Earlier this month, I stayed in a cabin along the ridge of Frazier Hollow, an hour east of Nashville, Tennessee, and two hours from where I grew up. Although shaded by tall woods, the 10-foot walk between the cedar frame and the fire ring was enough: Sweat poured down my face. The high was 94, four degrees above the historic average, and the air was muggy. I was lulled into thinking it was a typical Southern summer. A tick crawled up my arm, kudzu swamped the power lines in town, a dead armadillo drew flies along a rural road, and black-eyed Susans exploded beside a creek bed. 

The next day, when I weaved in and out of the honky-tonks on Nashville’s Music Row, heat rippled up from the sidewalk and my clothes soaked with sweat. The heat index—the combination of heat and humidity, or what the temperature feels like—was 101 degrees and climbing. By Tuesday, it topped out at 109 and a heat advisory covered much of middle Tennessee. Temperatures at that height can cause sunstroke, heat exhaustion, heat cramps, and possible heatstroke. According to NOAA data analyzed by the Alabama Political Reporter, in the United States alone, extreme heat causes more deaths than hurricanes and floods combined, twice as many as tornadoes, and four times as many as extreme cold. 

That same day, the heat index in Clarksdale, Mississippi, hit 121 degrees; 119 in West Memphis; and 113 in Houston, Texas. According to the National Weather Service, 13 states in the Midwest and South had active heat advisories, including Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. When forecasters issued a more serious “excessive heat warning,” it impacted nearly 17 million people.

Last week was just the most recent in a long string of extreme heat events. Over Memorial Day weekend, a heat wave nicknamed the “death ridge” tied or set new record highs for May in as many as 66 sites across the Southeast. In mid-July, an extreme heat wave affected 85 percent of the US population. And in Alaska, an Arctic heat wave—oxymoron, anyone?—busted temperature records and disrobed the state’s long coastline of any and all sea ice. July also set temperature records in half a dozen European nations, and public health advisories were issued across the continent. Extreme heat caused at least two deaths in Spain, and in one week in the Netherlands, there were as many as 400 more deaths than during a typical summer week. In Japan, extreme heat in early August was linked to 57 deaths and 18,000 hospitalizations. 

These widespread heat waves shouldn’t come as a surprise. Climate scientists and weather patterns have been warning us for decades. The past five years have been the hottest on record. After the hottest June ever recorded, July one-upped the previous month by becoming the hottest month ever recorded globally.

This summer is a primer on how deadly the cycle of increasing heat waves could become if nothing is done to respond to the climate crisis. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists (USC), if we continue business as usual, the southeastern United States will endure four months every year where the heat index exceeds 105 degrees. 

“We’re going to see temperatures off the heat index charts for multiple days of the year by mid-century,” says Joe Daniel, senior energy analyst at USC. By the end of the century, Alabama, for example, a state with historically zero off-the-chart heat days, would see 11 each year. According to Daniel, “Many of those days can be avoided if we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide pollution that we emit into the air.” 

Unfortunately, the increase in heat waves can also increase the feedback loop of climate change. Hotter days mean air conditioners work harder and longer to keep consumers cool. According to a June report by Nature, if global temperatures aren’t lowered by 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, the increased need for hot-season cooling could cause energy demand to rise over 50 percent in the southern United States.  

Stress on the energy grid can force utilities to move from their most-efficient and lowest-cost energy resources—like natural gas or solar—to their least-efficient and most-expensive energy resources. In the Southeast, that can mean relying on old, and expensive, coal-fired power plants. This means an uptick in costs to the environment, the utility, and the consumer. 

“We’re relying on the last few resources to keep the grid operating,” Daniel says. 

In Texas’s weeklong heat wave, for example, Monday set record demands for electricity. By Tuesday, a major utility declared an energy-conservation emergency and ERCOT (the Energy Reliability Council of Texas) was pleading with consumers to limit their electricity usage during peak hours. 

Even worse, the environmental problem can become an even more pressing economic issue. Although the South has some of the lowest electricity rates in the United States, the region faces the highest electricity burden—measured in electric bills against household income—which is impacted by a number of factors including regional climate, household energy efficiency, and utility rates and debt programs. If a household spends 6 percent of its total income on energy, it’s a burden. But in some low-income communities, records show households have spent over 50 percent of their annual income on energy. According to the South Alabama Electric Cooperative, running air conditioning during summer’s peak heat can account for over half the household’s total energy bill.  

“Many people, particularly those that live below the federal poverty line,” says Daniel, “already struggle to pay energy bills, and many can’t afford to pay them, particularly in the summer when bills are highest. Electricity can get turned off. When that happens, you’re exposed to the full effect of a heat wave, which can have deadly consequences for vulnerable populations.”

A lack of federal regulations and lax laws in many states mean that while it’s a real fear for utilities to turn off the electricity, the more consistent fear is utility bills. The federal government assists with utility bills through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. Texas’s program, CEAP, serves low-income individuals by doling out their annual budget to state-funded agencies.  

BakerRipley, a United Way agency that receives such funding in Houston, Texas, offers utility assistance to 14,000 to 20,000 households annually, but according to Desiree Davis, the utility assistance director, that only accounts for about 5 percent of the county. When I ask her what her utility assistance program needs, she tells me, “I will always say funding. Because we know there are so many households that need assistance beyond what we have.” 

According to Kristina Tirlonio, media adviser for the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, all CEAP funds are used up every year, and the state sees an increased need during summer months. In nearby Alabama, Josh Carples, spokesperson for ADECA (Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs) says that while the number of requests for energy assistance are fairly consistent year to year—since the cooling season began on June 1, over 40,000 households have applied for regular or crisis assistance—“when there are spikes in temperature, the number of requests will understandably spike as well.”  

As the heat wave simmers out in the Midwest and Southeast, temperatures in the Southwest are predicted to hit 115 degrees. No matter where you are in the United States, from Alaska to Mississippi, between Texas and Maine, extreme heat waves are affecting everyone. And they’re not going away.