July was the hottest month ever recorded on the planet and at least two-thirds of Americans were under some sort of heat advisory. His overarching goal was to make heat visible and make it feel urgent, which shouldn’t be that hard given that tens of thousands of people are already dying from extreme heat every year. Goodell’s reporting extends from Antarctica, California and the Arctic, to Paris, Chennai and the Great Barrier Reef, weaving stories of farmworkers, hikers, urbanites and polar bears with scientific analysis and political critique, and so connecting the dots between heat-related personal tragedies and the risks of global heating on the planetary scale. Heat is the “engine of planetary chaos” yet its dangers remain poorly understood.

Heat – in the atmosphere and the oceans – is driving every single climate impact, from rising sea level and melting glaciers to intensifying droughts, wildfires and superstorms. Goodell’s book is a comprehensive, compelling and timely examination of the fossil fuel-driven extreme heat that is transforming the planet and its inhabitants. “It’s not just about these vulnerable people who can’t vote or the incompetence of the government, it is out and out racism.” While nobody talks about that explicitly now, it is absolutely an undercurrent that having Mexicans pave roads in Austin in 107F is fine because they’re from Mexico, and used to it. “There were all kinds of crazy racist ideas like African people having thicker bones in their skulls that insulated them from heat. “I mean, that is insane, and emblematic of the ‘cruelty is the point’ ideology in so much of our politics right now.”Īccording to Goodell, the risks faced by mostly Black and brown workers also reveal enduring elements of scientific racism previously used to justify forcing enslaved African people to do backbreaking farm work in the scorching south.

The vast majority of farmhands and construction workers in Texas are migrants from Mexico and Central America. A couple of states have implemented heat exposure rules, yet last month in the middle of a heatwave, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed legislation prohibiting any city or county in the state from passing laws requiring shade and water breaks for outdoor workers.

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