Southern Europe, China and large parts of the United States are groaning under the heat. In his new book, American journalist Jeff Goodell warns that things will only get worse. He does so, unfortunately, convincingly. ‘How hot can it get in Italy exactly, is something like 54 degrees conceivable? We just don’t know.’
If you want to forget that autumnal Belgian weather of the past few weeks and take your mind off it, we have an excellent reading tip for you: The heat will kill you first by Jeff Goodell, one of the best climate books that has already been published this year. Goodell links scientific findings to scorching reporting to highlight the devastating power of global warming in general and heat waves in particular. The Rolling Stone journalist couldn’t have picked a better time to come up with such a book. He himself lives in Austin, Texas, where the month of July – the warmest on record – was as scorching as in southern Europe.
Jeff Goodell: We have never experienced this. It’s been incredibly hot here for two and a half weeks, just like in Arizona. Everyone says that this is the hottest part of the United States, but a lot of heat records have been broken in the past month. Not only here, of course: China is also worryingly warm, just like the water in the Atlantic Ocean. Near Florida, the water is as hot as 38 degrees, as if you ended up in a hot tub.
Experts calculated that we can expect such a heat wave every two to five years in the foreseeable future. It has been alarmingly warm in the US for several years now.
Goodell: In 2021 we experienced a heat wave that to me symbolizes the new climate we live in. It was not in the southern US, but in the northwestern part. It is traditionally cool there, and people are absolutely not used to heat waves. They don’t have air conditioners at all. Suddenly it was 45 degrees for a week. Fires broke out, more than a thousand people died. That is the point I want to make in my book: we live in a different climate than the one in which everyone reading this interview grew up. This is a new era that we have created ourselves by burning fossil fuels. It will continue to get warmer as long as we continue to do so. There are different climatic laws and patterns than we are used to.
Some scientists are amazed by the speed at which our climate is changing. You too?
Goodell: Partly yes and partly not. The IPCC models have proven to be very good in recent decades. Everything that happens today falls within the bounds of those predictions, scientists have been talking about for decades. However, it is much more difficult to see one-off disasters such as this heat wave coming. The climate remains something very chaotic. Moreover, the weather phenomenon El Niño reinforces everything today.
Do we actually know how hot heat waves will ever get?
Goodell: No. I’ve talked to the best scientists in the world, and they couldn’t tell me. Those models are very good at average temperatures, but not at peaks. However, I would have loved to hear whether there are physical limits to the heat of heat waves. Exactly how hot can it get in Italy, or in Texas? Is something like 54 degrees conceivable? We just don’t know.
Heat is the essence of climate change, and yet we underestimate the risks of that heat. Apparently we’ve never even seriously thought about it.
Goodell: I’ve been writing about climate change for two decades now, and I never really thought about it for the first fifteen years. It wasn’t until I went for a walk in Phoenix a few years ago in 44 or 45 degrees, and felt the impact of that heat very clearly on my body, that changed. I felt my heart pumping and got really dizzy. I also knew very little about heat before I started writing this book, while we are constantly talking about global warming. Global warming still sounds like something that will happen slowly, far away from us, in the distant future. What difference does one and a half or two degrees of warming make? That sounds much less frightening than it actually is. Many continue to interpret it as more pleasant beach weather. Heat is also invisible, unlike hurricanes, drought or rising sea levels. I look outside and I honestly can’t tell if it’s 30 or 45 degrees.
For the Republican Party, climate change is part of a belief system tied to transgender rights and the struggles of the LBGTQ+ movement.
In the US, many people are still moving to warmer areas, you write. That’s a bit bizarre.
Goodell: And again not. Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the country. I myself am an example of that trend. I lived in cooler New York, but I fell in love with a woman from here and I wanted to be with her. People are also still moving to areas below sea level, because real estate is often cheaper there. In Texas, no one pays income taxes, another reason to move. And people just love warm weather: they’d rather walk around in shorts all year round than have to clear snow in the winter. They don’t always understand that there is a difference between pleasantly warm weather and heat waves, even though I notice that it is gradually starting to change. We’re getting to a point where people will think twice before moving here.
In Belgium, we are particularly concerned about major cities such as Brussels and Antwerp, where the temperature during heat is considerably higher than in rural areas. Are we able to adapt our cities to the new climate?
Goodell: All asphalt and concrete make cities significantly warmer. Adjusting that is quite a challenge, which requires political will. Paris is a good example: the city is trying to green the center and create shade. There are public areas where people can cool off, and soon Parisians will be allowed to swim in the Seine again to cool off. What I’m less of a fan of is making air conditioning more accessible. But that’s also really important.
Many people will think: we will soon simply need better air conditioning.
Goodell: We all love such techno fixes today, but they are of course deceptive. We can’t just install air conditioners next to the ocean to prevent the water from warming up further. Air conditioning is not a solution to extreme weather. That being said, it is able to help people survive difficult periods. We will need it more and more. It is only accessible to people who can afford it. Literally billions of people on this planet will most likely never have access to air conditioning. People who have to work outside, such as in construction or on the land, are of no use.
During the corona crisis, people with essential professions were much more at risk. Will this be a traditional story where the rich are hardly bothered and the poor suffer?
Goodell: I call it the difference between the cool and the dammed. The most vulnerable people feel the heat first. Not only construction workers and parcel deliverers, but also people with poor health, young children and pregnant women. We all remain vulnerable, of course. Even people with great air conditioning and an extra battery for a power failure are affected. In that heat it is already a task for me to get the mail outside. This affects us all.
You made another uncomfortable comparison with the corona crisis: when we thought it was normal that thousands of people died from the virus, we will soon get used to the heat deaths.
Goodell: A new study recently showed that some 62,000 people died from heat in Europe last year. I’m afraid we won’t be surprised any more. Then we come to think of summer as the time of year when so many people die. We forget that we have of course created this extreme climate ourselves. It is good that we have the strength to adapt to new circumstances, but that can also turn into such a dire reality.
US President Joe Biden came up with ambitious climate policy, and the European Union has also taken action. Are you more hopeful today than twenty years ago?
Goodell: Twenty years ago I used to joke that I was writing about something akin to the sex life of some obscure animal. It seemed strange to specialize in something so few people were interested in. Today, on the other hand, everyone is talking about it. We take the climate into account when we move or want to invest. Another revolution is the development of renewable energy such as wind and sun. Twenty years ago, subsidies were needed for this, today they are the cheapest energy sources. People also indicate in polls that they think the climate is an important theme, but we see – and that makes me more gloomy – in the US and partly also in Europe that this theme has ended up in the culture wars. For the Republican Party, climate change is part of a belief system tied to transgender rights and the struggles of the LBGTQ+ movement. Only woke liberals do that. They also often ignore scientific evidence, as the anti-vaxers did during corona. We were all idiots back then who got a chip implanted by Bill Gates. It is impossible to argue with people who believe in that.
Jeff Goodell, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, uitgeverij Little, Brown and Company, 400 pagina’s, 38,85 euro.
Finally, Texas Governor Greg Abbott recently introduced a law that would prohibit cities from requiring mandatory drinking breaks and other precautions for outdoor workers such as construction workers. Why on earth?
Goodell: He did so in the midst of the hottest heat wave on record. The arguments were economic: people should not take extra breaks, but work hard. This kind of machismo has existed in Texas for some time: we are tough cowboys who can handle the heat. It also has a racial side: most of those workers are Mexicans and other immigrants. Abbott likes to present himself as someone who is strict with them, especially when he sees that more progressive cities like Austin want to help those people. It’s kind of like what was said about Donald Trump’s most gruesome decisions: the cruelty is the point. I’m really afraid it is.
2023-07-29 03:00:36
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