You may be familiar with the term climate justice or environmental justice - the idea that all people and communities have the right to live and thrive in safe, healthy environments with equal environmental protections. The injustice happens when already disadvantaged or marginalized communities are subjected to environmental hazards.
Now there is a new term that wants to capture the invisible threat of extreme heat that many are subjected to indoors in non-air conditioned buildings as heat waves become more frequent and severe. This term is thermal justice.
A new project by Bologna photographer Michele Lapini makes heat, an invisible threat visible, using an iPhone and a thermal sensor to “document temperatures in homes, workplaces and public spaces as the heat gripped the city. The images show that construction workers in direct sun, delivery riders crossing the city and residents of old apartment buildings and poorly cooled senior centers inhabit radically different thermal worlds than people with access to air conditioning, shade and well-insulated homes.”
Temperatures reached as high as 46.4 degrees C (about 115 degrees F) for a delivery driver on a bicycle riding through the paved streets of Bologna while a residential street showed a 27 degree F difference between that area getting direct sunlight (130 degrees F) and that shaded by trees (103 degrees F).
Lapini found that there was one common indoor space that was cooler - Salaborsa which the city had designated as a climate shelter.
Check out this article to see the images Lapini captured to show the heat differences.
What if similar photos were taken in your community? Is your local government thinking about providing cooling centres and other strategies for those who may be subjected to unhealthy high temperatures in their homes or workplaces?