„A new study underscores the wild temperature swings in Earth’s history. It also underscores why the issue with our rapid warming today is not «saving the planet». The planet has been through far hotter eras and will be fine. The issue is saving ourselves“, says The New York Times journalist Jeff Goodell about a new study on how the climate changes affect us.

The dozens and hundreds of headlines announcing record temperatures around the world and their consequences are only a Google search away. For example, in Arad alone, four people have died this year due to the heat, and September started with a heat wave after a summer full of red-code days and temperatures above 35 degrees. This is the new reality of living with climate changes. A reality where heat is becoming an increasingly dangerous and ever-present enemy. That’s what journalist and writer Jeff Goodell’s book, The Heat Will Kill You First, published this scorching summer by ZYX Books, is about.

With the keen reporter’s passionate sense of observation, a thriller author’s talent, and a science journalist’s rigor, Jeff Goodell denounces heat as a silent, highly dangerous predator that is already striking with lightning speed all around us. “We don’t understand heat. I didn’t understand it either until I started to dig deeper into the problem and its consequences,” Goodell says in the book.  Thirty million people live in extreme heat, with an estimated 489,000 deaths each year; technology, geography and other historical advantages cannot protect us; our livelihoods and those of animals will be affected and areas such as sport will suffer. 

„I am critical of the language we use to talk about climate change or the climate crisis. I prefer the expression «climate crisis», because it gives a certain sense of urgency. Others have used the expression «climate emergency». Neither of these expressions, however, captures the scale and scope of the risks we face from the extreme heat and rapid warming of our world”, said Goodell in an interview for ZYX Books with Horia Ghibuțiu, the one who translated the book in Romanian.

In the past decade, scientists who study the movement of animals have found that of the four thousand species that they’d tracked, between 40 and 70 percent had altered their distribution. „On average, terrestrial creatures are moving nearly twenty kilometers every decade. Marine creatures, who are largely free of barriers to seeking cooler waters, are moving four times faster than land- based animals. Some animals are making spectacular leaps. (…) Even the most seemingly immobile wild creatures are on the move. In Japan, several species of coral polyps, which form the branching thickets of coral reefs, were found by scientists to be traveling about two miles north every year. Plants are on the move too“, writes Goodell in The Heat Will Kill You First. This is a book about Andrea Dutton, MacArthur Fellow and professor of geology at University of Wisconsin–Madison said: „Once you read this book, you may never see a hot summer day the same way again. Jeff Goodell gives heat names, faces, stories, and emotions that you will find hard to forget.”

How do we summon the courage not to give up despite the bleak odds? How do we focus on solutions and on what each of us can do to make a difference? „I cannot answer these questions. (…) But for me, the big surprise in writing this book,” said Goodell, „was to discover not only how easily and quickly heat can kill you, but also how poignantly it reminds us how deeply connected we are to each other and to all living things. No matter where we are headed, we are, all of us, on this journey together.” With the lucky bat hunting at night in the cool breeze, the armadillo who might wish to escape the heavy, oppressive scales on a hot summer’s day, the pecan tree stressed by these times, the polar bear and her cubs facing the disappearing ice, or the coral reefs coping with heat waves.

You can buy Romanian version of The Heat Will Kill You First (Căldura te va ucide prima) from (https://zyxbooks.ro/product/caldura-te-va-ucide-prima-jeff-goodell-zyx-books/).