News Reporter: Climate Coach: Ice vests are the latest fashion

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Down-to-earth advice for life on our changing planet.

By Michael J. Coren

Welcome. This week, vagrant flamingos and the Law of the Sea. But first, night farming.

Night farmers. Ice vests. A $100 million "cooling gear" industry.

Global warming is changing how we work. Disasters make the headlines. But hotter days promise to change how we live and work.

Mark Hines's workday stretches from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. The farmer in Derwood, Md., has been driven into the night by the heat. "I tell people the sun has felt brighter these past few years," Hines said. He picks his tomatoes, melons, pumpkins and lettuce by headlamp to avoid the hotter Maryland summers.

This practice, as The Washington Post reports, is already a part of agriculture, since nighttime harvests can yield tastier produce, but it is becoming a necessity. Spraying apple orchards with water in the summer to avoid overheating, for example, delays the harvesting schedule until well after midnight.

Farmers are just on the leading edge of how business-as-usual is adapting to a warmer world. By the end of the century, almost half of the world's population is likely to experience lethal heat waves every year, even under optimistic warming scenarios.

In Arizona, Nevada and Texas, heat index values surged dangerously into the 110s this year, forcing people inside throughout the day. Those working outside must adapt now.

That's leading to burgeoning — if unproven — industries such as cooling gear.

Companies are making vests packed with ice and stickers to monitor sweat content and core temperature. Fabrics to reflect sunlight modeled on the carapace of desert ants are being tested. Over the past three years, estimates one of the sector's leading companies, cooling-tech sales have grown to $100 million.

For Troy Seavers, a Chick-fil-A franchisee in Arizona, conditions were too extreme for workers helping customers in the drive-through lane, as The Post's Jacob Bogage reports from Phoenix. Seavers erected a shade canopy for the drive-through, installed a misting station swamp cooler and mandated ice vests for workers to wear when temperatures rise above 100 degrees. "The guests need to see that I proactively am protecting my team from the sun," says Seavers.

Occupational injuries induced by extreme heat are becoming more common: a 2021 study published by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics concluded we may be undercounting them by a factor of five. Yet few states require these protections. Only three states — California, Oregon and Washington — mandate heat breaks for outdoor workers, while similar efforts failed in Florida and were repealed by state legislators in Texas.

Have questions or ideas for the column? Write climatecoach@washpost.com.

Snapshot

On Sept. 7, Hurricane Lee's peak winds surged from 80 to 160 mph in just 18 hours, an "exceptional" intensification, according to the National Hurricane Center, just one day after Hurricane Jova in the eastern Pacific strengthened at a similar pace.

Record-warm water temperatures supplied Lee's' high-octane fuel, demonstrating the well-established link between human-induced climate change and rapid storm intensification.

Hurricane Lee. (Tropical Tidbits)

The hurricane, weakening as it moves north over cooler waters, is expected to dump rain on the northeastern United States in the coming days.

The Second Degree

This week, my column made the case against bug zappers, which don't really kill mosquitoes. Another good reason to skip them: "Most folks don't realize that even seed-eating birds feed their young mostly insects, giving another reason we should be working to increase insect numbers, not indiscriminately reduce their populations.," writes Ron from Coon Rapids, Minn.

He, like many of you, endorsed alternatives to DEET to combat mosquitoes. "I gave up DEET many years ago, and now use only Picaridin (aka "icardin")," he writes. "Picaridin doesn't dissolve synthetic materials, have the awful smell of DEET, or leave a greasy feeling on your skin." Also, it's worth noting, pets can have adverse reactions to DEET.

Many of you have also written in concerning a burning debate: Do you call them lightning bugs or fireflies? Well, my friends, they are neither flies nor bugs. They're beetles in the family Lampyridae with more than 200 or so species in North America. Almost all of them live no farther west than Kansas.

That hasn't stopped everyone from having opinions on this. As for what to call them, you can pick. The Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes, see below, has the final word.

"Both" appears to have the edge.

On the Climate Front

From The Post:

Flamingos have been spotted across the U.S. Hurricane Idalia may be why.

Baby sea otters are adorable. But they aren't wanted everywhere.

Can golf cure its water addiction? Drought is making it harder for the game's lovers to justify its copious use of water.

The Sierra Club hired its first Black leader. Turmoil over racial equity followed.

From elsewhere:

Amazon deforestation plummets, writes Grist: "This shows how an election can change the fate of the Amazon."

Two scientists In the journal Science say they have developed a way to quantify how a discrete amount of greenhouse gases harmed polar bears, potentially opening up the way for Endangered Species Act protections.

Small island nations argued the Law of the Sea forces countries to address climate change, reports Reuters.

Dutch police used water cannons against 10,000 people demanding an end to government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry by blocking a traffic artery to The Hague.

I wanted to leave you with a note from Katie T.R., a science teacher. After my column on shifting baselines, she wrote about how climate anxiety almost persuaded her to not become a mother.

"My child was born in late June. The day he was born, the air outside of the hospital was hazy with smoke from the Canadian wildfires. I had never seen anything like it before — yellow and so thick that I could barely make out buildings across the street. The day I took him home was visually a little bit better but still 'hazardous.' I remember that first night, though, and all of the lightning bugs flickering outside of our window.

Your newsletter brought up that tension for me — the horrible and the hopeful — and gave me a new term with 'shifting baselines.' I like thinking of the power of stories and deep memory. It reminds me that the world that is right now isn't the way it always was and that we don't have to keep following the trajectory that we are on.

It gives a new meaning to the bedtime stories I'll be reading to my little one. I'll be sure to find picture books about snowmen and elm trees and lightning bugs. I'll even look for books about American chestnut trees and passenger pigeons and expanses of prairie, things before my time but common not so long ago."

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See you next Tuesday,

Michael Coren, Climate Coach