A former aide to the noted climate activist Mayor of Freetown, Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, Eugenia Kargbo is one of five official Chief Heat Officers (CHOs) in the world. After being appointed in 2021, she joins fellow CHOs from Athens, Miami, Santiago, Chile, and Monterrey, Mexico in a program.
serious for people s health. this almost requires us to really except the global warming is happening and really come up with a whole new way of living almost particularly in cities but really everywhere. yeah, you re absolutely right. the most important shift, i think, has to do with what you just said, that we have to realize that we live in a different world and this world needs a lot of adapting and a lot of changes in our behavior in the way we build, in the way we farm, in the way we move around. i mean, we really have to take this seriously from this point on ward. thank you so much. this was so helpful and i hope there are many more chief heat officers all over the world and that they can follow your example. thank you, fareed.
this morning, more than 85 million people are under heat alerts as record breaking temperatures are expected across the northeast united states throughout the weekend. many of us have noticed that these recent heat waves have been more dangerous and happening more frequently. but to raise public awareness and protect lives, cities like los angeles, phoenix, and miami have appointed chief heat officers to address the threat of rising temperatures. here with me now is kathy mccloud, the director of the rockefeller resilience center which is the group leading the appointment of chief heat officers around the world. welcome to you, thank you so much for joining us. i want to talk more about what exactly the role is of a chief heat officer. but let s talk first about this fact. heat already kills more americans than any other weather-related disaster. our elected officials, do you feel, taking this crisis seriously enough?
we can t quite comprehend how hot it is, and fit, healthy young people are coming into emergency rooms like crazy this summer. and we just have to get our minds around what this is. we think that having somebody at the local level, working closely with elected officials with that influence to wake up every day focused on helping protect people from heat, is the way to go. these chief heat officers can really get in front of the crisis and bring solutions, because there are lots of solutions. right, so tell us more about the tasks of a chief heat officer, especially in the context of these heat islands, right? educate us about that, because we know it s the low income neighborhoods and people who are homeless who are disproportionately impacted and hurt by heat waves. you re so right. and when we live in cities, the materials we ve built our cities with, including black asphalt that absorbs heat and then