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

by Jeff Goodell

unless we take dramatic action now, we may all discover what it’s like to live outside the zone. The human race—which built the pyramids and the iPhone, wrote epic love poems and invented rock ’n’ roll, worshipped ancient gods and now deifies Hollywood stars—will exist in a world beyond the world it grew up in, beyond the place where our hearts were shaped and our genes were forged.

If the Covid-19 pandemic demonstrated anything, it was how quickly and easily people were able to normalize the deaths of others, especially if they were old, sick, or otherwise living on the margins. There were a thousand deaths a day from Covid in the US alone. There were headlines and speeches and heroic doctors and nurses. And if you lost a friend or loved one, you felt the tragedy of it all. But after the initial shock and fear of Covid, the deaths became a part of everyday life.

As one social critic puts it: “We are confronted simultaneously with our vulnerability to catastrophe and our profound unseriousness in the face of it. It’s as if the fires are starting to spread through Rome and all we can do is argue about the fiddling.”

The End-Permian extinction was a horrific event, beyond our capacity to imagine. It was mass death by heatstroke.

world is changing. When people ask me if it’s hard to write about the climate crisis and imagine the hardship and suffering to come, my answer is always the same: This is the great story of our time, one that I feel privileged to tell.