Climate Point: Quiet deaths in extreme heat, and New England color could brown out.

Welcome to Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and the environment. I'm Janet Wilson, back this week from beautiful New Hampshire. As is the case everywhere, the impacts of human-caused climate change are already being felt there, and will worsen in coming years. 

From the possible loss of sugar maple syrup — which requires trees with snowy feet — to fiercer storms and worse floods, New England's rural touchstones are at risk. That includes the possible permanent "browning" of dazzling fall foliage due to more droughts, hurricanes and heatwaves, as Patrick Whittle with Associated Press explains.

Predicting peak fall foliage has always been an inexact science, but we lucked out on a balmy Saturday packed with scarlet, carrot orange and lemon yellow trees around every curve. The next night, a pelting rainstorm cleared nearly all of it but the bronzed oaks.  

So as that famous desert curmudgeon Edward Abbey said, "Get out there. While you can. While it’s still here. ... Get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air. ... Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much. ...You will outlive the bastards.”

There's more here by Abbey, who was far from perfect, but mighty eloquent.

Here are some other stories that may be of interest.

MUST-READ STORIES

Who dies in record heat. In two new pieces, journalists lay out the brutal toll of triple-digit heat amplified by climate change, putting faces on the statistics. In California's Imperial County, near the Mexico border, iNewsource's Zoe Meyers and Kate Sequeira report on the cost of government inaction. They write:

It’s three o’clock on Aug. 4 and the temperature is creeping towards 119 degrees Fahrenheit in downtown Calexico. Maribel Padilla, the co-founder of the Brown Bag Coalition, is driving a van around the city to hand out water, cold towels and snacks to people who are unsheltered on the street. She makes water deliveries anytime the temperature goes over 114 degrees. 

Padilla is concerned about one man, Pedro Sanchez, known as Peter, who she hasn’t seen in a couple of days. “I worry that if he lays down where there used to be shade, and time goes on and then the sun hits them and they don’t wake up … that’s how they end up dying."

In the New Yorker, James Ross Gardner chronicles "Seventy-Two Hours Under the Heat Dome" when 96 Oregonians died this summer due to extreme heat, including an elderly mom named "Jolly" Brown. The piece opens with beautiful descriptions of the world's weather systems, and moves on to measurements of 135 degrees by one  scientist, then gripping summations of people collapsing on sidewalks, at shelter entrances and mostly, in their un-airconditioned homes. He writes:

For the majority of those who died, the heat was experienced privately, for hours upon hours, and then for days. And when temperatures took their final toll, the victims dehydrated and in a hyperthermic state, that was private, too. This was a climate catastrophe unlike any the public is used to seeing play out on TV.

We’ve grown accustomed to the dramatic images of human-caused climate change, via increasingly frequent hurricanes and wildfires, but the element at the center of it all, the heat, has been more abstract, not as directly connected to Americans’ lives. The evidence indicates that that’s likely to change.

Both are well worth the read.

Checkmate.  Australia's Andrew Forrest made a fortune mining iron, emitting lots of carbon along the way. Now he wants to lead a climate change revolution — and beat the fossil fuel giants along the way, writes Damien Cave for The New York Times in his piece on a tycoon embracing net-zero policies.

POLITICAL CLIMATE

Crisis. Climate change is "first and foremost" a health crisis, a new medical journal report concludes. USA Today's Kyle Bagenstose spells out the grim findings weeks before a historic United Nations gathering in Glasgow, Scotland, where leaders may or may not ratchet down greenhouse gas emissions.

Lobbying.Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among several countries asking the UN to downplay the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels in a key report, according to a cache of leaked documents obtained by Justin Rowlatt and Tom Gerken with BBC. 

Spoiler alert. In the U.S., Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Viriginia), a coal country centrist, is still holding up passage of key Biden administration budget proposals to combat climate change and fund clean energy and transportation, per USA Today's Ledyard King. That's despite new data showing his state — including his hometown — is more exposed to worsening floods than anywhere else in the country, as The New York Times' Christopher Lavelle reports. Manchin has long earned revenue from fossil fuel production.

OIL AND WATER

California dreaming. Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday announced what could be the nation's largest buffer zone between new oil wells and homes and schools. At 3,200 feet, it would beat setbacks required by other oil-producing states, though fossil fuel extraction could continue for years from existing wells. State officials said strict new measures would require safety inspections and monitoring on those wells. There are some exemptions, as I write for The Desert Sun. 

Short supply. California and Utah are both facing statewide water shortages. In the Golden State, Ian James with the Los Angeles Times reports that the governor declared a statewide drought emergency on Tuesday, adding eight southern counties to his earlier action. The state water board tweeted Thursday that thanks to incoming rainstorms, it would lift water restrictions for now in Northern California's parched lower Russian River area, where residents have done more to cut water use than anyone else in the state. 

In southeastern Utah, state officials are predicting some areas could run dry in as soon as 10 years, reports Joan Meiners with The Spectrum.

HOT TAKES

Bottled up.Arrowhead bottled water producer now says 90% of the water it pipes from a national forest is returned or goes to an area tribe. The Desert Sun

Kilimanjaro going. Africa's glaciers are melting and millions face drought and floods. USA Today, Reuters

Holey moly. A giant hole was discovered in an area north of Canada known as the "Last Ice," worrying researchers in an area with the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic. USA Today

Setting boundaries. Biden launches review that could kill copper mining near Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. HuffPost

AND ANOTHER THING

White-out. I missed this a few weeks back: Turns out scientists have invented the whitest paint ever, vaulting it into the Guinness Book of World Records. But that isn't why Purdue University researchers did it. They wanted to develop a covering so reflective that it would help fight climate change, by keeping buildings cool and reducing the need for polluting air conditioners. Doyle Rice with USA Today fills us in. 

That's all for this week. Here's to cool autumn days wherever you may be, and for more climate, energy and environment news, follow me @janetwilson66. You can sign up to get Climate Point in your inbox for free here.