As California grapples with the increasing likelihood of record heat waves due to climate change, voters are questioning the government’s response to the sweltering conditions, saying they would welcome stronger policies to help minimize the heat’s impact.

More than three-quarters of California voters (77%) said they have recently experienced periods of extreme heat in their area, according to a new poll from the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, co-sponsored by the Los Angeles Times. Voters living in the Inland Empire, Central Valley, and Los Angeles counties reported the greatest impact on themselves and their immediate families.

By a wide margin, 67% to 22% of voters supported the idea that the state would set cooling standards for homes similar to the heating standards currently in effect. The standards require air conditioners or other measures to prevent indoor temperatures from rising to unsafe levels, a step that could be costly for building owners but could potentially save many lives, according to health officials.

As the mercury rises, Californians have given mixed reviews of how their communities have responded with refrigeration centers and other relief options. Twenty-six percent of voters in the affected areas rated their community as doing excellent or good work; 23% fair and 23% poor or very poor.

The findings underscore growing anxiety about the state’s climate future at a time when most experts say conditions are likely to be three times hotter in the coming years and decades. In July, the global average temperature rose 2.02 degrees above average, making it the hottest month on Earth in at least 174 years of record keeping, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That month, a stifling heat dome settled over the Southwest, sending temperatures in Phoenix to 110 degrees or higher for a record 31 days. Death Valley rose to 128 degrees, while several areas in the Central Valley broke daily temperature records, including 113 degrees in Redding, 110 degrees in Bakersfield and 109 degrees in Fresno, Madera, Hanford and Merced.

The fact that 77% of voters said they had recently experienced extreme heat was an important finding, said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS survey.

“I knew it would be a portion of people, probably a majority, but 77% seems pretty high,” he said, noting that the biggest impact was in the interior of the state.

Inland areas, as well as poor neighborhoods and communities of color, are often victims of extreme heat.

The idea of ​​cooling standards for buildings, called for in the poll, is being considered in Los Angeles, where officials are studying the feasibility of a city-wide cooling mandate for rental units.

A bill in the state legislature, Assembly Bill 2597, similarly attempted to require residential units to maintain adequate cooling, but stalled in the Senate. However, a bill passed last year, Assembly Bill 209, kept the idea alive, directing the Department of Housing and Community Development to study the draft and present recommendations to the legislature.

Mandatory cooling standards could pose challenges: More air conditioning would increase energy use, and the logistics of modernizing old buildings could be complex, says Louis Blumberg, a climate policy officer.

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profit group Climate Resolve. But it is also undoubtedly ‘the right thing to do’.

“There’s a policy basis for that, and a moral one as well,” Blumberg said. “We demand that our homes are safe. We do it for warmth, you have to make sure the house doesn’t get too cold. And in an era of warming temperatures, why shouldn’t that apply to keeping the house from getting too hot? “

A majority of voters, 70%, also supported a proposal in Congress to expand federal disaster relief legislation to include extreme heat as a form of natural disaster, along with hurricanes, fires, landslides, droughts and floods.

The Extreme Heat Emergency Act, introduced in June by Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), would give the Federal Emergency Management Administration, or FEMA, the authority to provide assistance to local governments during extreme heat.

Blumberg said heat was historically not included in disaster statements because people tend to think of disasters in terms of property damage.

“Extreme heat does cause some material damage, but the biggest damage it causes is to health

,

and for individuals,” he said. “So I think the next big policy change is to understand that heat is a public health crisis, and that it has significant negative impacts on people, including death.”

DiCamillo said he was not surprised by the broad support for the policy questions.

“At a time when people are experiencing this extreme heat, you would expect there to be support for some form of government action to minimize the impact, and we’re seeing that,” he said.

Previous Berkeley IGS polls, including a May poll on worsening weather swings, produced more geographically and politically divided results. Support for both heat proposals garnered majority support among voters in all major regions of the state, DiCamillo noted.

Results were also more consistent across party lines, although Democrats typically showed more unanimous support for the policy proposals than Republicans.

The poll comes as California is drawing increasing attention to its response to extreme heat. A 2021 Los Angeles Times study found that heat in the state has likely caused about 3,900 deaths over the past decade, six times the official number.

Another heat wave last year pushed the state’s power grid to the brink, prompting officials to send an emergency text alert to millions of residents asking them to cut their consumption immediately. Within half an hour of the warning, the load on the power grid dropped by about 2,000 megawatts, narrowly avoiding a blackout.

As many as 50% of voters said they lack confidence in California’s ability to provide stable, reliable electrical power during prolonged heat waves, the poll found.

“It’s consistent with the mixed views about how their communities are doing,” DiCamillo said. “Whether the state can actually continue to provide reliable power, half the people say yes, half the people say no.”

Despite the high temperatures this summer, the state has so far managed to avoid a repeat of last year’s grid load, something officials attribute mostly to increased battery power and increased hydropower due to historic winter storms.

But the effects of the 2022 heat wave are still being felt. Despite criticism, officials were unable to provide immediate data on how many people died during the record-breaking, 10-day heat wave. As recently as this summer, state health officials reported an estimated 395 deaths from the event.

Experts say this is still moving too slowly, especially since other states like Oregon and Washington already have the ability to do rapid assessments. But Blumberg said some progress has been made on that front, including $10 million for an upcoming statewide heat monitoring system in California.

Progress has also been made on a heat wave classification system, which would categorize heat waves like hurricanes and other disasters to raise awareness. The item, Assembly Bill 2238, was passed last year and officials are moving forward with the plan, Blumberg said.

Another awareness campaign, Governor. Gavin Newsom’s $20 million “Heat Ready CA” campaign, launched this summer, aims to educate and warn residents about

about

the dangers of extreme heat.

However, less progress has been made toward another important goal: heat standards for indoor workers. In places like the Inland Empire, temperatures in warehouses can reach 90 degrees or higher

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While state agencies are working toward a final settlement, progress has been “frustratingly slow,” Blumberg said.

He noted that extreme heat is the deadliest of all natural disasters, killing more people each year than hurricanes, tornadoes and other weather hazards, according to NOAA.

“We need to look at climate impacts from a people’s point of view, not just a property point of view,” Blumberg said.

The Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies survey surveyed 6,030 registered voters in California online in English and Spanish from Aug. 24 to Aug. 29.

Because the survey results are weighted to match census and voter registration benchmarks, margin of error estimates may be inaccurate; However, the results for the full sample are estimated to have a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction.