States face challenges getting federal aid amid dwindling Fema funds and laws that don’t consider heat a climate disaster
The spiraling costs of extreme weather in the US are hitting hard as more than 60 million Americans are under heat alerts this week, experts say, even though federal law does not explicitly consider heatwaves to be climate disasters.
Temperatures on Tuesday climbed toward record highs across the north-east, upper midwest and mid-Atlantic, with the south also bracing for soaring temperatures later in the week.
“It’s just an extraordinary, harrowing summer when it comes to extreme events, many of which bear the fingerprints of climate change,” said Rachel Cleetus, the climate and energy policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The country is stretched paying those costs, due to dwindling funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and laws that don’t consider heat to be a climate disaster.
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