Join our next Webinar 
Wednesday October 11, 7pm

“Will this summer be 
too hot for work?”

After last summer’s floods this seems a rhetorical question. But we know that el nino is racing across the Tasman towards us, bringing potential drought and heat.

Statistics show that heat is a fierce killer with more deaths attributed by the US National Weather Service to high temperatures than from floods or cold. Last year during the European summer heat-related deaths were estimated at 61,000.

Here, issues of climate and weather only feature as after-thoughts in this election campaign! We have yet to experience the equivalent of the prolonged heat domes which have stressed and killed many in other parts of the world, including in Western Canada. We can, however, be prepared!

Our Climate Declaration is fortunate to have access to the English version of a French-made film called Too Hot to Work. Its inspiration was the work of Mapua resident Dr Tord Kjellstrom who has pioneered international research into heat stress impacts on workers in a range of occupations and countries.

“He was one of the first to sound the alarm,” says Paris-based journalist and documentary film-maker Mikaël Lefrançois who co-authored Too Hot to Work with colleague Camille Robert.

Kjellstrom’s 2019 report for the International Labour Organization, titled Working on a Warmer Planet, assessed the effects on both health and productivity of heat stress.

The film begins with last year’s heat wave in Italy, moves on to the kidney disease suffered by sugar cane workers in Nicaragua and then to Qatar and the effects of hot conditions on Nepalese workers preparing for the football World Cup.

In the US it’s the heat in the cabs of delivery trucks that comes under scrutiny. The film finishes in India where a three-month heat wave last year reduced production levels and made work unbearable for women garment workers. We can’t ignore this film’s implications.

Please come prepared with questions. These will be responded to by Dr Kjelstrom’s colleague, Dr Bruno Lemke, a physicist and meteorologist also based in Mapua. We thank him for his participation.

Kia ora katoa!
Pat Baskett, on behalf of the team.

Here is the Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82813758993?pwd=MmdNTUN2ZEg3cno1aklDK0JWOEhKdz09
Meeting ID: 828 1375 8993
Passcode: 772421