trees, lining public spaces and benefiting the community as a whole. There are countless blocks and spaces throughout Philadelphia that are treeless and in need of planting – so there is a lot you can do! Another critical aspect of the Tree Tenders training is that it teaches people how to care for trees after they’ve been planted. Leaving recently planted trees on their own, particularly in cities, can often lead to them dying. Ongoing care, particularly for their first year, is crucial for them to become established and thrive. Check here to see if there’s a tree tender’s group near you.
Tree Philly is another program run by Philadelphia Parks and Recreation. This program provides free yard trees to people who want them. This is a great benefit for low-income people, as young trees aren’t cheap. You can also volunteer to canvas and let people know about the Tree Philly trees and sign up for them, helping to spread trees to yards around the city.
Wherever you are, tree planting is one of the simplest and most effective ways to increase cooling in your community. Trees also suck carbon out of the atmosphere and sequester it in the ground – so the more trees we have, the more nature will be at work fighting climate change. Philadelphia has a citywide tree plan which you can access here.
The less simple – yet absolutely crucial – task needed to make communities more heat resilient is the transformation of housing. Climate resilient housing adaptations save significant money long term, but they also involve up front capital that can be challenging for middle income people to come up with. For lower income people, the cost is usually prohibitive. Add to this the fact that lower income urban communities already tend to experience higher heat extremes because they have fewer trees in them due to historic disinvestment. So the hotter communities are the ones that have fewer resources to make the changes needed for their homes to become heat resilient. This is fundamentally unjust.
So how can we help improve the heat resilience of homes in low-income communities? The answer is by organizing and pressing for policies and funding that will help accelerate these crucial home adaptations.
As we looked at in the last post, white roof coatings, heat pump installations, and rooftop solar are three core adaptations that will make your home heat resistant, even in the event of a heatwave induced power blackout. An additional adaptation that we didn’t look at is energy efficiency upgrades – like improved insulation, windows, repairs to cracks that are leaking air, etc. The more efficient your home is at trapping the heat or cool inside it, the less hard your systems have to work and the less you have to pay for power.
Wherever you are, there are probably groups working on low-income housing challenges. Here in Philadelphia, I will talk about two specific entities – a public program and an advocacy coalition.
The public program is Built to Last. Built to Last is a citywide initiative focused on coordinating existing programs into a one stop shop that will repair systems, improve energy efficiency, apply white roof coatings, weatherize, solarize, and install heat pumps for low-income Philadelphia homes. For low-income people, energy burden is a vicious cycle. People who have low income rarely have the funds necessary to repair their homes. As a result, their homes fall steadily into disrepair, becoming increasingly energy inefficient and causing them to pay more to heat and cool their homes. As they pay more, they have even less to repair or improve their homes, which makes them more inefficient, and the cycle continues. Add to this the fact that we have already entered into the economic inevitability of the phase out of fossil fuels. Clean sources of power, though they cost more up front to install, are much cheaper than fossil fuels over time, which means that individuals and businesses that are able are steadily moving in that direction – and the transition is accelerating. The challenge for low-income people is that as those with the income switch away from (for example) gas and start heating their homes with heat pumps, the customer base of gas producers is getting lower and lower. In order to keep making their dying model work, they will have to raise rates higher and higher on their remaining customers, who will in turn be made up only by the low income people who couldn’t switch away in the first place. Their energy costs will weigh on them until they go into default, and apply for utility assistance, which will be carried by taxpayers. This will not be tenable long term for anyone, and the system will collapse. Advocates in my circles who are working to pressure Philly’s gas utility, PGW, to transition into a clean energy heating and cooling utility, refer to this vicious cycle openly and regularly as the “death spiral” for PGW. Many believe it has already begun.
Built to Last is crucial because it is stabilizes low-income homes with public funding that low-income people simply can’t amass themselves. The stabilization greatly reduces their energy burden, makes their homes more functional and healthy, helps families improve their own financial health and preserve generational wealth through their property, and (per the specific topic of this post), enables them to preserve a cool space during heat waves – with solar power to keep their cooling running even if the electric grid goes down.
This is an amazing program that has been very successful at a pilot level and is now shifting into its next stage. A documentary was made about 6 homeowners in Hunting Park who had their homes transformed through Built to Last – you can view it here. However, the need is much greater than the current funding. The program has finished 50 homes in Philadelphia through its pilot project, but there is currently a wait list of over 1,000. Fortunately, $5M in funding is coming to the program this fiscal year – and this is the direct result of advocacy.
This brings us to the second entity mentioned above – a Philadelphia-based climate-oriented housing justice advocacy coalition called HERE 4 Climate Justice, (or HERE4CJ). HERE4CJ is a coalition I’m involved with that is bringing together a number of really amazing local, regional, and national organizations who are pressing for legislative change that will make homes more healthy, affordable, and climate resilient for low-income people in our city. We have several different campaigns we’re working on, but our first big win was to pressure Philadelphia city council into giving Built to Last more funding in the FY 24-25 budget. We pressed for $5M and got enough councilmembers on board to win the full amount. That $5M will add 400 new Built to Last low-income home resilience projects to the 50 they’ve already done. But we need to keep pressing for more funding.
This, then, is where so much of the heart of collective climate resilience must arise – through public advocacy. There are so many ways you can get involved. You can reach out to your representatives (find your state rep and senator here, federal rep here, and federal senators here) and tell them what you want. Your calls really do matter. You can also join coalitions like HERE4CJ to press for these changes. The Evangelical Environmental Action Network (EEN Action) is constantly working on PA climate policies and has regular, simple, and guided ways to add your voice to different policy proposals. POWER Interfaith is highly involved locally and regionally pressing for climate solutions for low-income families. And you can also reach out to me – Allen Drew – to learn more about ways to get involved.
Finally, vote for climate mitigation, adaptation, and resilience that prioritizes communities with the least power. Climate policy prioritization must be at the heart of our votes locally, statewide, and federal. The transition towards clean energy, climate resilience, and ecological restoration is accelerating, but it needs to accelerate faster. We are very close to global climate tipping points, beyond which global heating will accelerate beyond our ability to change it. The next 5 years are absolutely crucial in pressing these transitions forward through the support of climate aggressive legislation. Voting for officials this November who do not prioritize climate action – or who ignore it or even actively resist it and support fossil fuel proliferation – would be a crushing act of collective self-harm, given the climate realities we are facing. It is crucial – absolutely crucial – that we all get out and vote for lawmakers who will move climate policy forward, for the good of humanity, and particularly for sake of the most vulnerable among us.
RESOURCES:
Tree Tenders: https://phsonline.org/programs/tree-programs
Tree Philly: https://treephilly.org/
Philly Tree Plan: https://www.phila.gov/programs/philly-tree-plan/
Built to Last: https://philaenergy.org/programs-initiatives/built-to-last/
Built to Last documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjlRfPXcUME&t=24s
HERE 4 Climate Justice: www.here4climatejustice.org
EEN Action: https://www.creationcare-action.com/
POWER Interfaith: www.powerinterfaith.org
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