Degree programme: stopping heat deaths

This episode discusses the escalating global heat waves and their deadly impacts, with a focus on the most vulnerable populations.

1. Heat waves are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.
2. The most affected are often the vulnerable groups—elderly, poor, and those in physically demanding jobs.
3. Current policy responses are insufficient to mitigate the impacts of extreme heat.
4. Practical measures like widespread air conditioning and urban infrastructure adaptations can save lives.
5. Policymakers need to incorporate comprehensive heat response strategies into climate adaptation plans.

1: Introduction to Global Heat Waves

Exploring the current state of global heat waves and their impacts. Key topics include the rise in temperatures and initial responses.

• Jason Palmer: "But already heat waves have spread across four continents."

2: Analyzing the Impact

Discussion on the direct link between heat waves and climate change, and the socioeconomic factors that exacerbate vulnerability.

• Rachel Dobbs: "Vulnerability to extreme heat is... a function of inequality."

3: Policy and Prevention

Focus on the changes needed in policy and infrastructure to better protect populations.

• Rachel Dobbs: "Comprehensive plans have to be taken to deal with heat waves specifically, not just to mitigate against climate change in the future."

4: Technological Solutions and Challenges

Evaluates the role of technology like air conditioning in mitigating heat-related deaths and the challenges it poses.

• Rachel Dobbs: "Air conditioning does figure in here, and it is quite a controversial issue."

1. Install and maintain air conditioning, especially in critical facilities.
2. Advocate for urban planning that includes heat-reflective surfaces and green spaces.
3. Support and promote policies that provide workplace protections from heat.
4. Participate in community programs that identify and assist vulnerable individuals during heat waves.
5. Push for the implementation of cooling centers in local communities.

As heatwaves become more frequent and intense, they exacerbate existing inequalities. The poor, sick and elderly are particularly vulnerable. How should governments respond? Universities depend on the high fees international students pay. Now Indian scholars are replacing the diminishing flow of Chinese ones (10:00). And full-body deodorant is all the rage: find out if you should be using it (16:15).

People

Jason Palmer, Rachel Dobbs

Companies

None

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

None

Content Warnings:

None

Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile Unlimited premium wireless. Everybody get 30, 30 better 30, baby, get 20.

Want to know a secret? More than just my armpits stink. That's why I use secret whole body deodorant everywhere
2020 better to get 2020 a better get 15. 1515, just $15 a month. So give it a try at Mint mobile.com switch. $45 upfront for three months, plus taxes and fees. Promoting for new customers for limited time unlimited, more than 40gb per month slows full terms at mint mobile.com dot.

Jason Palmer
The Economist hello, and welcome to the intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm Rosie Blore. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the event shaping your world.

Universities love international students, or more to the point, the fees that they bring in after a long stretch as the biggest international cohort, chinese scholars are thinning out and indian ones are taking their places.

Rosie Blore
And here's a question. Have you ever tried full body deodorant? Do you think that perhaps you should? Our correspondent asked us to confront the smells we emit from our feet, our knee crevices, and, yes, from our under boobs.

Jason Palmer
But first, for half the world, the summer is just getting started. But already heat waves have spread across four continents.

Record temperatures in Europe and North Africa have fueled forest fires. In America, heat warnings have spread from New York to New Mexico. Even this afternoon, we could have some real field numbers around 90. Top Story this morning is definitely the heat. Olga.

Small details are big surfaces. Tight corners are odd shapes, flat, rounded, textured or tall, whatever your next project, theres a spray paint pattern thats just right because rust oleums new custom spray five in one gives you control with five different spray patterns so you can tackle nooks, crannies, edges and curves without worrying about drips, runs, uneven coverage or anything else. Custom spray five in one only from rust oleum
Another day where we could hit 100 degrees in Albuquerque. And in Saudi Arabia, hot weather is believed to have killed more than 1300 Muslims completing their pilgrimage to Mecca. This year, a sacred rite has turned into a dangerous ordeal. Temperatures in mecca have surpassed 50 degrees celsius, with tragic results. It's a story of environmental catastrophe that's become, frankly, quite normal.

Jason Palmer
And as the mercury rises, so does the death count. Summer has now arrived in the northern hemisphere, and like the last few summers, there are huge heat waves over large areas. Rachel Dobbs is a climate correspondent for the Economist. You will hear a lot of reports of people dying in these heat waves and more throughout the rest of the summer. But heat doesn't actually have to kill anyone.

And so, Rachel, we've talked about climate change enough on the show to know that these things are very connected then. But you are talking about heat waves as an entirely separate thing, broken out as a separate issue. Why? It's not so much that they are a separate issue. They are hugely related to climate change.

Want to know a secret? More than just my armpits stink. That's why I use secret whole body deodorant everywhere
The amount of warming that we've currently seen is massively contributing to the higher extremes that we are now seeing. But these are not events that are going to come in the future and that we have time to prepare for. This is the reality that we are living in now with this level of warming. And very comprehensive plans have to be taken to deal with. With heat waves specifically, not just to mitigate against climate change in the future.

And there is this huge distance between the risks posed by heat waves increasingly every year and the response that you are seeing from officials. They are not taken seriously enough, they are not built into countries adaptation plans enough, and they are not systematic or wide reaching enough. So if you say policymakers and officials are not taking this seriously enough, how should they be doing things differently? I think the first and most important thing to be thinking about is that vulnerability to extreme heat is in many ways a function of inequality. Being older in firm is a serious risk factor, but differences in economic income plays a huge role, too.

Where people live is incredibly important. One analysis found that indoor temperatures in a densely packed slum in Mumbai were on average six degrees hotter than in nearby suburban homes. People who have no homes at all are also particularly vulnerable. There was a very long heat wave in 2023 in Arizona, and 45% of the deaths in one of the counties there were people who were homeless. In cities like London and New York, there is a big difference between how hot neighbourhoods that are poorer and often traditionally non white are, like the Bronx versus Central park.

Many of the pilgrims who died on the hajj this year were also poorer, and that almost definitely contributed to their deaths. They were overwhelmingly unregistered as pilgrims who had come in under tourist visas, and they inevitably did that because they couldn't afford the full package. They were then denied access to things like air conditioned complexes, air conditioned tents, adequate water, adequate medical supplies. So is the policy prescription here, then, in terms of dealing with heat waves, principally, then dealing with the poor, the infirm, the elderly, the people who are most at risk in this accounting? Yeah, it absolutely is identifying the groups that are most at risk and sort of prioritising ways to help them.

And, you know, these are not always obvious. So another way in which heat disproportionately impacts people is according to the kind of work that they do. Industries that are based outside, so agriculture are obviously very, very vulnerable to extreme heat, but also industries that are based in sort of cramped conditions indoors, often in poorly ventilated areas, like sorting packages in a warehouse or working in a factory, are much more likely to be exposed to dangerous heat levels. Those are also, crucially, jobs that are more likely to be done by poorer blue collar people in rich countries or by large parts of the population in poor countries. Ok, we have quite a clear picture of who's at risk, but still what's to be done, how to fix this problem.

So, obviously, because this problem is about lots of different groups who are vulnerable for lots of different reasons, there is no sort of one set prescription for any country. But what you have to do is look at the whole problem systematically and work out a range of interventions to then try and target all of these different levels. So there are a lot of options. Some of them are very simple stuff like painting the roofs of buildings white to reflect light, are very beneficial, will be particularly beneficial in places like Africa, where lots and lots of people live under tin roofs, which absorb huge amounts of heat. Another option would be to give schools or workplaces more flexible policies about being at home or different hours when people have to attend, when temperatures are really high.

Because though policies have to be designed to approach the problem at lots of different levels, some are more complicated and more contentious. These ones seem to be the ones where they fall outside the traditional remit of climate or health policy. So stuff like trying to rework labor regulations. The Biden administration has been working very hard to try and introduce federal heat protections for workers, mostly to mandate pretty common sense things like access to rest, access to shade, access to water. They've been doing that for two years and have really struggled.

I think that those regulations are likely to come in soon, but there's been a huge amount of industry pushback. Businesses say that, you know, the cost of providing these things is going to be prohibitively expensive. And these measures, which make a lot of sense and seem like they should have been implemented a long time ago, are actually then very hard to push through. As you say, some of the solutions that are there, before we get into the thorny policy questions are very simple. Painting things white.

Jason Palmer
There is already a heat wave conquering technology out there, though, in the form of air conditioning. Does that not figure in here? Yeah, air conditioning does figure in here, and it is quite a controversial issue, not least because it uses large amounts of energy. And one of the things we have to do to reduce further temperature rise is reduce emissions. But thinking really needs to change on air conditioning.

Want to know a secret? More than just my armpits stink. That's why I use secret whole body deodorant everywhere
It is now a life saving technology. The Lancet, which is a medical journal, found that in people aged over 65 globally across one year, access to air conditioning saved about 190,000 heat related deaths. It meant that those people did not die. That actually is about half the total people who did die in that age bracket from heat related causes that year. So it is hugely, hugely beneficial.

It's also really, really critical in certain environments. I'm thinking places like hospitals, I'm thinking places like care homes. You have to prioritize grids being powered by renewable sources so air conditioning units are not contributing massively to emissions. You also have to make sure that access to air conditioning is given much more widely. And so even people who cannot afford to have it in their homes or cannot afford to foot the electricity bill for it, have access to it when they really need it.

Quite a lot of american cities now actually do this quite well with big cooling centres, which are often a big air conditioned school gym or whatever it is that people can go, go and stay in and often sleep and just get out of the incredibly high temperatures during a heat wave. So, as you say, plenty of prescriptions here. Policy prescriptions, technology prescriptions. If you are a policymaker, how to figure out what's best for your constituency, for your people. Quite a good example of this is actually France, who has had a very, very detailed plan since about 2004.

There was a particularly bad heat wave in Europe in 2003 that was originally mostly just sort of health impacts, but has been evolved and finessed over the years. And it now takes in everything from working advice to replacing tarmac on children's playgrounds with something that absorbs less heat, to very detailed protocols for exactly what hospitals should do, exactly how communities should track who is vulnerable in them. And they have had really quite a lot of success with this. It's difficult to do. It takes a lot of time.

You have to really think about it and really put resources behind it. But in the 2003 heatwave, France lost tens of thousands of people in another heat wave in 2019. So after this plan had been in place and had been evolved several times, and that heat wave was actually marginally hotter than the one in 2003, they had 90% less casualties. So a lot of effort, a lot of payoff. Given that hot summers are now inevitable and are going to be happening with increasing frequency, these kind of measures do need to be taken seriously and put into place basically everywhere there is a lot of suffering that is being caused that could otherwise be averted.

Jason Palmer
Rachel, thanks very much for your time. Thanks for having me, Jason.

Ryan Reynolds
Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds at Mint mobile. We like to do the opposite of what big wireless does. They charge you a lot. We charge you a little so naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right, we're cutting the price of mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month.

Give it a try at mint mobile.com. Switch $45 upfront for three months, plus taxes and fees. Promoting for new customers for limited time unlimited, more than 40gb per month slows full terms@mintmobile.com. dot.

Jason Palmer
In Britain, you will often find yourself in a queue of people, says this video. Unlike in China, it's expected that you wait your turn and not push in. Expect it queuing verges on religion here. This video was put out by Imperial College London, Britain's premier science and tech university. It's a little guide for incoming chinese students.

The number of students studying abroad has tripled over the past two decades to more than 6 million. And for a while, the fraction of chinese scholars was going up and up. That, though, is changing. Chinese students are growing gradually, less keen to study outside their own country. Mark Johnson is the economist's education correspondent.

Mark Johnson
In their place, indian students are becoming the main engine of growth. So what's the evidence? This is what's going on. Let's put some numbers to it. Well, the number of Indians going abroad for foreign study is increasing very fast.

So in the first ten months of 2023, something like 700 Indians went abroad for foreign study at some level or other, at least according to the indian government. That was roughly 30% more than in 2019, the year before the pandemic. Since 2022, America has been issuing more student visas to indian citizens than they hand out to chinese ones. That's also true in Britain. It's the first time in 15 years or so that this has been the case.

Jason Palmer
So what's actually going on here? What's driving the surge in indian students? Well, India has a massive and fast growing university aged population. So every month, a million more Indians turn 18, and their families are much richer than they used to be. So GDP per person in India is five times now what it was 20 years ago.

Mark Johnson
The indian university system has grown extremely quickly, but, you know, the very top institutions are very hard to get into, harder even than America's Ivy League. And a lot of the others are of quite poor quality. So lots of students think they'll do better if they go abroad. And new kinds of financial company, new kinds of fintech firms are springing up to make sure that they get access to the loans that they need to pay foreign fees what effect has all. This had back at home?

I mean, in public, indian politicians are inclined to sort of bemoan all this is brain drain and say it's all disastrous. I think behind the rhetoric, everybody knows that students who go abroad generally do well and generally do better than they would have done if they'd stayed at home. I mean, those who return home bring back valuable skills. India's best universities are full of foreign educated academics, and those who stay away are also ultimately seen as flag flies for India abroad. And what about on the receiving end?

Jason Palmer
What effects has that sort of influx had elsewhere? Mostly this is really good news for receiving countries. So rich countries benefit when they get smart, ambitious young people. I mean, especially if they're bringing with them talent in, say, engineering or computer science or maths. Indeed, in America, a quarter of all billion dollar startups have founders who came to the country as international students.

Mark Johnson
But it's also good because of the money that foreigners are bringing to western universities. So, I mean, in Britain, to use one example, foreigners make up about a quarter of all students now, but they contribute more than 40% of all fees. So in lots of countries, foreign students, whether they're Indians or Chinese, are making an outsized contribution to the financial health of these places. But this does kind of crash into the other debate that we're often talking about on the show, which is immigration and the degrees to which those receiving countries might want a huge influx. So I think there is an important risk that a shift in where international students come from is actually going to aggravate these debates, which were already quite toxic about the pros and cons of this student migration.

There's a couple of reasons why. So it helps to understand the way that the Indians are different from the Chinese, who up to now have been the main source of international students. For one thing, indian students have a bit less money, so they tend to go to more affordable, less prestigious institutions. They tend to do shorter courses. So in Britain, a typical indian student spends only about half as much on tuition fees as a chinese one does.

The second difference is that the Indians are a bit more inclined as a group to want to stay on after their studies. So they place great value, in particular on post study visa schemes that let them stay and work for a few years, even if they don't have a sponsor after they graduate. And in some cases, indeed, they're relying on that opportunity to help pay back some of the money they borrowed for their fees. And that's different from the Chinese, who were often spending savings rather than loans and who historically have tended to head home as soon as their courses were finished. So do you think the coming immigration tensions around this will actually kind of outweigh the education questions we've been talking about so far?

I think it means that universities and everyone else that value the very many benefits that come from this global movement of students are definitely going to find themselves involved in more heated battles going forward and are going to have to fight a bit harder to sort of preserve this in western countries that have been quite open to it up to now. So, I mean, take these post study visa schemes. They're getting more integral to the business of international study, but they're also now growing more noticed by the public and increasingly controversial. And we're also, as a second example, finding that immigration authorities are more suspicious of indian students. They're more likely to turn down their student visa applications than has been the case for chinese ones.

So there is a big risk that policymakers in rich countries are increasingly encouraged to raise the drawbridges, that they become more inclined to shun the opportunities that exist to bring in the best and brightest from abroad. And if that is what happens, they're also going to have to revisit funding settlements that in lots of places seem to have assumed that universities are going to be able to keep on growing ever more reliant on income from overseas. Mark, thanks very much for joining us. Thank you.

Rosie Blore
I mean, we've all done it, haven't we? You're on your way somewhere in a rush. Can't hang around and leap onto a full subway car.

I've never made it above armpit height, so it's particularly disgusting to be on a crowded train.

And then somewhere along that packed journey, you suddenly start to wonder if the stench that's suffocating you could actually be yourself.

Annie Krabbel
Last year, Americans spent more on deodorant than any other rich country. Annie Krabbel is a news editor at the Economist. So they bought $6.6 billion worth of deodorant, which is about $20 per person, and that's almost double the per capita spending of France. And american media is full of deodorant ads. Just even hearing about this is making me anxious about me being somehow disgusting or smelly in ways I haven't yet realized.

Rosie Blore
Thank goodness this is audio. It sounds like these ads are making a lot of people, not just me, feel somewhat neurotic. Yeah. So it's not that unique among western countries for deodorant to be considered a part of everyday hygiene, but Americans are increasingly stocking several types of deodorants, and they're almost treating them like perfumes. And then one of the most interesting developments is the launch of full body deodorant in the United States.

Annie Krabbel
So this is no longer just your standard underarm deodorant stick. Now we have ads talking about the body odor you allegedly have everywhere from your feet to your under boobs. Want to know a secret? More than just my armpits stink. That's why I use secret whole body deodorant everywhere.

It arguably started with a company called Lumi, which was created by a gynecologist in 2017. She made a deodorant cream for your crotch, basically, but then pitched it as being effective everywhere. No one likes odor below the belt, whether youre at the gym getting free samples of butt and scents at the office, inhaling your own front fumes, or in bed doing some stinky wanky. No, not the Teletubby. Your privates go everywhere you go.

No one likes odor below the belt, whether youre at the gym getting free samples of butt and scents at the office, inhaling your own front fumes, or in bed doing some stinky wanky. No, not the Teletubby. Your privates go everywhere you go. So why isnt there deodorant for privates? Now there is with Lumi
So why isnt there deodorant for privates? Now there is with Lumi. Its so crazy. Wow. But fumes and under boob smell is not something I was expecting to be discussing.

Rosie Blore
Absolutely fascinating, terrifying stuff, Annie. Yeah, they all kind of have this irreverent tone. Yeah. Like I said, it's this funny sort of interplay between this product that's pitched as being for everywhere your feet. People are applying it under their sports bra.

Annie Krabbel
Anywhere that there's folds of skin, basically. But then at the same time, there's kind of just this wink, wink. It's for your crotch. And clearly the Lumi advertising really plays into that. Well, apart from instilling widespread paranoia on a daily basis about full body odor.

Rosie Blore
And I'm not underplaying how corrosive that paranoia can be. Are there any problems with using this deodorant? Do we care? So for now at least, these are all, for the most part, deodorants. Unlike antiperspirants, which actually block sweat glands, deodorants, they don't prevent you from sweating.

Annie Krabbel
And so that's really important. It's like a miraculous thing in a lot of ways, human sweat. And we cool ourselves down and you don't want to mess with that process. Then if we're talking about the use of these products on your groin, that raises some red flags for some gynecologists who advise their patients to avoid anything that has fragrance. So, you know, they can cause irritation or even infections.

And then, yeah, there's still this gender angle of these expectations of how women are supposed to smell. So Loomis founder says she is empowering women by normalizing this and giving them safe options to deal with odor. They're clinically tested, but the marketing copy is still stuff about how odor saps women's confidence and undermines their self worth. And one of the critical gynecologists that I spoke to, her name is Jennifer Lincoln. She hates this and says it's not helpful to tell women that they should smell like pina coladas.

And it's not really clear how doing that will help restore women's self worth. Thank you, Annie. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Thank you for having me, Rosie.

Rosie Blore
That's all for this episode of the intelligence. Let us know what you think of the show. You can get in touch@podcastconomist.com. we'll see you back here tomorrow.

Small details are big surfaces. Tight corners are odd shapes, flat, rounded, textured or tall, whatever your next project, theres a spray paint pattern thats just right because rust oleums new custom spray five in one gives you control with five different spray patterns so you can tackle nooks, crannies, edges and curves without worrying about drips, runs, uneven coverage or anything else. Custom spray five in one only from rust oleum
Small details are big surfaces. Tight corners are odd shapes, flat, rounded, textured or tall, whatever your next project, theres a spray paint pattern thats just right because rust oleums new custom spray five in one gives you control with five different spray patterns so you can tackle nooks, crannies, edges and curves without worrying about drips, runs, uneven coverage or anything else. Custom spray five in one only from rust oleum.