Heat exhaustion and visions of death after a short walk down the street on one 46°C day in Phoenix, Arizona, led American author Jeff Goodell down a three-year journey examining the dangers of extreme heat: its effect on our bodies, glaciers, sea levels, infrastructure, and more.
His conclusion: “Extreme heat is the engine of planetary chaos. We ignore it at our peril”—a finding Goodell was reminded of mid-June, when a heat dome settled over his current home in Austin, Texas, as well as other parts of the southwestern United States and Mexico.
“The extreme heat that is cooking many parts of the world this summer is not a freakish event—it is another step into our burning future,” writes Goodell, author of the forthcoming book The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, in an opinion piece for the New York Times.
Many of us underestimate heat’s dangers, tending to rely on past experiences of living with high temperatures before climate change pushed “high” to the extreme. Goodell recounts the danger he put himself in when he chose to “brave the heat” and walk to a meeting that sweltering day during a 2019 Arizona heat wave. He thought he “knew heat”, but he was wrong. “After walking three blocks, I felt dizzy,” he recalls. “After seven blocks, my heart was pounding. After 10 blocks, I thought I was a goner.”
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