54 pages • 1 hour read
Jeff GoodellThe Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key Figures
Jeff Goodell
Jeff Goodell is an American journalist and author who has spent much of his career investigating the intersections of climate change, energy, and the environment. He is known for his work at Rolling Stone magazine, where he has been a contributing writer since the 1990s.
Growing up in Silicon Valley, California, Goodell was exposed to both the technological optimism of the region and the environmental transformations occurring around him, from droughts to wildfires. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied English, and he later earned a master of fine arts in fiction writing at Columbia University. Goodell’s professional journey as a journalist began with covering a wide range of topics, but he became increasingly drawn to energy issues in the 1990s. His early books reflected his fascination with both technology and environmental consequences. One of his most notable works from this period is Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family (2000), in which he explores the history of his hometown and critiques the American dream as embodied by the rise of Silicon Valley. This early book reveals Goodell’s interest in the social and environmental impacts of technological advancement.
Goodell’s shift to environmental journalism took more specific focus with his 2006 book Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future. In this book, he investigated the coal industry and its enormous role in driving climate change, illuminating the environmental and human costs of America’s dependence on coal energy. His deep dive into coal set the stage for his future works and established him as an authoritative voice on energy and climate issues. This book marked the beginning of his long-term dedication to exposing the systemic forces—particularly those related to fossil fuels—that are fueling the climate crisis.
Following Big Coal, Goodell continued to investigate climate-related topics, but his work took on even more urgency in The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World (2017). In this book, he examined the growing threat of sea-level rise, traveling to cities around the world to report on how coastal communities are grappling with rising waters due to climate change. His reporting included on-the-ground research and interviews with scientists, city planners, and residents living on the front lines of climate change. This global perspective gave Goodell a more nuanced understanding of the varied impacts of climate change, which helped inform his later work.
By the time he began working on The Heat Will Kill You First, Goodell had already spent more than 20 years covering the escalating dangers of climate change. His earlier works focused on coal and rising seas, but extreme heat became a natural next step for him as it emerged as one of the most deadly and underestimated threats of climate change. Having lived through increasingly severe heat waves himself and witnessed the devastating impacts of extreme temperatures, he felt a responsibility to raise awareness about heat as an invisible yet lethal climate force.
ExxonMobil
ExxonMobil is a fossil fuel company and one of the major contributors to global carbon emissions. According to Goodell, ExxonMobil has known about the climate consequences of burning fossil fuels for over 50 years. Internal documents from the 1970s and 1980s show that ExxonMobil scientists were aware of the potential for severe global warming due to CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels. Despite this knowledge, the company allegedly funded campaigns to sow doubt about climate science and delay regulatory action that could have mitigated the environmental consequences.
Goodell uses the company as an example of how corporations, despite knowing the scientific realities of climate change, have historically prioritized profits over sustainability. This behavior contributed to decades of delayed global action on climate change, exacerbating the current climate crisis, which includes increasingly frequent and intense heat waves. Moreover, ExxonMobil represents the broader fossil fuel industry’s ongoing challenge to international efforts to curb climate change, illustrating how corporate influence can shape both public perception and governmental policy on environmental issues—a contributor to the Inadequacy of Current Responses to Extreme Heat.
Fredereike Otto
Friederike Otto is a prominent climate scientist, recognized for her groundbreaking work in extreme event attribution, a field of climate science that examines the connection between climate change and specific extreme weather events. Otto has been instrumental in developing methods to directly link extreme weather events to human-caused climate change. Her role in shaping the science of extreme event attribution offers a way to quantify and explain how much more likely and severe specific weather phenomena have become due to global warming. This contribution marked a shift in how climate change was understood, moving from vague notions of risk to more concrete, evidence-based attributions, proving climate change culpable for events like heat waves and hurricanes.
By establishing a clear link between human activity and extreme weather, her research opens doors for accountability in both public discourse and legal arenas. Otto herself believes that “science is—or can be—a tool for justice” (118), emphasizing how her work not only addresses the physical science but also the societal implications of climate change. Otto’s work in real-time attribution, where she and her team analyze extreme events shortly after they occur, brings an immediacy to climate science that is vital for raising public awareness and shaping policy. This ability to provide near-instant analysis reinforces the urgency of the climate crisis. Her work not only contributes to scientific knowledge but also to public understanding and potential legal frameworks for addressing climate harm.
Harold Goodman
Harold Goodman, the founder of Goodman Manufacturing, shaped the development and widespread availability of affordable air-conditioning units, which transformed how people lived and worked, especially in the rapidly growing, heat-prone regions of the United States like the South and Southwest. Air-conditioning allowed for the construction of tightly sealed, cheaply built homes without natural ventilation or shade, changing architectural practices and making regions more dependent on cooling technology. His company’s business model also made air-conditioning accessible to middle- and working-class families, fueling population growth in regions that were previously difficult to inhabit due to extreme heat. This shift had far-reaching consequences, as it enabled the rapid growth of Sun Belt cities and altered the political landscape of America, with a migration of conservative voters to the South influencing national politics. Goodman’s focus on efficiency and cost-cutting in air-conditioning production helped democratize comfort, but it also contributed to a growing dependence on fossil-fuel-powered technology, intensifying the climate crisis.
Sebastian Perez
Sebastian Perez was a 38-year-old Guatemalan immigrant who journeyed to Oregon in search of better economic opportunities. Perez’s journey to the US was fueled by a desire to support his wife, Maria, and fulfill their shared dream of building a house back in Guatemala. After a grueling journey across the Mexico-US border, Perez arrived in Oregon confident that hard work in the fields could help him pay off the debt from his passage and send money back home. He began working at Ernst Nursery & Farms, where he spent long days outdoors, performing physically demanding tasks such as dragging heavy irrigation pipes. He worked 10 hours a day without overtime or benefits, earning a modest wage of $14 an hour, which he sent home to support his family and pay off the debt from his journey.
On June 26, 2021, during a record-breaking heatwave, Perez collapsed in the field after hours of working in searing temperatures that reached 106 degrees Fahrenheit. His coworkers found him unconscious, and Perez died of heatstroke before emergency services arrived. His death shows how extreme heat can disproportionately affect individuals working in labor-intensive industries, especially when those individuals have limited access to protections, shade, or water breaks. Goodell uses Perez’s story as an example of Socioeconomic Inequality in Climate Resilience, showing how systemic issues, including the lack of adequate labor protections, intersect with climate-induced challenges and ultimately lead to preventable deaths.
Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, Miju, and Oski
Jonathan Gerrish, Ellen Chung, their one-year-old daughter, Miju, and their dog, Oski, died in August 2021 on a hike in the Sierra National Forest. Gerrish had planned their route and had completed many hikes in the Sierra foothills before this fatal trip. However, neither he nor Chung anticipated the extent of the danger that day. The extreme heat, which soared to 109 degrees, was worsened by the exposure on the steep Savage Lundy Trail, a southeastern-facing path with no shade due to the remnants of a wildfire that had burned much of the vegetation in the area years before. Gerrish’s repeated attempts to seek help, including an incomplete text message pleading for assistance, show the family’s mounting panic and disorientation as they realized the severity of their situation. They reached a point on the trail where they had no choice but to stop and rest, likely realizing that their bodies were shutting down. This incident shocked the local community and drew national attention to the risks associated with extreme heat. The deaths of Gerrish, Chung, Miju, and Oski show how even a routine hike can turn deadly in the face of rising temperatures, which are becoming more frequent due to climate change.
David Keith
Keith is a Canadian climate scientist who explores methods for managing solar radiation to counter the effects of global warming. His research focuses on how humanity might deliberately intervene in the Earth’s climate system, specifically through technologies designed to reflect sunlight into space, thereby cooling the planet. Geoengineering, as Keith proposes, could be a last resort to prevent catastrophic climate impacts, particularly if efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions fall short. His research stresses the urgency of finding innovative solutions to a warming planet, while also raising ethical and practical questions about whether humans should intervene in complex natural systems to such an extent.
