WASHINGTON, September 11, 2026 — I’m back in your inboxes after an August reprieve. Given how much of my summer was spent seeing the impacts of climate change up close, this will be more than just a travelogue. Most recently, I was in Austin, Texas, where some friends and I thought it would be fun to go to the University of Texas’ football season opener. It was not. As some of you may have seen on social media, the temperature inside the stadium reached 106 degrees. On our way out, I asked a friend whether it was the hottest he’d ever been at a sporting event. His answer: It was the hottest he could ever remember being in his life.
A few weeks prior, I was in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with my extended family. Santa Fe’s high altitude and dry climate mean that, despite its location between Arizona and Texas, it rarely gets truly hot. (If all you knew about New Mexico was where it sits on a map, this might surprise you. I answer questions about the climate there all the time.) As a result, few homes have central air conditioning. The house we were staying in was cooled by a “swamp cooler,” which pulls air through water to cool it before circulating it through the house. Unlike a traditional air conditioner, a swamp cooler doesn’t filter the air it brings inside. That became a problem when wildfire smoke was trapped in place by a heat dome: turning on the cooler would have meant filling the house with smoky, polluted air. So, we were stuck inside, unable to cool the house without making the air inside unsafe to breathe.
We made the most of it, traveling to Los Alamos, which is only about 40 minutes away from Santa Fe, but where the air was perfectly clear. We toured the local science museum and went up to the old site of the Los Alamos Ranch School, where we found a picture of my grandfather, who had graduated in 1937. It meant a lot to my mother to show the picture of her father to her grandchildren, and it is a moment that I’ll remember long after forgetting the other details of the trip.
Of course, plenty of Americans did have access to air conditioning this summer. They also had to pay for it. The combination of extended periods of high-to-extreme temperatures along with rising electricity prices made July the most expensive month in recorded history for families to power and cool their homes, with the average bill nationwide costing $217, according to MIT’s Electricity Price Hub.
With the mid-term election less than eight weeks away, these rising costs are worth paying attention to. Families are feeling squeezed as the cost of living—and the cost of the energy needed to power our lives—continues to rise. Meanwhile, President Trump has focused attention elsewhere, including recently suggesting that New Mexico should be renamed “New America.”
Here at EDF Action, we’ll keep making the case for an economy powered by clean energy that lowers costs for Americans while delivering cleaner air, cleaner water, and a safer climate. We are grateful for your support in helping us to do it.