Ideas By Jerel Ezell October 16, 2024 11:45 AM EDT Jerel Ezell is an assistant professor in community health sciences and the director of Center for Cultural Humility in the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. I n September, NASA declared the summer of 2024 the hottest in recorded history. Before that news could be fully digested, the U.S. was hit with Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, unprecedented in their own rights in terms of intensity and destruction.