I just finished reading The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet and it certainly made me sweat. This bestelling book by environmental journalist Jeff Goodell is well worth the accolades it has received. It chronicles the real-world effects of climate change in a brutally detailed, visceral way by describing how extreme heat affects the human body; it examines and explains the tragic deaths of young, healthy, athletic people who underestimated the peril of heat waves, bringing this home for the reader in a way that simply can't be ignored. Although I was aware of this in general, Goodell makes clear just how much deadlier heat waves are than other extreme weather events like hurricanes, tornadoes, flash floods, etc., claiming more lives annually than all of these combined. Places like Europe, where the climate has been mild enough historically that most buildings have no air conditioning, are especially vulnerable. The 2003 European heat wave's death toll rose above 70,000, proving especially lethal in Paris, where the iconic zinc roofs turned upper floors into ovens. That is a key lesson brought home in this book: heat domes descend on a community like invisible assassins, doing their damage before the unsuspecting victim realizes how dire their situation has become.

The book explores many parts of the world affected in different ways by global heating (not warming, as Goodell points out, because that term sounds too gentle): the US Pacific Northwest, Canada, the Great Barrier Reef, and India, to name a few. Nowhere can completely escape the changes we've already set in motion, which can be mitigated (if we act quickly and decisively) but not completely avoided. Air conditioning has become a literal lifesaver in more and more regions...but A/C doesn't truly cool things off, it simply moves the heat around so that your controlled environment allows you to survive. (If you're wealthy enough to afford the luxury.) Unfortunately, in the process, more fossil fuels are burned to generate the electricity required to power the air-conditioning units, which amplifies global heating, which requires even more A/C. And so it goes. A daunting adaptation challenge with no quick and easy solution.

This book will alarm you. It may also provide enough gruesome details about heat stroke to save your life when the next heat wave strikes your own locale, or if you venture into an unfamiliar climate zone where temperatures rise far beyond what you're accustomed to. We still have time to reduce the suffering that will afflict many of the most vulnerable members of our society in the coming decades. Instead of pretending it's not a problem, and simply cranking the A/C, we all need to make sure our government leaders feel the heat. A little pressure-induced sweat might do them good!