There are many places in the United States that are hotter than Rhode Island. But the people who live in those hotter places are much more likely to use air conditioning. The Department of Energy estimates that in New England, just 75% of people use air conditioning at home. The national average is closer to 88%.
It’s difficult to say with certainty what causes the gap in A/C usage. But one likely cause is force of habit: Historically, air conditioning in New England was more a luxury than a necessity. Climate change is changing that.
Greg Wellenius is a climate scientist at Brown University. His work on long-term heat trends in Rhode Island was cited in the National Climate Assessment — the federal government’s most comprehensive, authoritative report on how climate change will affect (and is affecting) the country.
Wellenius says a big part of the problem is how quickly summers are getting longer and hotter. Today, Rhode Island gets about three more weeks of really hot days than they did in the 70s. The average number of dangerously hot days has also increased.
“[Rhode Islanders] are not as accustomed to it because the climate is changing faster here than in some other parts of the country,” Wellenius says.
And for the Ocean State, it’s only going to get hotter. Wellenius’s analysis projects that by 2050, 1,000 additional Rhode Islanders every year will make emergency room visits for heat-related symptoms. Also by 2050, he projects: 30 to 40 more deaths from heat each year.
Plus, extreme heat isn’t just a public health issue; it’s an economic problem as well. As days with dangerously high temperatures become more common — and the speed of climate change outpaces humans’ biological capacity to adapt to it — there will be fewer hours in the year during which it’s safe to work outside. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that by the end of the century, the U.S. will lose 1.8 billion labor hours across the economy. That’s about $170 billion in wages. (The EPA projects that most of these losses will be concentrated in regions of the country that are already hot. Rhode Island won’t be as affected, though it’s unlikely that the state will be completely immune.)
What is almost certain is that summers in Rhode Island will, on the whole, continue to get longer and hotter. But Wellenius says that just how bad the damage is depends upon our decisions today.
“If as a planet we burn less fossil fuels — if we emit less greenhouse gases — we will see the health benefits of that, both today and into the future,” he says. “So how much hotter it’s going to get — how many more hospitalizations and deaths due to heat we have — depends entirely on our behavior over the next two decades.”
