The Heat Will Kill You First
Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
-
-
4.8 • 6 Ratings
-
-
- $19.99
Publisher Description
FINALIST FOR THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE | FINALIST FOR THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY'S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD
New York Times best-selling journalist Jeff Goodell presents a "masterful, bracing" (David Wallace-Wells) examination of the impact that temperature rise will have on our lives and on our planet, offering a vital new perspective on where we are headed, how we can prepare, and what is at stake if we fail to act.
“When heat comes, it’s invisible. It doesn’t bend tree branches or blow hair across your face to let you know it’s arrived…. The sun feels like the barrel of a gun pointed at you.”
The world is waking up to a new reality: wildfires are now seasonal in California, the Northeast is getting less and less snow each winter, and the ice sheets in the Arctic and Antarctica are melting fast. Heat is the first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it is revealing fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy, and our values. The basic science is not complicated: Stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow, and the global temperature will stop rising tomorrow. Stop burning fossil fuels in 50 years, and the temperature will keep rising for 50 years, making parts of our planet virtually uninhabitable. It’s up to us. The hotter it gets, the deeper and wider our fault lines will open.
The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event— one that culls out the most vulnerable people. But that is changing. As heatwaves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic.
As an award-winning journalist who has been at the forefront of environmental journalism for decades, Goodell’s new book may be his most provocative yet, explaining how extreme heat will dramatically change the world as we know it. Masterfully reported, mixing the latest scientific insight with on-the-ground storytelling, Jeff Goodell tackles the big questions and uncovers how extreme heat is a force beyond anything we have reckoned with before.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
If the title of this wake-up call about the realities of climate change seems alarming, that’s the point. With this stripped-down, un-sugarcoated book, science journalist Jeff Goodell focuses on the worst-case scenario for our planet’s near future—one that becomes increasingly likely if governments fail to take decisive action. Goodell cites loads of expertly assembled research to show us why this brutal future is so probable. He’s also a gifted writer who can describe food shortages and disease outbreaks with a level of stark detail that scared the daylights out of us. The Heat Will Kill You First is a gripping read that comes with an urgent message.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heatstroke, infectious disease, and attacks by starving polar bears are among the perils posed by rising temperatures, according to this startling report. Rolling Stone contributing editor Goodell (The Water Will Come) surveys how extreme heat is ravaging the planet, describing the 2021 wildfire that tore through the town of Lytton in British Columbia during an unprecedented 121 °F heat wave, the sudden deaths by overheating of a California family out for a hike in California's Sierra Nevada foothills, and the spread of disease-carrying mosquitoes into warming regions. The author also details how his own life has been affected by climate change, as when he recounts a trip he took with friends to the Canadian Arctic, where they were shadowed by polar bears that were likely hungry and eyeing the group's food because the lack of ice floes made it difficult to hunt seals. The alarming case studies are well complemented by elegant reportage on overheated regions ("The air feels solid, a hazy, ozone-soaked curtain of heat," he writes of a summer day in Phoenix) and disturbing explanations of the dire physical effects of excessive heat (a 107 °F body temperature melts cell membranes). The result is a sobering assessment of the risks of global warming.
