Transcript: This is Climate: Extreme Heat
MS. EILPERIN: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post live. Im Juliet Eilperin, the deputy climate and environment editor at The Washington Post. Today we're joined by longtime climate journalist, Jeff Goodell. He is the author-- MR. GOODELL: Hi, Juliet. MS. EILPERIN: Hey. He is the author of the new book called "The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet." Welcome, Jeff, to Washington Post Live. MR. GOODELL: Thanks for having me. MS. EILPERIN: Great. Let's get started. So I want to start with the brutal heat waves that across North America, Asia, and Europe, where hundreds of millions of people have been enduring blistering conditions for weeks. Can you put into context for us, how alarming are these temperatures that we're seeing across the Northern Hemisphere right now? MR. GOODELL: Well, they're, of course, very alarming because they--these temperatures are so extreme, and they are, you know, pushing the limits of what humans and other--all living things can handle in these kinds of conditions, but, you know, it's really important to say that this is not really a surprise. I mean, you know, scientists have been warning us about increasing temperatures as we continue burning fossil fuels and loading the atmosphere with CO2, and these extreme events, while extreme and while at the outer boundaries of what a lot of these models have shown, they're not beyond what scientists have been warning us about for a very long time. So it's an odd moment, because at one, it's kind of scary and it feels like things are, you know, spinning out of control heat-wise, but on the other hand, this is what scientists have been talking about for a very long time. So that's where we are. MS. EILPERIN: Got it. And in Death Valley, California, the heat capital of the country, we had nighttime low temperatures exceeding 100 degrees. Obviously, Phoenix has been hitting record heat wave and averaging, you know, at least 100 degrees. When you have particularly these evening temperatures being so high, what are the implications of that, and what does it mean for human health? MR. GOODELL: Well, you know, our bodies are like these exquisitely tuned heat machines. We're very good at keeping our body temperature sort if stable around 98.6 degrees, and when temperatures get higher, our bodies have to work harder to cool off. We have one cooling mechanism, which is sweat, and when it gets hot outside, to maintain a cool interior body temperature, our heart starts pounding, and it starts pushing blood out towards our skin so that it can be cooled off as the sweat evaporates. And that is difficult for our bodies, and it takes a lot of work, and it puts strain on our hearts and on our circulatory system and on other internal organs, and our bodies need a break. And so when you have high temperatures during the day, especially for outside workers, their bodies have been working really hard, and if you have cool nights, then at least at night, the body gets to relax. The heart rate goes back down. There's a kind of recovery period. When you have these extreme night temperatures, there's no break, and so it really adds to the strain of our hearts and internal organs and makes these temperatures all the more difficult to withstand. MS. EILPERIN: Now, there's some people who obviously say, "It's summer. It's hot. Go into air conditioning if you need to." What would be your message to them, and how would you explain some of the complexities that arise when we are all using our air conditioning, you know, whether it's here or overseas, at an extended period? MR. GOODELL: Yeah. Well, you know, in America, we love techno fixes, and we love the idea that, you know, what's the big deal? We can just air-condition our way out of this, and we just need to get more air conditioning for more people and we'll all be fine. There's a number of problems with that. One is that there are billions of people on this planet who live in hot areas who do not have air conditioning and who are, by all reason--in all reasonable time scenarios, not going to have access to air conditioning. So yes, it's important to democratize access to air conditioning, to energy programs and make it cheaper to run them. I've spent a lot of time with--in neighborhoods with people who have air conditions but can't afford to run them because the electric bills are so high. So yes, improving access to air conditioning is important, but let's not pretend that we're going to get air conditioning to everyone on the planet at any time, ever. And also, let's not forget that we're not going to air-condition the wheat fields, where we grow our food, and the cornfields. Those are not going to be air-conditioned. We're not going to air-condition, you know, the oceans. We're not going to--you know, the consequences of a warming ocean for marine life and for our weather patterns are enormous. We're not going to air-condition the sort of wildlife, all the other living things on the planet that are suffering from these extreme--from this extreme heat. And then, just finally, the final thing is by being dependent upon air conditioning, we're also dependent upon this umbilical cord of electric power. And I am talking to you right now from Austin, Texas, where a couple of years ago, we had a five-day outage. Our grid went down for five days in the middle of winter, and, you know, it was awful. And people didn't have access to, in that case, the heating. But if you had the same kind of thing happen when the grid is strained during some of these extreme heat waves, if we have a power outage in Phoenix this week, hundreds, if not thousands, of people will die, because our houses are not built to function without air conditioning. Windows are sealed, all that kind of thing. They become convection ovens as soon as that air conditioning fails. MS. EILPERIN: Right. And that's obviously one of the things you cover in your book, should, for example, you have a blackout, some sort of massive outage in a place like Phoenix at this point, and obviously, there've been studies about just the huge human toll that would--that would take. So we have a question from our audience, and it's Johanna Barsotti from Illinois asks, "I'm thinking about older adults and how they're moving to warmer areas, but sometimes they don't realize the intense heat there. How can organizations help raise awareness and support these vulnerable communities? For example, I've read about changes in our diet, like food that's harder to digest raises our body temperature." And we'd be really interested in your thoughts on this, and we did an analysis just the other day for one of our stories, which found that for people ages 65 and older, their top destination was, in fact, Maricopa County. So clearly, this is where a number of people are going, whether it's Florida, you know, in Texas or, you know, in the Sun Belt. MR. GOODELL: Yeah. I mean, I'm a great example of that. I moved to Austin, Texas, from upstate New York. I moved here for love. I fell in love with a woman who lived here and had a job here, and I decided that I wanted to be in this place, even though I knew it was hotter and riskier. So people move to different places for all kinds of reasons. But it's also generally true that people like warmer climates than colder climates. It's also generally true that these areas in the Southwest and Southeast are cheaper than--real estate and things like that. Texas doesn't have state income tax. So there are lots of financial reasons why people are moving to these places. But I think also one of the big things is that, you know--and this is something I really try to communicate in my book--is that people just don't understand the risks of extreme heat. They don't get that how dangerous it really is and how quickly it can become really dangerous. And, you know, especially with these extreme temperatures, you know, it's one thing to go outside when it's 105 degrees. It's an entirely different thing to go outside when it's 120 degrees or even 118 degrees. These relatively small differences in temperature have enormous implications for the risks, mortality risks for people, especially older people who have any kind of heart conditions of circulatory issues, pregnant women, you know, young children, people who are on various medications like diuretics or beta blockers, things like that. MS. EILPERIN: Is there any place that you found that actually has done an incredibly good job at educating people about the risks where it's made a difference? I mean, obviously, again, you cover in your book, this idea of naming heat waves as one way to raise awareness, but I'm wondering if even on a small level where that's you've seen that done in a way that's really made an impact. MR. GOODELL: You know, a lot of places are experimenting with things. A lot of cities are naming these, you know, chief heat officers, which has been, I think, a very effective way of heightening awareness throughout public health and government agencies and things about how we talk about heat, but I don't think I've found anywhere that it is really kind of escalating the awareness campaigns and other kinds of work that can be done at the same speed as the risk is accelerating. You know, you see cities doing lots of interesting things, trying to plant more trees, which is a good thing for shade, access to cooling centers, which is a good thing for people who don't have air conditioning. You have cities like Athens who were trying to rebuild, you know, an ancient Roman aqueduct to bring water into the center of the city in order to give people relief and to allow more green spaces, Paris doing things to green the inner city and ban vehicles from the central part of the city. But it's all, you know, just beginning, and, you know, it's just--it hasn't at all accelerated at the rate that, unfortunately, these temperatures are accelerating. MS. EILPERIN: And in terms of this understanding, the real toll that heat is taking, you know, we can actually say, in part, because of, of course, the action that has been taken in Phoenix, how many people die of heat in Maricopa County, but we can't say how many people have either died of heat, you know, in the United States every year or certainly on the entire continent of Africa. What does that tell us about our understanding of the toll that heat takes and also the inequity that we obviously see with some of these climate impacts? MR. GOODELL: Yeah. I mean, I would argue that we don't even know the toll in Maricopa County, and we have a number. But, you know, heat is not like a gun. It doesn't leave a wound, and so it's very difficult to diagnose as a cause of death. Often it's a heart attack or something like that, that is the proximate cause of death, and then you only understand that it's heat-related when you understand the context and if you have an investigation that looks at those kinds of things. I think it's widely understood in public health officials and others who care about these things that I talk to that the actual mortality of these extreme heat events is really underestimated. We just saw a study in Nature that came out a few weeks ago with the death toll of, I think 63,000 people in Europe last summer, which was radically revised upward from what we had before. So I don't think we have any real idea about the real toll, especially--you mentioned Africa. I mean, there's no--there's no counting of mortality in Africa that it's anything close to accurate that I've seen there, and obviously, heat takes its toll there as it does everywhere else. So I don't think we're even beginning to really grapple with the actual health and mortality risks that these heat events represent, and, you know, as they get hotter and strike in more unusual places, those numbers are just going to grow. MS. EILPERIN: And in your book, you tell an incredibly powerful and moving story about a Guatemalan immigrant who died working at a nursery in Willamette Valley in Oregon, and that there are obviously thousands of farmworkers and construction workers, UPS drivers, who are facing extreme heat and risk their lives every day, yet there's no national standard to protect them. And I'm wondering what advice you have for people who are facing these conditions and don't have, you know, kind of the uniform approach that would give them greater protections. MR. GOODELL: Yeah. I mean, it's--you know, it's just, you know, scandalous in the United States that we don't have heat protection. OSHA doesn't have rules about this. You know, here in Texas, in the middle of the heat wave a couple of weeks ago, Governor Abbott signed legislation prohibiting local cities and things from instituting shade and water breaks for construction workers. I mean, it's just, you know, outrageous, frankly, and the people who work outside are the ones who are very--the most vulnerable to this in certain ways, because as in the case with Sebastian Perez, the Guatemalan immigrant that you--that you mentioned who I wrote about, who died during the 2021 heat wave while he was working at a nursery in Oregon, you know, he was from Guatemala. He had talked to his family. He--about heat. He understood heat. You know, he thought he understood heat, but he also had a job, and, you know, he didn't have a--there's no--there was no union. There was no worker protections of any sort, and so he had to make the choice: Do I keep working, or do I stop and take a shade break or a water break and risk getting fired? And, you know, he was trying to save money for a house to start a family with his wife, and that was a difficult decision for him. And tragically, sadly, you know, he made the wrong decision and continued to work rather than risk losing his job, and he ended up dead in a field in in Oregon. And these are the kinds of decisions that outdoor workers have to deal with. I mean, I see it here in Texas all the time, you know. I mean, people out working on the roofs of buildings, you know, in this 115 degree heat, it's just, you know, crazy. And people who live in hot cultures, if they learn how to deal with it, right, in the sense that everyone knows that the thing to do is to take a break, get--have plenty of water and all that. But when you have a governor, like we do here, who doesn't allow that and who puts these workers in the position of losing their job or risking their life, it's really barbaric. MS. EILPERIN: And one thing that we obviously face when you see these temperature records being shattered again and again, these intense wildfires that are starting earlier, lasting longer, these hurricanes, to what extent do you think that people just get used to living on a hotter planet, and what implications does that have for cutting the greenhouse gas emissions that are helping drive some of these changes? MR. GOODELL: Yeah. That is a really great question and one that I think about a lot. You know, there's a lot of--we've talked a little bit about adaptation. There's a lot of talk about adaptation and things that we can do to adapt to higher temperatures, and whether it's, building cities in a different way, changing labor laws, all of these--improving access to air conditioning, all these kinds of things, but the kind of adaptation that I fear is going to take over is exactly what you're talking about, which is that, you know, we're just going to accommodate ourselves to the fact that, you know, it's 125 degrees in the summertime in Phoenix or 130 or whatever the number will get to be, and people will die. And that's just the way it is, and we will just accommodate ourselves to that and think that--and forget that this is the climate that we created and that we can do something about and just go along with it. You know, covid was some kind of an example of that, right? There was an accommodation of, you know, these death rates at a certain point, and it was just like, okay, that's just how life is now. And I fear that very much with how we're going to go forward with climate, that it's just going to be, you know, the background of our world now, and the losses that we will suffer from lives and all kinds of other things will just be seen as something that is happening, and that, you know, we're not in control of, and don't have any power to do anything about, which is exactly not true. MS. EILPERIN: And you write, obviously, a lot in the book about the impact of heat on humans but also on ice, on corals, on crops, and what does the general public not understand when we're talking about the dangers of rising temperatures, would you say? MR. GOODELL: Well, you know, in the book, I tried to do two things. One is to give a real personal description of what heat does to our bodies. I wanted to take the--you know, a lot of climate books are very general. They're about rising temperatures of 2 degrees centigrade and things like that, and they're sort of this macro catalog of these impacts that climate change are going to have. And I wanted--you know, the title of the book is kind of controversial, you know, "The Heat Will Kill You First." But I wanted it to be personal. I wanted it to communicate immediately that this is about our lives and how we live now. But the second part of the book, you know, that is interwoven through all this is the larger planetary implications of rising heat, right? So heat is the engine behind all of the other climate impacts. It is why wildfires are burning bigger and hotter. It is why the ice sheets are melting faster. It is the primary driver of all these other things. And I--the best example of this that I can share and that I write about in the book is going to Antarctica. I went on a seven-week scientific cruise to the West Antarctica where a change in the Southern Ocean of temperature of just 1 degree Fahrenheit, tiny change, right, small change that you would think would not matter at all, is changing the dynamics on the ice sheets and allowing this a slightly warmer water to get underneath these giant ice sheets and begin to break them up from below. And they are beginning to fracture and things because the bottom is basically melting out of them, and that it has enormous implications for sea level rise for the future of coastal cities around the world. So I wanted to use that as an example of how even these sort of smallish changes that sound like nothing have enormous human implications. MS. EILPERIN: And research has consistently shown that the warming planet is, you know, almost entirely driven by our use of fossil fuels, whether that's in transportation, heating, manufacturing. If the world were to drastically reduce its carbon output, how long would it take to see a significant change in these extreme weather events and, you know, ultimately shift in this trajectory, would you say? MR. GOODELL: Well, I think the science is pretty clear right now that, you know, temperature rise stops when we get to net-zero emissions. So, you know, every molecule of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere between now and when we get to net-zero emissions will increase the temperature of the Earth, and when we get to zero, then the temperature increase will stop. But what's really important to grasp and I think a lot of people don't grasp is that when we get to net-zero emissions, it doesn't mean we go back to the climate that we had before. It's not like air pollution in the '70s when you put catalytic converters on cars and we put scrubbers on industrial sources and we cleaned up the air, and then everything went back to kind of a cleaner, more beautiful air, right? And now, CO2 is not like that. CO2, it stays in the atmosphere for thousands of years. So even when we get to zero emissions, we're still locked into whatever level of warming we're at then, and, you know, zero emissions is still a long way away, decades. So we're going to be living on a hotter planet for a very, very long time, and we're not going back to the old climate that we all grew up in. MS. EILPERIN: And you've been critical of the Biden administration's efforts on climate change and specifically arguing that the federal government should halt the extraction of all fossil fuels, right, to get us closer to this net zero, and now, obviously, President Biden and his aides say that, to some extent, including most notably in the case of the Willow oil project on Alaska's North Slope, that their hands are tied, to some extent, by the laws that we have, that, you know, even as there was a huge push to deny ConocoPhillips the ability to drill in that area, that they made this decision that it was better to cut a deal with this company than face a legal challenge and ultimately be reversed. I'd just love you--for you to share your thinking of what do you think of that argument and how in an ideal world would the president of the United States and top aides address these issues. MR. GOODELL: Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I give Biden--President Biden and the administration a lot of credit. The Inflation Reduction Act was really, you know, an incredibly important piece of legislation. I understand how difficult the politics are right now, you know, and when you--especially when you compare what President Biden has been doing compared to, you know, his predecessor who was--you know, thought things of global warming is a Chinese hoax or something that, you know, instigated by Bill Gates and George Soros or something. I don't even know what he thinks, but, you know, the simple fact is, you know, this sort of practical politics at a certain level is taking us down a road to a hotter and hotter planet. I mean, this is an emergency. This is not a--you know, a deal that we can just--you know, the fossil fuel industry's clear strategy is to drag this out, the reduction of fossil fuel, burning oil and gas, as long as possible. And everything that we do, especially opening up new drilling and opening up new resources and allowing access to new resources, just prolongs that. And the longer this goes on, the hotter it gets, the bigger the losses are, the more consequential it is to everyone and everything alive and the more people will die. MS. EILPERIN: And to pivot off the incredibly dark comment you just made, how optimistic are you that a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is possible, would you say? MR. GOODELL: I'm sorry. I didn't hear that one. MS. EILPERIN: How optimistic are you that we could achieve a drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, whether it's, you know, both in the United States and abroad? When you look at it, you know, in terms of per capita emissions--and here the United States has made a lot of strides, so has the UK, so have a number of other countries, how--you know, how-- MR. GOODELL: You know, yeah. I mean, you know, the--15 years ago, all the arguments were about economics, right? It was all we can't shift away from fossil fuels because solar and wind and everything else is just too expensive, and now the opposite is true. Now for a new build, you would--the economics of building anything to do with fossil fuels make no sense whatsoever. So we're--the engine for dramatic change is there. The problem is the politics, right? And the problem is that, you know, this climate change stuff and energy stuff has fallen into this cultural war that we're in right now, and it's become part of, you know, this battle about woke culture and the science-driven elites. And, you know, you see it emerging in the anti-vax stuff and everything, and that makes all this transformation really difficult, because it's no longer, you know, based in kind of economic or scientific reality. It's based in this sort of cultural belief system, which is very difficult to sway. But, you know, lest I sound like the Grim Reaper or anything like that, I'm actually quite optimistic about the potential for change and how we can use this moment to transform our thinking about a lot of things. And I really do feel like there's a tremendous opportunity right now. And, you know, having covered this for 20 years, I see tremendous change in the number of people who are engaged in this, who are thinking about this, even in the couple of weeks that my book has been out, just the--you know, the level of attention that it has gotten and the people who are engaged in saying, "Wait a minute. I got to figure out what's going on here." And, you know, I remain very optimistic that we can use these times to kind of build a better world. MS. EILPERIN: Actually, and following up on that, I mean, obviously, as some in our audience will know, you've written many excellent books, including "The Water Will Come," about which obviously addresses sea level rise. Can you talk a little about how did--what was the reaction to that book and how it differs from this one and what that says about where we are in kind of the public understanding and the visceral reaction that people have to climate change, would you say? MR. GOODELL: Well, you know, this book has captured, you know, I think, the imagination of people much more than that book. I think that book was--you know, I think it was widely read, and I'm very proud of it, and it did very well, but, you know, it didn't have--sea level rise is not a life or death situation for people, for most people. It's a huge planetary issue. It has a huge investment and implications for where we live and how we live, but no one stands on Miami beach, and that afternoon, something happens in Antarctica. And they drown because of the rising waters. It's a big meta kind of issue, and like I said, it has a lot of financial implications, but it doesn't have that kind of intimate, you know, human implications that heat does. And I think that, you know, this book has gotten a more visceral response. It's gotten a more--people are alarmed, and I don't mean that in the kind of climate alarmist way, but I mean that in the sense of "Wait a minute. It's hot out there," and this is--you know, I'm worried. I go out and walk my dog, and, you know, I can feel my heart beating faster, and, you know, what do I do, and how do I handle this, and how scared of this should I be? And so I think that's good in the sense that it's like, you know, taking this--you know, what we're doing to our climate, which has always been such a far off and distant discussion, even in my--even in "The Water Will Come," even though there are many cities that are suffering from sunny-day flooding right now. It's taken it away from the distant future and into an urgent personal, your life is at stake kind of a conversation, which I think is really great because I think it's really--you know, I think we need to get educated about this. We need to get smart about how to deal with this. You know, heat deaths can be avoided very easily, really, if we know what we're doing. I think that awareness of this can save a lot of lives. MS. EILPERIN: We're almost out of time, but if there's one piece of information that everyone should take from your book, is there just one thing that you would say that it's important to keep in mind? MR. GOODELL: Wow. That's a good question. I mean, you know, I think it's about this question of, you know, we're living in a hotter world now, and it's going to continue to get hotter. And you--you meaning readers of my book--and myself included, we need to get smart about how to deal with that, whether it means, you know, how to change our energy sources, how to change where we live, how we live, where--when we walk our dogs, what--how much water we carry. We just need to be climate-educated and climate-smart because our lives really do depend on it now. MS. EILPERIN: We'll have to leave it there. Jeff Goodell, thank you so much for joining us. MR. GOODELL: Thank you for having me. MS. EILPERIN: And thanks to all of you for watching. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to find more information about all our upcoming programs. I'm Juliet Eilperin. Thanks again for joining us. [End recorded session]