The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

The Heat Will Kill You First belongs to the burgeoning genre of climate change-related nonfiction, yet it diverges even from these calls for action in the immediacy of its arguments. In recent years, books like Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction and David Wallace-Wells’s The Uninhabitable Earth have shaped climate literature by calling attention to the urgent and catastrophic impacts of global warming. Both books stress the seriousness of the problem, but they approach it from a broad perspective, exploring how climate change reshapes ecosystems and threatens human civilization on a large scale. Their impact has been to show readers the enormous and interconnected consequences of climate change, raising awareness and calling for action to address these complex challenges. Goodell aims to do something related and yet distinct by personalizing the climate crisis.

Wallace-Wells, for instance, discusses global-scale climate threats, writing about the potential for extreme heat, food shortages, economic collapse, and mass migrations if climate change continues unchecked. This puts the emphasis on the future, not the present. Goodell, by contrast, focuses on how climate change is already impacting people at an individual and community level, making his arguments all the more relevant to readers’ lives.

Similarly, Kolbert adopts a scientific and investigative tone as she explores the ongoing mass extinction event driven by human activities. Her focus is on the alarming rate at which species are disappearing due to habitat destruction, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. Her narrative is broad and ecological, emphasizing the interconnectedness of life on Earth, while Goodell’s approach is more immediate and personal. He uses stories from people’s daily lives to support his arguments. Goodell centers his book on heat to convey that the climate crisis poses an immediate danger with direct physical impacts on human health and survival. He brings the climate conversation to a more personal level, detailing how high temperatures are reshaping human experiences today.

Though it is not the only work to do so, Goodell’s book is also notable for discussing social inequality in the context of climate change. Where Wallace-Wells warns of the broad economic damage caused by rising temperatures, Goodell emphasizes that the effects of extreme heat are felt unevenly. He dissects how heat disproportionately affects specific groups—especially low-income individuals, outdoor workers, and communities of color. He examines how, in cities, wealthier areas benefit from resources like green spaces and efficient cooling, while poorer neighborhoods, often with heat-trapping infrastructure and limited tree cover, experience higher temperatures. Goodell’s exploration of these inequities is also distinctive in its emphasis on worker protections and policies. He details the absence of protective regulations for outdoor laborers and describes the health risks faced by migrant and agricultural workers, who often carry out exhausting tasks in dangerously high temperatures without adequate water or rest breaks. This social justice perspective makes Goodell’s book not only a call for environmental action but also a plea for regulatory reform and policy changes that consider the welfare of at-risk populations. The Heat Will Kill You First argues that effective climate action must be inclusive and considerate of social justice concerns, a message that adds a human-centered urgency sometimes missing from other climate narratives.