Love it or Leave it...Arizona Republicans Don’t Want to Hear About the Deadly Heat Wave GOP lawmakers are brushing off the extreme heat — and any suggestion of climate change.

Even the most ardent climate change deniers don’t deny that the Valley is hot. Instead, the heat skeptics question how hot it is, exactly, along with who’s saying it’s hot and why.
Heat-tolerant Republicans argue that the heat isn’t unusual — this is a desert city after all — or that even if this is an especially hot year, there are hot years and cold years.
“This weather is normal,” Justine Wadsack, a hard-line Republican in the state Senate, tweeted recently. 

Politico

2 days ago

Arizona Republicans Don't Want to Hear About the Deadly Heat Wave - POLITICO

“If ya can’t stand the heat in Arizona, you’re welcome to leave.”

PHOENIX — When Arizona lawmakers returned to the state Capitol here earlier this month, they started their day with a prayer to ease the scorching heat.

“We pray, Father, for solutions to end suffering and for our temperatures to trend downwards to provide relief for so many in harm’s way,” the legislative chaplain said as sweaty heads bowed in the state Senate.

Meanwhile, the air conditioning was out in the state House of Representatives. Heat seeped through the western-facing wall as the state’s 60 representatives piled into the squat cinderblock building. Fans set up to cool the hallways were too loud for staff to work, so they were on only intermittently. Extension cords ran through the hallways, tripping up lobbyists passing through.

It was the first day back in session after a six-week hiatus, and the heat was impossible to ignore.

Every single day of July had reached 110 degrees or hotter, demolishing the previous record for the longest 110-plus-degree streak that Phoenix — nicknamed the Valley of the Sun for a reason — had ever seen. Most of those days were above 115 degrees, and most nights, the low stayed above 90 degrees, setting records on both fronts.

All told, the average daily temperature — the average of the high and low — was 102 degrees, or more than 7 degrees above normal for July, which is also a record, according to the National Weather Service.

Meanwhile, dozens of people have died amid the extreme heat. Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, recently brought in new refrigerated storage containers to hold all the dead bodies, a tactic it first employed during the peak of the pandemic.

The campaign account for Kari Lake accused Gov. Katie Hobbs and Rep. Ruben Gallego of “pushing mass hysteria in an effort to declare a climate emergency.” | LM Otero/AP Photo

But among some Arizona Republicans, saying this summer has been especially hot is akin to saying the 2020 election was especially free and fair or that Covid-19 is an especially deadly virus.
With extreme and growing heat waves almost certainly fueled by climate change, Arizona might, in theory, be the kind of place where lawmakers grapple with this new reality. But the politics of climate change are just as paralyzed here as the rest of the country. Or perhaps it’s even worse, with the Arizona GOP taken over by its fringe elements in recent years and largely refusing to acknowledge the issue at all. Democrats, meanwhile, lament that their leaders aren’t doing nearly enough to address the heat — even as heat-related deaths are climbing.