TEXAS — It's been a long, hot summer in Texas, as an unrelenting heat wave hits the U.S.

Most of Texas — along with 27 other states — are under an excessive heat warning. Dallas, Austin and San Antonio have all broken summer heat records.

Thanks to those temperatures, 94% of the state is under drought conditions. Texas is also seeing multiple fires, and 212 out of 254 counties are under a burn ban. The heat is also making air quality worse. So far this year, Texas has had more days with unhealthy pollution than any other time this decade.

Experts say climate change has made heat waves like this worse, and more frequent.

“At this point, you can assume that climate change is affecting almost every extreme weather event that’s occurring,” said Andrew Dessler, an atmospheric sciences professor at Texas A&M University and director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies. “The temperatures we’re experiencing now are certainly turbo charged by all the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gasses we’ve dumped in the atmosphere.”

Texas has already gotten two degrees warmer in the last century, and scientists say that will get worse if action isn't taken.

“The number one thing we have to do is stop dumping heat trapping gasses into the atmosphere,” said Dessler. “That means we need to rebuild our energy infrastructure away from fossil fuels towards climate-safe energy sources like wind and solar.”

Any move away from oil and gas has been widely denounced by Texas leaders, who say it would be too damaging to the state’s economy. But Dessler says that climate change and economic growth are not mutually exclusive.

“Wind and solar are now the cheapest energy sources we have,” he said. “And we know how to build and robust and reliable grid with [those sources]. So, not only can we head off climate change, but we can improve the economy.”