WASHINGTON (AP) — Levena Lindahl closes all rooms during the summer months, covers windows with blackout curtains and budgets for air conditioning to manage the monthly cost of electricity. But heat still gets in.
“Going up there is like walking into soup. It’s so hot,” Lindahl said. “If I walk past the attic upstairs, you can feel the heat coming off a closed door.”
Lindahl, 37, of North Carolina, said her monthly summer electricity bill was about $100 years ago but has doubled since then. She blames a gradual warming trend caused by climate change.
About seven-in-ten Americans say extreme heat has had a minor to major impact on their utility bills over the past year, and most have seen at least a minor impact on their outdoor activities, according to a new 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’s findings highlight how extreme heat is changing people’s lives in big and small ways. The survey found that nearly 7 in 10 Americans have been personally affected by extreme heat or an extreme heat wave in the past five years. That makes extreme heat a more common experience than other weather events or natural disasters, such as wildfires, major droughts and hurricanes, which a third of U.S. adults say they have been personally affected by.
A significant portion of Americans (about 4 in 10) report that extreme heat has at least a minor impact on their sleep, pets or exercise routines.
Jim Graham, 54, lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and worries about the safety of his dog’s paws when he goes for walks outside, especially when the temperature is above 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40 degrees Celsius). They go for walks at 5:30 a.m. to protect his dog’s feet. “It seems to be warmer than usual this year,” Graham said. His one-story home has central air conditioning, and even setting the thermostat at 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius) costs him more than $350 a month on electricity, a big jump from what he was paying about a decade ago.
He’s not the only one who’s seen the dollar rise: About 4 in 10 Americans, including nearly half of homeowners, say they faced unexpectedly high electricity bills last year because of storms, floods, heat or wildfires.
Like Lindahl, many see a link to climate change. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults who have experienced some type of severe weather event or weather disaster in the past five years say they believe climate change was a contributing factor. Three in 10 say climate change was not a cause.
Earth was 2.66 degrees Fahrenheit (1.48 degrees Celsius) warmer last year than it was in pre-industrial times, according to the European climate agency Copernicus. Some may see this increase as insignificant, but temperatures fluctuate unevenly across the planet and can be dangerous to human health. Several parts of the U.S. broke all-time temperature records this summer, with Las Vegas reaching a scorching 120 degrees Fahrenheit (48.9 degrees Celsius) on July 7.
The survey found that nearly 1 in 10 Americans say extreme heat has had a major impact on their sleep in the past year, while nearly 3 in 10 say it has had a minor impact and 55% say it has had no impact. Hispanic Americans are more likely than white Americans to say their sleep has been affected, and lower-income Americans are more likely than higher-income Americans to report an impact on their sleep.
The effects of extreme heat are more commonly reported in the West and South. About half of people living in the West say their sleep is at least somewhat affected by extreme heat, about 4 in 10 people living in the South say their sleep is affected, and about 3 in 10 people living in the Midwest and Northeast say their sleep is affected. People living in the West and South are more likely than those in the Northeast to say their exercise routines are affected.
Other aspects of daily life—such as jobs and commutes, the scheduling of events like weddings and meetings, and travel and vacation plans—were less disrupted overall, but their impacts are being felt disproportionately among certain groups of Americans. About a quarter of Americans say their travel or vacation plans have been affected by extreme heat, and Hispanic and Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to say so.
For some, even spending time outside has become more difficult. The survey found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans say extreme heat has impacted outdoor activities for them or their family.
In general, people who do not believe climate change is happening are less likely than those who believe climate change is happening to report that they have been affected by aspects of extreme heat. For example, about 8 in 10 Americans who believe climate change is happening say extreme heat has had at least a small impact on their electricity bill, while half of Americans who are unsure or don’t think climate change is happening say this.
Mario Cianchetti, 70, is a retired engineer who now lives in Sedona, Ariz. His home has solar panels and heat pumps that he installed because he was interested in lowering his electricity bills to save money. “When you retire, you have one fixed income. I didn’t want to deal with rising energy costs,” said Cianchetti, who describes himself as a political independent.
Cianchetti said temperatures were unusually warm, but installing sustainable technologies in his home was a matter of finance. “It’s not that I don’t believe in climate change, yes, I do believe we’re entering a warming cycle here, but I don’t believe it’s man-made,” he said.
As for general views on climate change, 70% of U.S. adults say climate change is happening. Of those who believe climate change is happening, about 6 in 10 say it is entirely or mostly caused by human activities, 3 in 10 say it is caused by both human activities and natural changes in the environment, and 12% believe it is primarily caused by natural environmental change. 9 in 10 Democrats, 7 in 10 independents, and about half of Republicans say climate change is happening.
Those numbers are essentially unchanged since April, when the question was last asked, and have remained steady in recent years, but about half of Americans say they have become 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, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling 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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