In a 2020 study, climate scientist Michelle Tigchellar and her colleagues looked at the heat risks to agricultural workers across the country. Under good working conditions—with regular breaks, shade, and water access—most workers, they found, can stay relatively safe up to a heat index of about 83 degrees Fahrenheit. The risks build quickly beyond that threshold. In one Florida county, they analyzed, working conditions are already hotter than that for 113 days out of the year. That number could rise to 148 days if global temperatures rise further.

The law above exists because Florida tomatoes and citrus depend on the cheapest labor possible with the least worker protections.

If you’ve ever read “Tomatoland” Florida farm conditions are so close to slavery that they periodically become slavery-enough for someone to get busted under slavery statutes. Workers…almost all immigrant labor…are corralled into busted trailers they pay their employers to rent, are forced into fields freshly sprayed with pesticide and herbicide with little proctection from contact or inhalation, and are regularly put into circumstances of debt and scrip-issuing that recall “Sixteen Tons.”

Heat protections include working hours and recognition of conditions in which labor can’t take place, and that simply will not hunt for landowners.

re: #77 Randall Gross

As we move to a hotter equatorial region climate we must do better. Our Southern state society will change whether they want to or not because they will have to. How painful it becomes is entirely dependent on how many like DeSantis that they put in office.

Depressingly true.