President Joe Biden called out climate deniers while announcing a new website for safety info, heat.gov, and new actions to protect U.S. workers from extreme heat on Friday. “Even those who deny we are in a climate crisis can’t deny the impact extreme heat is having on Americans,” Biden said. Biden didn’t go so far as to declare a Climate Emergency, but instead instructed the Labor Department to do more inspections of overheated workplaces, boost spending on weather predictions, and send a hazard alert to employers to address the risk of extreme heat facing employees.
“Worker protections and water access are vital in this deadly heat,” Jean Su of the Center for Biological Diversity told the New York Times, “but incremental steps like these are the reason we’re suffering this record-shattering summer … real relief won’t come until Biden confronts the culprit of deadly fossil fuels.” (New York Times $, MSNBC, E&E $, AP)