Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Culture

The One Woman In Miami Rooting Against the Heat

How do you promote ‘beating the heat’ in a city that desperately wants them to win?

Miami.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Miami has two heat seasons and this year, against all odds, they happen to overlap.

The No. 8-seed Miami Heat have played deep into June against the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Finals after having notched an improbable series win against the No. 2-seed Boston Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals and hung on for an all-important road win in the best-of-seven championship series that started in the Mile High City last week. Though Miamians are no strangers to winning, the 2023 team’s endearing underdog narrative has ignited Heat fever across the county, and country, with many former Floridians making the pilgrimage home just to root for their team.

Quietly, though, a group of public officials in Miami-Dade County is doing everything in their power to ensure that the heat doesn’t win.

A former high school basketball player herself, Jane Gilbert is aware that rooting against the heat in Miami is practically sacrilege. But in a sense, it’s her full-time job: Gilbert is the city’s Chief Heat Officer. The first-of-its-kind position was established to strategize and mobilize against Miami’s extreme heat; for her, the heat season runs “the opposite of our basketball season,” from May 1 to October 31 each year.

Get one great climate story in your inbox every day:

* indicates required
  • Though the position of a Chief Heat Officer has now been replicated by Phoenix, L.A., and a number of international cities including Monterrey, Mexico; Athens, Greece; and Dhaka, Bangladesh, Miami-Dade County was “the first community in the world to establish an official Heat Season” and Heat Officer post, Daniella Levine Cava, the Miami-Dade County mayor (not to be confused with the mayor of the city of Miami or the mayor of Miami Beach), told Heatmap. “This initiative is critical to help us prepare and protect people, particularly the most vulnerable, from the threat of this ‘silent killer.’”

    Extreme heat is the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States, although it’s not the highest profile, especially in a besieged state like Florida. For most Americans on the outside looking in, climate change in the Sunshine State manifests as rising sea levels, hurricanes, and Governor Ron DeSantis’ increasing denialism. That’s not necessarily how it’s experienced first-hand, though; in fact, when low-income communities in Miami-Dade were asked their top concern related to climate change, it wasn’t sea level rise or even hurricanes that they pointed to: It was the heat.

    Heat is different in Florida than in the Western United States “where you get the extremes, those heat waves,” Gilbert explained to me. “Here we have chronic high heat.” While the danger for populations in places like the Northwest is a lack of preparedness for extreme heat events, “what we worry about [in Miami] is A/C-insecure and energy insecure populations where they can’t afford the utility bills anymore because of the combination of all costs.” Then there’s Gilbert’s nightmare scenario: a “widespread power outage during a hot time like we had with Hurricane Irma in 2017,” when 12 nursing home residents died from heat exposure.

    Chronic extreme heat will be a fact of Miami-Dade’s future. The county already has 50 more days with a heat index over 90 than it did half a century ago — “I’ve been here 27 years, and I feel the difference,” Gilbert told me. Studies have found that Miami-Dade will “likely suffer the most extreme change” in temperature of any region in the U.S.

    Gilbert, who was appointed to her office as part of Miami’s overarching Resilience Center program in 2021, sees much of her job as reaching the right people in a voice that they’ll be receptive to. That’s both literal — PSAs are distributed in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole — but also involves the more delicate art of building authority and trust. Reaching an “elderly single woman,” for example, “is different than a construction worker; that’s different than a pregnant mom with young kids.”

    Adding to this trickiness, of course, is how to get the word out about the Miami heat without getting it confused with, you know, the other Miami Heat. When researching this piece, I found that even a specified Google search of “extreme heat Miami” turned up superlative results about the basketball team. “It’s both a blessing and a little bit of a challenge because certainly I don’t want [the message to be] ‘Beat the Heat,’ right?” Gilbert, who’s a fan of the team, said. Luckily, the Heat basketball team seems amused by the connection too: “They sent me my own personalized jersey when I was appointed,” Gilbert added, “which was very nice.”

    It’s unclear at this point how far the Heat will make it in the finals; if they lose on Friday night, they’ll be down 1-3 in the series, putting them on the cusp of what would be a heartbreaking, if anticipated, defeat. But for Gilbert and her team, the days ahead are all about pace, discipline, and hustle. There’s a long season ahead and it’s just getting started.

    Read more about the wildfire smoke engulfing the eastern United States:

    Your Plants Are Going to Be Okay.

    Why Are the Canadian Wildfires So Bad This Year?

    How to Stay Safe from Wildfire Smoke Indoors

    Wildfire Smoke Is a Wheezy Throwback for New York City

    Wednesday Was the Worst Day for Wildfire Pollution in U.S. History

    You’re out of free articles.

    Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
    To continue reading
    Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
    or
    Please enter an email address
    By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
    Adaptation

    The ‘Buffer’ That Can Protect a Town from Wildfires

    Paradise, California, is snatching up high-risk properties to create a defensive perimeter and prevent the town from burning again.

    Homes as a wildfire buffer.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    The 2018 Camp Fire was the deadliest wildfire in California’s history, wiping out 90% of the structures in the mountain town of Paradise and killing at least 85 people in a matter of hours. Investigations afterward found that Paradise’s town planners had ignored warnings of the fire risk to its residents and forgone common-sense preparations that would have saved lives. In the years since, the Camp Fire has consequently become a cautionary tale for similar communities in high-risk wildfire areas — places like Chinese Camp, a small historic landmark in the Sierra Nevada foothills that dramatically burned to the ground last week as part of the nearly 14,000-acre TCU September Lightning Complex.

    More recently, Paradise has also become a model for how a town can rebuild wisely after a wildfire. At least some of that is due to the work of Dan Efseaff, the director of the Paradise Recreation and Park District, who has launched a program to identify and acquire some of the highest-risk, hardest-to-access properties in the Camp Fire burn scar. Though he has a limited total operating budget of around $5.5 million and relies heavily on the charity of local property owners (he’s currently in the process of applying for a $15 million grant with a $5 million match for the program) Efseaff has nevertheless managed to build the beginning of a defensible buffer of managed parkland around Paradise that could potentially buy the town time in the case of a future wildfire.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Spotlight

    How the Tax Bill Is Empowering Anti-Renewables Activists

    A war of attrition is now turning in opponents’ favor.

    Massachusetts and solar panels.
    Heatmap Illustration/Library of Congress, Getty Images

    A solar developer’s defeat in Massachusetts last week reveals just how much stronger project opponents are on the battlefield after the de facto repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act.

    Last week, solar developer PureSky pulled five projects under development around the western Massachusetts town of Shutesbury. PureSky’s facilities had been in the works for years and would together represent what the developer has claimed would be one of the state’s largest solar projects thus far. In a statement, the company laid blame on “broader policy and regulatory headwinds,” including the state’s existing renewables incentives not keeping pace with rising costs and “federal policy updates,” which PureSky said were “making it harder to finance projects like those proposed near Shutesbury.”

    Keep reading...Show less
    Yellow
    Hotspots

    The Midwest Is Becoming Even Tougher for Solar Projects

    And more on the week’s most important conflicts around renewables.

    The United States.
    Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

    1. Wells County, Indiana – One of the nation’s most at-risk solar projects may now be prompting a full on moratorium.

    • Late last week, this county was teed up to potentially advance a new restrictive solar ordinance that would’ve cut off zoning access for large-scale facilities. That’s obviously bad for developers. But it would’ve still allowed solar facilities up to 50 acres and grandfathered in projects that had previously signed agreements with local officials.
    • However, solar opponents swamped the county Area Planning Commission meeting to decide on the ordinance, turning it into an over four-hour display in which many requested in public comments to outright ban solar projects entirely without a grandfathering clause.
    • It’s clear part of the opposition is inflamed over the EDF Paddlefish Solar project, which we ranked last year as one of the nation’s top imperiled renewables facilities in progress. The project has already resulted in a moratorium in another county, Huntington.
    • Although the Paddlefish project is not unique in its risks, it is what we view as a bellwether for the future of solar development in farming communities, as the Fort Wayne-adjacent county is a picturesque display of many areas across the United States. Pro-renewables advocates have sought to tamp down opposition with tactics such as a direct text messaging campaign, which I previously scooped last week.
    • Yet despite the counter-communications, momentum is heading in the other direction. At the meeting, officials ultimately decided to punt a decision to next month so they could edit their draft ordinance to assuage aggrieved residents.
    • Also worth noting: anyone could see from Heatmap Pro data that this county would be an incredibly difficult fight for a solar developer. Despite a slim majority of local support for renewable energy, the county has a nearly 100% opposition risk rating, due in no small part to its large agricultural workforce and MAGA leanings.

    2. Clark County, Ohio – Another Ohio county has significantly restricted renewable energy development, this time with big political implications.

    Keep reading...Show less
    Yellow