Heat Waves Are Not a Natural Disaster, They Are Political

As millions across the United States endure scorching heat waves, the mainstream discourse often treats these extreme temperatures as unpredictable, “natural” disasters. But these heat waves, reaching record-breaking and deadly levels, are anything but natural. They are the direct consequence of political choices rooted in a long history of colonialism, extractive economies, and climate delay—and they reveal how systemic injustices leave the most vulnerable at greatest risk.

The Rising Temperatures Are No Accident

Scientists have been warning us for decades that burning fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—would heat the planet and destabilize the climate. Every uptick in the mercury, every shattered record, can be traced back to emissions created by wealthy countries and corporations that have relentlessly exploited both people and ecosystems. Heat waves, like those sweeping across the United States, are part of this pattern: atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are directly responsible for trapping heat and making these extremes more frequent and more intense.

Yet the political response to this crisis has been characterized by inaction, delay, and false promises. In the U.S. alone, lawmakers have repeatedly chosen the interests of the fossil fuel industry over the health and safety of the public. Instead of moving quickly to decarbonize the economy, they have gutted climate policies, subsidized oil and gas expansion, and ignored frontline communities calling for transformative change.

Colonial Roots of Climate Collapse

Understanding the heat wave as political also requires us to look back further. Climate collapse is a product of centuries of colonialism that established exploitative relationships with nature and Indigenous peoples across the globe. From the clear-cutting of forests and draining of wetlands to the wholesale destruction of Indigenous food and land management systems, colonial economies systematically commodified ecosystems and rendered entire landscapes more fragile. That ongoing legacy lives on in industrial agricultural practices and suburban sprawl across the U.S., which worsen heat by removing green space and covering the ground in asphalt and concrete. Indigenous and racialized communities are pushed into these heat-island neighborhoods with few resources and little political power to demand relief. For them, a heat wave is not just a passing inconvenience; it is a serious threat to life.

Climate Delay Is Killing Us

We also cannot ignore the active role of “climate delay,” where politicians and corporations acknowledge the existence of the climate crisis in words but block meaningful action in practice. This delay is deliberate. It serves to protect profits while the planetary crisis intensifies.

Every year spent delaying real solutions means that the heat waves grow hotter and deadlier. Every new oil pipeline, every new offshore drilling lease, locks us into decades more emissions. Even modest legislation like the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act contains vast subsidies for fossil fuel companies. These decisions are political—and they result in hotter summers, dangerous humidity, and the silent suffering of those without access to air conditioning or clean water.

The Human Toll and Political Choice

Heat waves disproportionately harm those who bear the least responsibility for causing them. Poor and working-class people, people of color, outdoor laborers, incarcerated people, and those experiencing homelessness face the greatest exposure. In some places, these communities experience temperatures up to 10°F higher than wealthier neighborhoods due to lack of tree cover and green space—an inequality that itself is a legacy of racialized housing policies like redlining. Every time elected officials refuse to regulate greenhouse gases, or cut funding for public cooling centers and tree-planting programs, they make a political decision that endangers these people. Treating heat waves as an apolitical event obscures this reality and lets those in power avoid accountability.

We Can’t Rely on Business-as-Usual Leadership

Despite their rhetoric, most world leaders have not acted as though this is an emergency. The U.S. and other wealthy countries have failed to meet even their modest emissions reduction pledges. They continue to support the global oil economy through trade, finance, and diplomacy. This inertia is political: the result of deep ties between lawmakers and lobbyists for the very industries fueling this crisis. That’s why solutions must come from social movements, Indigenous leadership, frontline communities, and youth climate strikers who are pushing for climate justice, a rapid end to fossil fuels, and investments in resilient, fair cities. It is also why international solidarity matters. The heat waves we experience in the U.S. are part of a global pattern—from Pakistan to Sudan to Brazil—driven by the same extractive economy, and they demand systemic change across borders.

A Path Forward Exists

Climate change is not inevitable. If political will aligns with the public good, we can shift quickly to renewable energy, redesign cities to be cooler and greener, protect workers from heat, and repair our damaged ecosystems. This requires divesting from colonial capitalist systems and investing in community-controlled solutions rooted in Indigenous knowledge and local resilience.

The political leaders who continue to protect fossil fuel interests and corporate profits must be held to account. The fight against heat waves is the fight against political inertia, colonial legacy, and climate delay. It is, fundamentally, a fight for justice—for our health, for future generations, and for the planet that sustains us all.

Climate change and war fuel one another. Armed conflicts emit millions of tons of CO₂ each year — the U.S. military alone is one of the world’s largest polluters — while scorching heatwaves and droughts destabilize entire regions, igniting resource conflicts and displacement. In 2023, record-breaking heatwaves across the Middle East and Africa displaced over 30 million people, deepening humanitarian crises. Until we confront both militarism and fossil fuels together, we cannot build a peaceful, livable future.