Heat

Life and Death on a Scorched Planet

By: Jeff Goodell

Narrated by: Dominic Gruenewald

The world is waking up to a new reality: once-in-a-century floods are now happening three times a year and bushfires are the new norm. The surface area of the Arctic’s polar ice caps is rapidly decreasing, while Antarctica’s largest ice shelf is crumbling. These are effects of the planet’s increased temperature.

Extreme heat is the most direct and deadly consequence of our hellbent consumption of fossil fuels. It is a first order threat that drives all other impacts of the climate crisis. And as the temperature rises, it will reveal fault lines in our governments, our politics, our economy and our values.

This audiobook is about the extreme ways our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later, and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days go from 30°C to 43°C. A heatwave, Jeff Goodell explains, is a predatory event – one that culls out the most vulnerable people.

©2023 Jeff Goodall. Recorded by arrangement with Black Inc. (P)2023 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

'Heat is a masterful, bracing, vivid portrait of the future.' (David Wallace-Wells, author of The New York Times bestselling The Uninhabitable Earth)

'A mix of fantastic storytelling, lucid science communication, and eternal optimism in detailing the profound threat we face with the climate crisis and what we can still do about it.' (Michael Mann, author of The New Climate War)

'Heat is essential reading for anyone who cares about the future.' (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction)