A third of the U.S. population is currently living under extreme heat warnings, including in California. Triple-digit heat is fueling wildfires across the state, including one in Yosemite National Park and four in Riverside County. Meanwhile, Southern Europe, Japan, and Israel are baking. Heat is responsible for more deaths than floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes, according to the National Weather Service.
The Earth will continue to heat up if we don’t immediately curb fossil fuel usage, says Jeff Goodell, journalist and author of “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.” That’s because by burning coal and oil, more and more CO2 gets pumped into the atmosphere permanently.
“The CO2 that we're putting in the atmosphere is very different than traditional air pollution. … We are radically changing the climate of our Earth for the foreseeable future [and] certainly for many generations to come.”
He adds that this new CO2-driven climate “plays by different rules” — and “no one is quite sure what those rules are.”
Goodell was compelled to write “The Heat Will Kill You First” after a trip to Phoenix, where the outside temperature hit 115 degrees Fahrenheit. After walking 12 city blocks to his meeting, he says he realized how much the heat was physically affecting him.
“Urban areas or downtown areas are hotter even than the air temperature around because of the asphalt and concrete, so it's probably like 130 or 135 degrees where I was walking. … I was dizzy. My heart was pounding. And I thought, ‘What is happening to me?’ I realized that this was a consequence of heat, and that I didn't have any understanding of how it worked [and] how it was dangerous.”
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So how does heat impact your body? Goodell says there’s only so much humans can handle.
“The only heat relief system we have is sweating. Our heart starts pounding faster, pushing the blood out towards the surface of our skin, away from our brains, away from our internal organs, so that the sweat can cool the blood down. And that mechanism works pretty well if it's a dry heat, and the sweat can evaporate. If it’s a wet heat, sweat has a harder time evaporating.”
However, during times of excessive heat, the body’s circulatory system goes into overdrive to cool down.
“Your heart starts really really pounding fast, pushing a lot of blood out. And a lot of the mortality from extreme heat comes from heart failure. Anyone who has any kind of heart issues, any kind of circulatory problems is much more vulnerable.”
Goodell points out that if it gets too hot, the body starts to denature.
“When you get to a body temperature of 105 and beyond, the actual cell membranes of your body begin to melt. Your body actually begins to dissolve from the inside. … The proteins that control the cellular functions of our bodies begin to unfold.”
Heat doesn’t just harm humans either.
“Every living thing on the planet has the same kind of thermal capacity, and the heat affects everything. It affects the trees, the park. It affects the butterflies flying around. It affects your dog and affects every living thing.”
“The CO2 that we're putting in the atmosphere is very different than traditional air pollution. … We are radically changing the climate of our Earth for the foreseeable future [and] certainly for many generations to come,” says Jeff Goodell, author of “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet.” Credit: Little, Brown and Company.
Goodell suggests that people underestimate the threat of heat: “People think of heat as just a reason to go to the beach or go to the lake. They don't understand how quickly it can impact our bodies. The idea that all we have to do is drink water and it will be fine is just a myth. It's important to stay hydrated because you need to sweat, but on a hot day, water itself does not cool you off, and drinking water will not save you from heat stroke.”
Goodell says it's up to us to find solutions for creating cool spaces, which includes planting more trees and increasing access to shaded and cool areas.
And we must do a better job at anticipating heat and being ready. “We do a really good job when a hurricane is coming, telling people where to go, how to handle it, what to do, how bad it's going to be. We don't do a good job with that on heat. We need to do a better job of ranking heat waves, maybe even naming heat waves, as some organizations are beginning to do.”