Jeff Goodell

Yikes. It’s all too easy to transfer the impacts of climate change to future generations, but this book is a jarring wake-up call. It unpacks the grim reality: we’re already losing the fight against our warming planet, and the consequences are here now, with more to come. The book explores relevant history, compelling anecdotes, and a sobering analysis of how global warming reshapes our world. From the extinction of plant and animal species due to environmental mismanagement to the show more devastating human toll of heat waves and extreme weather events, the evidence is damning. We should all be enraged by how society accepts the deaths of vulnerable populations as inevitable rather than preventable. This book is packed with eye-opening insights and it’s impossible not to feel a sense of despair. The geopolitical challenges and the stranglehold of capitalism make solutions feel out of reach. This is an essential read, I learned so much, but it’s not exactly comforting. I don’t feel better equipped to face the challenges ahead, just more aware of the stakes. show less

Thesis: “Even parts of humanity that didn’t fuck around are in the finding out phase now.” Floods, fires, crop-eating bugs, bacteria-containing permafrost, migrating disease-bearing animals, and more are what we’re reaping. Unfortunately, when your building is so hot that opening doors burns your hands, you’re also cognitively impaired—heat makes us more impulsive and violent; suicide and violence against others increases, and possibly even the likelihood of civil war.

One study show more estimated that 489,000 people worldwide died directly from extreme heat in 2019, “more than the number of deaths from guns or illegal drugs.” Even a quick transition to clean energy would leave half of the world’s human population—more than three billion people—exposed to life-threatening heat and humidity by 2100.

Biology puts limits on us: “no matter how much water you drink, your body can only replace about two quarts of water per hour—so if you are in a hot place for a long time, dehydration is a concern.” There were other incredible details on animal heat adaptation, including in Saharan ants and camels, and role of heat in promoting bipedalism, then the influence of being able to sweat to cool down in enabling endurance hunting. “Sometimes bumblebees get so hot that they fall dead out of the sky.”

While some adaptation is possible, replacing existing infrastructure with, e.g., “rail lines that don’t melt and houses that aren’t ovens and asphalt that doesn’t turn to pudding” would take both resources and time, neither of which are readily on offer. Instead, people will mostly do what they’ve always done—migrate—except that will cause even more disruption. (There aren’t many Border Patrol agents in areas where it’s hot and dangerous to cross the border, which funnels migrants to those places; the Border Patrol has thus weaponized heat already.) Meanwhile, Americans are still moving preferentially to places in the US at higher risk for heat, because of bad government policies and because those places tend to be cheaper and have more space.

More biology: In hotter temperatures, rice—a staple crop—takes more arsenic out of the soil, creating more health risks. Plant-eating caterpillars mature in 21 days instead of 28, making for more generations (and more evolution) every season. Coral reefs have lasted 250 million years; they might have 50 years left.

There are alternatives for dealing with heat, but air conditioning is more pleasant, so we ignore them even as our cities must grow to handle a growing population. All isn’t lost, though we may have to give up things like old buildings that can’t handle green roofs or solar cells. What do you want to do with fifteenth-century Venetian palazzos sinking into the lagoon? How much is their preservation worth? show less

Despite the unfortunate subtitle, this is a serious look at the history and current research being done into using technology to alter the climate to counteract the effects of global warming. The focus of the book is limited to "serious ideas that may be workable in the near term" (i.e., 50 years or so). This eliminates some extremely long-term and expensive ideas which nevertheless have promise, such as placing giant mirrors into orbit. Some ideas have potentially massive effects, others show more would be at most modestly successful but also less costly.

Technologies discussed at length would work towards either
-- increasing the earth's albedo (reflectivity): for example, injecting clouds or the atmosphere with various substances to increase brightness, or painting roofs and roads white;
or
-- removing CO2 from the atmosphere (including ideas to increase plankton in ocean deserts by dumping in massive loads of iron)

Aside from the ethical, moral and religious reasons for favoring or opposing various techniques, there is the worry that one or more methods could be used for military, political, or even terrorist purposes, not to mention greed as a motivation for non-regulated climate forcing. Without international agreement and oversight, geoengineering would probably be dangerous, and there is the fear that encouraging such techniques would lull us into a business-as-usual attitude regarding CO2 pollution. Goodell also points out that geoengineering would be messing with a system we don't really understand. He concludes that the best approach would be to do small experiments to decide what the effects and benefits of any particular technology might be, develop an international body to oversee research and its uses, and increase vigilance about and reduction of CO2 .

I've read quite a bit about climate change, and this book gave me a welcome added dimension into the options we have. Goodell's audience is the well-informed general reader who is already convinced of the seriousness of our climate situation. (NOTE: the edition I read was an advance reading copy provided electronically via NetGalley.com). show less

Jeff Goodell’s last book, The Water Will Come, was pretty alarming–but living in the Midwest, it wasn’t personal. The Great Lakes are not going to flood Michigan. But, The Heat Will Kill You First is downright frightening.

Especially this year when Canadian forests are burning. The smoke kept us indoors for the first days of our vacation, masked when outside–while back home, Detroit had the worst air quality in the world.

Is this the future? Uncontrolled burning of the forests, show more sunlight blocked, the air too polluted to breath? Grey skies that the sun can’t penetrate?

But the real threat of a hotter world is broader and more devastating. And Goodell serves it all up in a book that will raise the hair on your neck better than any suspense thriller you could read.

In the news today we read about temperatures higher than ever recorded. Our bodies, Goodell tells us, were developed for the climate of East Africa: dry and 72 degrees. What happens when our body temperature rises isn’t pretty.

Last May, I experienced early heat stoke while at a local garden center. It was in the 90s outside, the sun relentless outdoors and the greenhouses stuffy and airless. I didn’t feel well. My fitness watch showed my body temperature had risen two degrees! I fled to the air conditioned car, and hubby drove us home, where I cooled in air conditioning with an icy glass of water.

What first world, middle class luxury. Air conditioning.

It is the poor of the world who really suffer, and those who must work outdoors, and even those living in housing built for the moderate climate of the past. And that, my friends, is most of the world.

Climate refugees are already part of dystopian fiction, and will too soon become reality. As will the impact on agriculture resulting in crop loss, the migration of species bringing new diseases North, the destruction of ocean life because of warming waters…

If you aren’t alarmed, you aren’t listening.

And yet….and yet…Goodell holds on to hope that we CAN build a better world. There are people imagining better ways to live and perhaps answers to be discovered.

We are all on this journey together, he ends, humans and animals and plants and trees.

Thanks to the publisher for a free book. show less