Mayor Kate Gallego on Phoenix's 'hellscape' year and what's in store for 2024

It's easy to forget in December, when Phoenix residents spend the holidays hiking, golfing and grilling by the pool in the pleasant, dazzling sunshine, just how oppressively hot Arizona summers can be. To some degree, this has always been true. But in recent years, the temperature dial has ratcheted into uncharted terrain.

In 2023, Phoenix logged the hottest month in any U.S. city, the longest streak of 110-degree days, and broke more than a dozen daily record highs. Desert-adapted humans and saguaros succumbed to heat exposure like never before.

This did not go unnoticed by media outlets around the world. Suddenly, everywhere you looked, Phoenix was labeled an "inferno," a "hell on earth," "a blighted dystopian hellscape," often by publications in regions with their own serious and unmanaged climate problems.

It was a little offensive, perhaps especially to Mayor Kate Gallego, who has been working to address rising temperatures and make Phoenix the most sustainable desert city since before she took office in 2019.

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In early 2021, shortly after she was re-elected, Gallego sat for an interview with Anthony Flint, a journalist focusing on global urbanization and a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. Between 2018 and 2023, Flint interviewed 20 notable local leaders around the world who are making progress solving global problems. He compiled their advice in his new book, "The Mayor's Desk," due out in paperback from Columbia University Press in January 2024.

Gallego's inclusion centered on her sustainability efforts. Her interview with Flint touched on extreme heat, climate change, worsening water shortages and investments in affordable housing and infrastructure.

"In some communities, climate change may be a future problem, but in Phoenix, it’s facing us right now," Gallego told Flint.

Since then, Phoenix has become hotter and drier, largely due to the influences of climate change and urban expansion, yet has remained a top relocation destination for Americans fleeing cold, flooding or pricier cities. In a recent conversation with The Arizona Republic, Flint reflected on his mid-pandemic interview with Gallego and what he would ask her now in light of all the heat records that fell in 2023.

“2021 was a perilous time," Flint said. "Some of the things she was advocating might have seemed like an uphill battle. Mayors are on the ground, on the front lines. Climate change is a global problem, but leaders are finding ways to deal with it on a local level. Extreme heat is a tough one in terms of resilience and adaptation. So I’d ask her how it’s going on that."

He also said he might ask her if she's getting tired.

The Republic caught up with Gallego just after Thanksgiving to learn how she's thinking about the "hellscape" summer of 2023 and whether it will influence her plans as she runs for re-election in 2024.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Joan Meiners: Mayor Gallego, I wonder if you'd start by reflecting on how you feel the pandemic, which was underway when you spoke with Anthony Flint for "The Mayor's Desk" book, may have played a role in people's relationship with scientific information and attitudes about issues like public health and climate change.

Kate Gallego: We have seen pretty dramatic changes in how interested our voters are in the water portion of climate. To me, that comes from the drought in the long term, and the challenges with the Colorado River supply in particular. I find that Phoenix residents are really paying attention to water in a way that they did not before. I would not attribute that to the pandemic, but really the changes on the Colorado with the water supply. That's been the biggest change I have seen recently.

JM: Do you think people understand the connection between climate change and our water supply?

KG: I generally think people do understand that connection. Our water supply is also intensely political, and that is very complicated. But I believe most people in Phoenix are aware we're in a long-term drought. It's very common for me to get those types of questions when I'm out at general community events.

JM: This summer was intense. Did you sense or see any resulting shift in local attitudes toward climate action? I know I get a lot of climate denial-type emails, but I'm wondering if maybe you saw different responses to the heat this summer.

KG: To me, we've seen a pretty consistent increase in interest in climate change over the last decade, with more people wanting to see action and willing to take action on their own. When I first began in public life, people would say in public opinion polling they did not think climate change affected them personally. And now you see people saying it does personally affect them. When people feel personally impacted, that's when you're going to see more action, both with their own decisions as well as how they vote.

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JM: Going more into politics, you are a "climate mayor" in a state that is not generally recognized for its climate awareness. You have a climate action plan for the city; the state does not. What is it like to kind of shoulder that load for the state in terms of protecting people from climate impacts, which were made so apparent this summer?

KG: We are on our second Climate Action Plan now. I was a volunteer doing work with environmental quality and sustainability for the first one, not yet an elected official. So Phoenix did a climate action plan more than a decade ago. But since then, many cities have stepped up, from Tucson to Mesa, and are trying to do more.

I find different communities approach the issue with different lenses. Many of the mayors who have electric vehicle facilities in their communities are really focused on that portion of the challenge, but are also excited about what I would consider green jobs but they just consider high-wage jobs. So the reshoring of American manufacturing around climate technology, I think, has brought a lot of people to the table who might not otherwise be there.

It's been deeply disappointing, however, to see a majority in the Legislature move away from action on climate. When we did the regional transportation plan reauthorization, there were several legislators for whom the most controversial part was that there would be one person who would be looking at resiliency. The plan had experts on rock products and homebuilding and a huge industry and jobs focus. But having one person with expertise in resiliency was controversial, after a summer of ... yeah.

JM: Do you see progress in the Legislature overall? Or are we backsliding?

KG: I think cities are stepping up. So Phoenix really leads the way, but we have great company. And that is cause for optimism. At the local government level, it has not been partisan. In the legislature, there's a huge diversity of opinions. But there are some very extreme opinions.

JM: Turning to how Phoenix's approach to climate change is viewed from elsewhere, I know you've been interviewed ad nauseam about this summer's heat extremes by national and international reporters who popped in for the occasion, so I don't want to rehash that. But I'm curious about your reaction to all the coverage labeling Phoenix a "hellscape" when you've been working to make it the most sustainable desert city.

KG: I did feel like I had to defend the fact that I have chosen to live here. It's probably hard to understand our climate if you've lived in a part of the world that gets 20 inches of snow every year. As you and I sit here, it is quite likely that some areas to the east of the Great Lakes will get 20 inches of snow. That sounds unattractive to me.

For me, climate change is hitting every part of the world. In some ways, the impacts were deeper in areas that were completely unprepared for it. We have a high level of air conditioning in this community. And we have seen really difficult impacts when parts of the world that don't have air conditioning were hit with heat waves less extreme than those we would see.

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To me, every part of the world is getting hit by climate change, it just manifests itself differently depending on the local weather and conditions. From extreme fires to extreme floods to extreme heat records, pretty much everywhere was impacted. In our case, the thermometer was the highest. So it does make it easy for reporters to come cover climate change here. But it would be irresponsible to not acknowledge that climate change has really hit every part of our country.

JM: I agree there was a lot of missed context on our heat in news reports over the summer. If you had to boil it down to one point you feel was missed that you'd like to make for readers now, what would it be?

KG: How much innovation is happening in Phoenix around climate change. From the way we are changing our buildings to designing our downtown for more shade to encouraging sustainable companies here. We are leading on the solutions.

So yeah, a lot of international and national coverage glossed over our success stories to focus on the thermometer.

And I did get some criticism about the heat office. Because we have a heat office, people assume we're the level of government in charge of heat. We are not. There is no part of the Constitution that says heat protection is a local government activity. We just have stepped up and tried to lead and be solution focused.

Read our climate series: The latest from Joan Meiners at azcentral, a column on climate change that publishes Wednesdays

JM: You're up for re-election next year. Are there ways this year's extreme heat will influence your campaign or preparations for next summer?

KG: We plan for heat year-round. So every summer we learn and we do things differently. We will continue to try to do more for vulnerable populations, think about resiliency of the electric grid and work with our utility partners to, again, avoid major outages.

I really think long-term, we have been focused on sustainability and heat, regardless of where we are in the election cycle. And we will continue to do so. It's something that's been with me throughout my life. I have an environmental degree, and first got involved with the city through environmental issues. So I will be involved regardless of what I do for a living.

Joan Meiners is the climate news and storytelling reporter at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Before becoming a journalist, she completed a doctorate in ecology. Follow Joan on Twitter at @beecycles or email her at joan.meiners@arizonarepublic.com. Read more of her coverage at environment.azcentral.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego reflects on the state's 'hellscape' year