WASHINGTON (AP) — In the summer, Levena Lindahl closes off entire rooms, blacks out the windows with curtains and calculates the monthly electricity costs for the air conditioning. But even then, the heat penetrates the house.
“When you go upstairs, it’s like walking into soup. It’s so hot,” Lindahl said. “When I walk past my attic upstairs, you can feel the heat radiating through a closed door.”
Lindahl, 37, lives in North Carolina. Her monthly electricity bills in the summer were around $100 a few years ago, but now they are twice as high. She blames this on a gradual warming trend caused by climate change.
About 7 in 10 Americans say extreme heat over the past year has had a minor to significant impact on their electricity bills, and most have noticed at least a minor impact on their outdoor activities, according to a novel poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
As tens of millions of Americans endure another summer of historic heat waves, the survey results show how extreme heat is changing people’s lives in ways huge and diminutive. The survey found that about 7 in 10 Americans have been personally affected by extremely balmy weather or extreme heat waves in the past five years, making extreme heat a more common experience than other weather events or natural disasters such as wildfires, severe droughts and hurricanes, which up to a third of U.S. adults said they have been personally affected by.
A significant share of Americans—about 4 in 10—report that extreme heat has had at least a minor impact on their sleep, pets, or exercise routine.
Jim Graham, 54, lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and worries about the safety of his dog’s paws when walking outside, especially when it hits 104 degrees Fahrenheit. To protect his dog’s feet, they go for a walk at 5:30 a.m. “It seems to be hotter than usual this year,” Graham said. His one-story home has central air conditioning, and even when he sets the thermostat at 80 degrees Fahrenheit, it costs him over $350 a month in electricity bills, a huge jump from what he was paying about a decade ago.
He’s not the only one watching the costs add up: About four in 10 Americans say they’ve received unexpectedly high electricity and gas bills in the past year due to storms, floods, heat or wildfires – including nearly half of homeowners.
Like Lindahl, many see a connection with climate change. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults who experienced severe weather or weather disasters in the past five years believe climate change was a contributing factor. Three in 10 say climate change is not a cause.
According to the European climate agency Copernicus, the Earth was 1.48 degrees Celsius warmer last year than it was in pre-industrial times. Some may consider this augment insignificant, but temperatures fluctuate unevenly around the world and can be hazardous to human health. Several regions of the United States have set temperature records this summer, and Las Vegas reached a sweltering 48.9 degrees Celsius on July 7.
According to the survey, about one in 10 Americans said extreme heat had a major impact on their sleep in the past year, while about three in 10 say it had a minor impact and 55% say it had no impact. Hispanics are more likely than white Americans to say their sleep has been affected, and lower-income Americans are also more likely than higher-income Americans to report impacts on their sleep.
The effects of extreme heat are reported more frequently in the West and South. About half of people in the West say their sleep has been at least slightly affected by extreme heat, while about 4 in 10 people in the South say their sleep has been affected, compared with about 3 in 10 people in the Midwest and Northeast. People in the West and South are also more likely than those in the Northeast to say their exercise routines have been affected.
Other aspects of daily life — such as work and commuting, the timing of events such as weddings and family gatherings, and travel and vacation plans — are less affected, but their impacts are disproportionately felt by certain groups of Americans. About a quarter of Americans say their travel or vacation plans have been affected by extreme heat, with Hispanics and African Americans more likely to make this statement than white Americans.
Even enjoying time outside has become more challenging for some. The survey found that about 6 in 10 Americans say extreme heat has impacted their own or their family’s outdoor activities.
In general, people who do not believe in climate change are less likely to report being affected by various aspects of extreme heat than people who do believe in climate change. For example, about 8 in 10 Americans who believe in climate change say that extreme heat has at least a diminutive impact on their electric bill. This compares with half of Americans who are unsure whether climate change is happening or do not believe that it is happening.
Mario Cianchetti, 70, is a retired engineer who now lives in Sedona, Arizona. His home has solar panels and heat pumps that he installed because he wanted to lower his electric bill and save money. “When you retire, you’re on a fixed income. I didn’t want to deal with rising energy costs,” said Cianchetti, who describes himself as politically independent.
Cianchetti noted that temperatures felt unusually toasty, but said installing sustainable technologies in his home was a financial matter. “It’s not that I don’t believe in climate change. Yes, I believe we’re entering a hot cycle here, but I don’t believe it’s man-made.”
When it comes to general views on climate change, 70% of U.S. adults say climate change is happening. About 6-in-10 of those who believe climate change is happening say it is caused entirely or mostly by human activities, while another 3-in-10 say it is caused equally by human activities and natural environmental changes, and 12% believe it is caused mostly by natural environmental changes. Nine-in-10 Democrats, 7-in-10 independents, and about half of Republicans say climate change is happening.
These numbers have remained essentially unchanged since the last survey in April and have remained stable over the past few years, although about half of Americans say they have been more concerned about climate change in the past year.
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The survey of 1,143 adults was conducted July 25-29, 2024. The sample came from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
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O’Malley reported from Philadelphia.
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