The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

by Jeff Goodell

When the next pandemic hits, the chances are good it will be caused by a pathogen that leapt from an animal that was seeking out a cooler place to live.

A study in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal, estimated that 489,000 people worldwide died from extreme heat in 2019. That’s far more than all other natural disasters combined, including hurricanes and wildfires. It is also more than the number of deaths from guns or illegal drugs.

Smoke pollution doesn’t only kill people near fires either. Wildfires in western Canada have been directly linked to spikes in hospitalizations three thousand miles away on the East Coast of the US.

There is a lot of confusion about the relationship between water and heat exhaustion and heatstroke. Water is necessary to keep sweat flowing. If you get dehydrated, you can’t sweat. And if you can’t sweat, you can’t cool off. But drinking water does not in itself cool off inner-core body temperatures. Put another way, dehydration can exacerbate heat exhaustion and heatstroke, but you can still die of heatstroke and be well hydrated.

The only place we still have significant hair is on our heads, and that’s because our brains are so sensitive to heat, and in this situation, hair works as a sunshade to help keep our brains cool. (It also adds cushioning in a fall.)

In many places in the world today, heat is rising faster than our ability to adapt to it.