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Shumita Basu, Narrating: Hey there. Real quick before we get into today's episode, if you're enjoying this show, follow us on Apple Podcasts, and even better, leave us a rating and review. It's one of those things that helps other people find our show and we love to hear what you're enjoying and want more of. Thank you for doing that. Let's get to the show.
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Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation," from "Apple News." I'm Shumita Basu. Today, the dangers of extreme heat for our health and our planet.
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Basu, Narrating: This summer has been hot. In many places, scarily so. Heat records are being broken every day.
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Unidentified Speaker: Planet Earth is on fire.
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Unidentified Speaker 2: The record heat across the world has been unrelenting.
Unidentified Speaker 3: You know, it's 111 degrees outside.
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Unidentified Speaker 4: Tonight, the deadly heat dome tightening its grip.
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Unidentified Speaker 5: It is the kind of heat that you feel as soon as you step outside.
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Unidentified Speaker 6: When you open an oven, that's what it feels like.
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Unidentified Speaker 7: We're talking about a deadly heatwave that is feeling more like a heat tsunami in the South.
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Unidentified Speaker 8: Virginia Key, Florida…
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Unidentified Speaker 9: Galveston, Texas…
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Unidentified Speaker 10: California and Arizona…
Unidentified Speaker 11: The extreme weather is not just impacting the U.S., parts of Europe…
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Unidentified Speaker 12: Greece, Spain, France, northwest India…
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Unidentified Speaker 13: The Iraqi capital is broiling in 116 degree heat…
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Unidentified Speaker 14: But extreme heat isn't just in the air. About 40% of our global oceans are currently experiencing a marine heatwave.
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Unidentified Speaker 15: Unprecedented water temperatures…
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Unidentified Speaker 16: So what happens when we keep adding the heat?
Unidentified Speaker 17: Muscle cramps, heavy sweating, dizziness, nausea…
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Unidentified Speaker 18: Collapsed under the scorching sun…
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Unidentified Speaker 19: Second- and third-degree burns…
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Unidentified Speaker 20: Falling or passing out…
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Unidentified Speaker 21: A woman has died because of heat-related issues…
Unidentified Speaker 22: A mountain biker died trying to help heat-exhausted hikers…
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Basu, Narrating: Extreme heat has a cascading effect. In the U.S., we've seen poor air quality caused by Canadian wildfires, catastrophic flooding in the northeast, and an on-going water crisis in the West. It all serves as a unavoidable reminder of how climate change is reshaping our planet and our lives.
In a new book called "The Heat Will Kill You First," journalist Jeff Goodell lays out how heat itself is at the root of our climate crisis. It's the force pushing us into what he says is a new climate era. But, as Jeff himself will tell you, he does not feel defeated or pessimistic about the future. He actually says
there's a lot of reason for hope.
Jeff lives in Austin, Texas, a city that has seen a streak of 100-plus degree temperatures for days this summer. So, I asked him to start by telling me how he's processing what he's seeing, what we're all living through…
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Jeff Goodell: I think that what we're doing right now, even if we don't know it, and don't quite acknowledge it, is really saying goodbye to the climate that we grew up with. We're now reaching this point with climate change that the atmosphere is changing in such kind of dramatic ways that we're seeing the emergence of these extreme events, like these heat waves, like the flooding in the northeast, in real time. And we're seeing it in ways that even climate scientists who have been very good at predicting kind of long-term changes in the climate and the relationship between burning fossil fuels and CO2 and warming… Those sort of long-term models have been really good and really on target, but the short-term, how fast it's going to happen and how extreme it's going to get, uh, this has been a big surprise even to the most sort of, um, alert and far-seeing climate scientists that I'm aware of. And we're just all feeling it, and I think that it's really important to not think of this as a new normal, which is a phrase that a lot of people are using to describe this changes that we're seeing, it's more like a new abnormal.
Basu: Yeah. I mean, it's really dire when you put it in those terms. I think what's also scary to hear is that the pace seems to be far exceeding expectations. Why is that out of sync with what climate scientists have been saying now for some years? Or why are some scientist who follow this closely feeling so surprised?
Goodell: Well, because-- I mean, I think, thinking about this, it's important to understand the basic idea that burning fossil fuels creates CO2, which goes into the atmosphere, which is essentially permanent and accumulates up there and causes a general warming of our atmosphere. That is very simple to predict, relatively speaking, the relationship between CO2 levels and the amount of warming that that causes. And so the models and the predictions for all that have been very good. But that's very different than the real-time dynamics that are happening. You know, our climate system is predictable in sort of long-term ways, but it's very chaotic in shorter terms. It's sort of like-- I mean, one metaphor I use, or analogy that I use, is, like, if you're on a stream and you drop a leaf in the stream, if you drop it in ten times that leaf is going to end up in ten different places because it'll hit little eddies and currents and bump against the rock.
Goodell: And so that's what we're seeing emerging now, is that, you know, as our planet is warming up, the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the, of the planet, it's causing changes in the jet stream that are kind of unpredictable, the jet stream is sort of wiggling around, that is causing these kinds of heat domes that we are seeing here in Texas for the last few weeks and the whole southeast and southwest has been feeling. So these more local, regional changes are much more difficult to predict.
Basu: I see. And what do you want people to understand about how heat is really the issue at the center of this?
Goodell: Well, heat is really important for two reasons, and in my book I try to do what turned out to be a difficult thing, which is to talk about the sort of macro implications of heat, the big-picture implications of heat, and the immediate implications of heat. In other words, what it does to our planet and what it does to you and your body, and how it can kill you quickly. And the big-picture story about heat that's really important to understand is that heat is the primary driver of all of these impacts of climate change that we think about and hear about all the time. Sea level rise, drought, wildfires, all these kinds of things, are driven by the increased heat that is accumulating in our atmosphere, right? So it's this primary driver that's forcing all of these big planetary changes. But the other thing that I didn't really understand until I undertook this book is the way heat impacts our bodies and how, you know, it is a killer in a way that all of these other kind of climate change impacts are not. You know, no one stands on the beach in Miami beach and dies because of sea-level rise, right? There's a lot of implications to rising seas, but you're not going to drown because Antarctica is melting that afternoon, whereas I can go for a hike in Arizona on the wrong day and I can be dead in two hours.
Basu: And in fact you open your book with a really-- a really tragic story of a young couple, a young family, that went out and did exactly that, went on a hike and didn't come home. Can you tell us a little bit about their story? They were in California.
Goodell: It is a very tragic story and one that was, um, difficult for me as a writer to tell because it is so tragic. This family-- His name was Jonathan Garish and his wife's name was Ellen. He was in his 40s, she was in her late 30s, they had a one year old child. And they lived in Silicon Valley, he worked at Snapchat as an engineer, and they decided during the pandemic that they wanted to get away from the Valley, so they moved to the Sierra Nevada foothills. They would go on hikes all the time, a couple miles, bring their daughter along and their dog. And, um, one day during the summer, uh, two years ago, they decided to go explore this river canyon, where they wanted to find some swimming holes. And it was only a couple miles from their house. They started out at 7:30, they had water. They hiked down into this canyon and then they played around the river for a while and around 11:30, as the heat was rising, they started to hike out. And it was a two-mile long kind of climb up a steep switchback. There was no shade because there had been wildfires there two years previous and all the trees were burned. And what essentially happened is the family didn't come home, they sent out a search party and they found the entire family dead on the trail. And it took a while for them to figure out, you know, investigators to figure out, what had happened, and it became clear that they all died of heat stroke. And it's an example of how quickly you can get yourself in trouble, and even people who are young and in relatively good shape can be vulnerable to these kinds of things.
Basu: I mean, it's such a horrific story in so many ways. You write about some of the details there, that they had brought water with them, that they went on hikes, they seemed prepared to go on hikes. Also the fact that it was difficult for officials to determine what exactly had happened is interesting. I mean, what happens to our bodies when we are under such extreme heat? Why is it difficult to tell if someone has died of heat stroke?
Goodell: Because heat's not like a gun, you know, heat does not leave a wound. Most people who die of heat stroke die of heart failure, kidney failure, other kinds of circulatory problems. What happens to our bodies in these kinds of extreme heat situations is kind of predictable and horrific. Our bodies have one mechanism to cool down, and that's sweat, so what happens when it gets hot is your body works very hard to get rid of that heat and the way it does that is your heart starts pumping faster and it pushes all the blood out of your internal organs and your brain towards your skin surfaces. And it does that in order to get it closer to where you're sweating, so it uses that sweat to cool off your blood, and then it recirculates the blood and it cools off your body. And that works pretty well, until it doesn't. Either you get dehydrated and you can't sweat anymore, and so that cooling mechanism doesn't work, or it's too hot and, even though you're sweating, the accumulation of heat build-up gets higher and higher. And so if you keep going, your body temperature keeps rising, you will eventually, when your body temperature gets to around 104, 105 degrees, which is, you know, only 6 or 7 degrees above normal, your body actually starts sort of melting from within. The cell membranes around all of your cells actually begin to melt. The proteins that control much of the cellular functions within these cells, which have this sort of intricate folds that determine what they do, they begin to unfold. And your body, you just sort of start unraveling from within, and that's why sometimes people will have a heat stroke and get to a hospital and they will survive, but they will have permanent damage to their kidneys or other internal organs because some of the cells-- cellular structures of those organs have begun to melt and there's no sort of fixing that. So even if you survive heat stroke, you can still have permanent damage from that.
Basu: Wow. And you mentioned that you've had experiences like this before where you've maybe just miscalculated your own physical ability to be out in the heat. What's that been like?
Goodell: Well, I mean that, you know, uh, what happened to the Garish family that I described earlier on the hike in California, one of the reasons I really wanted to write about it is because a similar thing happened to me. This was seven or eight years ago. I had been covering climate change, thinking about climate change for more than a decade. I obviously understood that our world is getting warmer, you know, it's called global warming, it's not like it's some kind of secret thing, but I didn't have any understanding of what that meant for me personally, or any understanding of what the, sort of, dangers of heat were. I'd never given it a thought. And I happened to be in Nicaragua on a vacation, and I was climbing a volcano on this steep trail on a hot, humid day. And I was in really good shape. And about halfway up the volcano, I noticed my heart was pounding and pounding, faster and faster, and I started to sweat and I thought, Oh, this is good, but then I started sweating more and more and then the sweat just kind of came pouring off of me in this, like, spooky way to me. I didn't know what was happening to me, and it felt like my body was kind of running out of control. I could feel the heart, my heart pounding really fast in my chest, I was getting dizzy, I felt kind of a hallucinogenic, and it was very frightening, and I had no idea what was happening to me. I had no idea. Luckily, some of the people I was with did understand and kind of took me into the shade and let me sit down for a few hours and kind of recover, but I came very close to not making it myself that day.
Basu: Wow. Wow. I mean, it seems like it really is about, as soon as you can, treating someone by literally trying to cool them as quickly as you can, right, in terms of treating possible heat stroke or heat exhaustion?
Goodell: Yeah, that's the only treatment that there is, is to get your body temperature down as fast as possible, and depending on how far you are on the spectrum of heating, you know, getting in a cold shower, getting in a lake, getting in shade, in extreme conditions packing yourself in ice. The urgency of getting your temperature down as fast as possible is the single most important thing.
Basu: Another thing that I realized I had misconceptions about as I was reading your book had to do with hydration and staying hydrated while you're out. And I was surprised to read that-- I guess maybe it's just been so ingrained in me, right, if it's a hot day, make sure you're carrying water with you. But I guess that was always-- or I guess maybe I had this conception of that being a total safeguard against heat stroke or heat exhaustion, and it's just not. The way you explain is, some people can be hydrated but also still suffer seriously from heat.
Goodell: Yeah, it's a big misconception, and it's a kind of complicated message to get out because, you know, it really is important to have water, because if you dehydrate your body you can't sweat and you can't cool off. But there's this idea that drinking water itself cools you off, right? If it's a hot day and you have water with you and you drink water, that process itself cools yourself down, and it doesn't, it has nothing to do with it. The only way that water helps is that it ensures that you have the ability to sweat.
Basu: Mm.
Goodell: And there are many cases, and I write about them in my book, where people, whether they're athletes, construction workers, wildfire fighters who are wearing heavy gear, where even though they're well hydrated, they're working in such hot conditions and accumulating so much heat so fast that even though they're sweating and all their bodies natural cooling mechanisms are functioning fine, they can't dump the heat out fast enough because it's so hot. The bottom line is you can drink as much water as you need and be very well hydrated and still die of heat stroke very quickly.
Basu: Yeah. I've heard a-- the sort of optimistic, slightly optimistic, take on this, which is that, you know, humans are very adaptable. But I think the really big caveat to just say out loud is: who can afford the cost of adapting? And you talk about, in the book, how heat is democratic, it'll affect you no matter what, as a person, but of course it feels like there's a huge divide between how the wealthy will weather a warming planet and how countries that are not wealthy will weather it. Can you talk a little bit about that dynamic and really what's at stake there?
Goodell: Yeah, I'm really glad you asked about that because that's a really, really, important point. It goes to kind of the heart of what I'm trying to write about and communicate in this book. And that is that, you know, when anyone says "we" can adapt, the first question is who is we? I am sitting here right now talking to you in an air conditioned studio in Austin, and just outside the building here are, that I happened to see coming in-- three blocks away are some guys working in the street, repaving the asphalt on a street here. It's going to be 106, 107 degrees today. You know, they are suffering it in an entirely different way than I am. Go to any city in the world, go to the rich neighborhoods and to the poor neighborhoods, and you will see that the rich neighborhoods are cooler. They are bigger trees, shadier… You know, money buys coolness in our world, there's no question about that. And it goes to this idea that, like, to connect this idea of adapting, everyone says, Oh, well, we can just air condition, you know, we just need to bring, you know-- air condition more people, to, you know, get more people access to air conditioning. On one level, that's true, we do need to democratize air conditioning so that more people have access to it and it's less expensive and it's, um-- you know, power bills are cheaper and things like that so people have access. But there are billions of people on the planet who do not have air conditioning and will not have air conditioning anytime soon. And there's also millions of people here in the United States who have air conditioning who can't afford to run it, many of the times, or have an air conditioner that's broken and can't afford to fix it. I've spent a lot of time with these people, I write about it in my book. But also, more broadly than that, it's not just about us humans, you know? We're not going to air condition wheat fields where our food is grown, we're not gonna air condition where corn is grown. I went to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas here, which is one of the most agriculturally productive regions in the world, and, you know, a lot of the vegetables and things that are growing there are growing at the limits of the heat that they can take. Well, then what happens? Well, how do we deal with that? And, like, you know, what about other species? I mean, uh, you know, we can air condition our own little spaces, but we're not going to air condition things for, you know, all of the living creatures in our world. You know, we all want a techno fix, we all think that there's some technology that'll come along that will be the equivalent of, you know, the plaster cast we can put on our broken ankle that we can wear around for a little while and everything will be okay, that we can just fix it. And heat and climate change, more broadly, are not that kind of problem. It's a much different problem that requires much bigger thinking about the complexities of our lives. And just to go back to the point you first brought up, it is very true that extreme heat is a issue of justice and equity, and this question of the divide between the cooled and the doomed is very clear and is widening with every bump of the temperature that we experience.
Basu: Well, let's talk about some of the changes on the level that you're describing that are needed, the high level changes. I was interested to hear you talking recently about Texas, and what an example the state of Texas is as a state that has relied so heavily on fossil fuels and is so closely connected to the fossil fuel industry, and how, you know, with all the concerns about the energy grid being able to sustain the high demand during a time like this when temperatures are so, so high in Texas, and seeing some degree of success really being attributed to renewable energy investments in Texas, solar and wind energy. Can you talk a little bit more about that and, um, not just what it means in Texas, but just generally speaking, the shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources and the role that that can play.
Goodell: Yeah, that's a really important question that's become more and more clear here in Texas just during the last few weeks during these extreme heat events that we've been having here. But, before I go into that, I just want to underscore, you know, something that's implicit in what you asked, which is to really make clear that the reason that we're having these extreme heat waves, the reason our planet is getting hotter and hotter, the reason we're having this conversation at all, is all about the burning of fossil fuels. Burning of fossil fuels is, you know, not the only but by far the primary reason why CO2 is accumulating in our atmosphere. Getting off of fossil fuels is the most urgent thing that we need to think about in the big picture of how to deal with this extreme heat and this warming planet that we live on. It is absolutely, in every context, kind of job one. I moved to Texas four years ago. I lived in New York and I grew up in California, and moving to Texas has been an eye opening experience for me. It is the belly of the beast in America. Um, it is the fossil fuel capital of America, for sure, and it is also ground zero for many climate impacts. But what's really interesting is that Texas is changing really fast in some good, really good, ways. And this issue with the heat waves in the last few weeks has really underscored that. And there was a lot of fear, even for myself and my friends, about the risks of blackouts during extreme heat events because everybody cranks up their air conditioning, but our grid was strong, and our power didn't go out, and part of the reason it didn't go out, a large part of the reason it didn't go out, is because 25% of our power here in Texas was coming from solar. Texas is the leading state in the country in renewable energy. It's going gangbusters here and it's really kind of showed its stuff during these heat waves because during these extreme heat events, mechanical fossil fuel plants like natural gas plants have all kinds of problems because of the heat changes, the dynamics of the metals and things in the power plants. And solar works really well on hot days, on hot sunny days. And not only does it work well, it's cheaper, right? And so these heat waves are showing the importance of moving towards this renewable energy and the virtues of having this kind of power that isn't vulnerable to heat in the same way that sort of mechanical thermal plants are.
Basu: Yeah. I mean, politics are often seen as the place of gridlock on issues like this. How has Texas managed to square what's happening at the political level with the realities and the demands of what's happening to the environment and the climate?
Goodell: Yeah, I mean, part of the answer has to do with simple economics. Right now, renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuel energy anywhere in the world, much less Texas, and Texas has really great resources for this because we have a lot of open space for wind coming across the prairie in the northern and western part of the state, we have a lot of sunlight, and we have a lot of engineering expertise. So it's really taking off here. And it's simply because of the economics. It's just, We can do this, we can make money, it's booming, and that's a great thing, you know? The conversation about "Oh, solar is so expensive," you know, this conversation that was happening ten years ago, is gone now, and now it's shifted to this sort of culture war stuff that, like, real Americans burn fossil fuels kind of thing. And, you know, the leadership here is trying to do all it can to slow the transition because there's still a lot of money being made in fossil fuels and that money gets funneled into politics and… The hard thing about this is that the transition away from fossil fuels is inevitable and obvious, it's just a question of how fast it happens. And, you know, to put it simply, the fossil fuel industry is doing everything they can, politically, to slow that transition down. And that's the game. It's like, We need to drag this out as long as possible so that we can get our investment back from the infrastructure and all the money we've poured into oil rigs and pipelines and all that kind of thing, lest they turn into stranded assets and lose billions of dollars. So it's all about just sort of milking it as long as possible. But the trajectory is very, very clear.
Basu: You, Jeff, have been writing about the environment and about the climate for over two decades. I wonder if you can talk about how your perspective has changed over time. How do you think that we as a country, that we as a society, have changed or not changed when it comes to conversations around climate?
Goodell: One of the things that I've really seen change is that, you know, this stuff that we're talking about, whether it's where our energy comes from or how we're going to adapt cities or how heat impacts our bodies, has become much more central in cultural conversations. It used to be-- I joke that when I told people I wrote about climate change, it would be like I wrote about the sex life of porcupines or something. It was like this weird little thing that, you know, that must be cute, kind of fun thing to do. Now, everybody wants to talk about it. They want to know "Where should I buy real estate?" Or "Where should I move?" Or, you know, "How do I handle the heat?" Or, you know, "Who do I invest with?" Or things like that, and so that is very encouraging. The thing that discourages me… I have to say, COVID was pretty discouraging for me because, it showed-- You know, there was so much sort of suffering and, you know, so much death from COVID, and at a certain point, you know, we've just kind of decided that it's okay that X thousands of people will die every year of COVID and we're just going to go on, and-- and I do fear with climate, and even more specifically with heat stuff, that we're just going to move into a kind of acceptance of this, that, you know, Oh, the weather and the climate has always been crazy and chaotic and, you know, we're sorry that, you know-- A new study that just came out just showed 60,000
people died of extreme heat just in Europe last summer, and, like, Oh, that's too bad, but that's how it is and we will just accept all of this, and the chaos and turmoil that will come along with all of this we will just kind of adapt to in the kind of worst kind of way. And that's something that I didn't concern myself with.
Goodell: Ten years ago or so, I was talking with Al Gore for something and he said everybody who cares about climate change or this energy transition that we're talking about has what he called their "Oh, shit" moment when they see something, or something happens in their lives, that they realize what's at stake. Ten or 15 years ago, I kind of believed Al Gore, and I don't think he's wrong, but I believed that there would be an "Oh, shit" moment, that we would all, civilization broadly, we would wake up and realize the risks and understand what was going on, and now I don't think that's going to happen. I think it's going to be a long, difficult war, a long, difficult fight, this transition. Um, it's going to happen one way or another, um, only question is is what this new world that we're emerging into and creating for ourselves is going to look like.
Basu: Mm. I mean, I think this is the part of the conversation where people really start to feel very, very small, right, and very, um-- very hopeless. I recently read Jia Tolentino's most recent piece in "The New Yorker" that was about climate anxiety and she asks, if the goal is for the planet to remain habitable into the next century, what is the right degree of panic? And how do you bear it? And I think that echoes how a lot people are feeling right now and the kind of conversations that they're having with their friends, with their families, with their therapists, certainly. I mean, how do you suggest that people deal with these feelings of anxiety and smallness in the scope of this issue. I'm sure you've had to deal with this at times yourself.
Goodell: Yeah, you know, a lot of people say, like, Why aren't you, like, living in your basement, you know, drinking bottles of bourbon and just, like, you know, despairing about the fate of the civilization and the future of our planet? And I don't feel that way at all, I feel the opposite. I feel incredibly inspired by what's happening. You know, I think that we're at this inflection point where we have tremendous power to change things. I go out every day and I meet these amazing people who are doing amazing things, whether it's planting trees in Austin here, or whether it's solar entrepreneurs, or whether-- in Botswana, you know, um, meeting people who are fighting oil drilling in the Okavango Delta, I wrote a big story about that. I mean, you see these people who are tremendously invested in building a better world.
Goodell: And… I mean, I do think that we're coming close to seeing, from a legal perspective, and I write about this in my book actually, the fossil fuel industry is becoming more and more like the tobacco industry, that they knew what they were doing, they've done this, they've withheld the information. ExxonMobil knew in the 1970s what was-- the consequences of burning fossil fuels would be. Their models were amazingly precise. They changed, you know, the height of their oil rigs in offshore drilling in order to deal with sea level rise and stuff, but they withheld and deceived and actually spent millions and billions of dollars funding disinformation campaigns. So, I do think there's a coming moment of responsibility. I remain deeply hopeful and deeply inspired that in this chaos and in this moment of change is a time of possibility, and that's why I think being involved, being informed, being politically active, talking about it with people is so important because we have this moment that we can seize and that we have in our power. We're far from powerless. In fact, I feel more powerful now as a writer, just speaking of myself, than I did ten years ago by far. Way more people like you and whoever's listening to this podcast are listening to things that I'm talking about and writing about, you know, than they were ten or 15 years ago. And it's not because I have any special message, but because people are aware of what's going on. And in that awareness comes possibility, and in that awareness comes the potential for a better world. And that's ultimately what I find most hopeful about this moment.
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Basu: Jeff, what a timely book. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me about it.
Goodell: Thanks for having me.
Basu, Narrating: You can find Jeff Goodell's book, "The Heat Will Kill You First," on Apple Books. And if you're enjoying this show, "Apple News In Conversation," please don't forget to rate, review, and follow us on Apple Podcasts.
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