I think the heat is doing it, in the sense of engaging more people. Thatโs why I titled my book The Heat Will Kill You First. Some people were saying, youโre an idiot, no oneโs gonna read a book like that. Thatโs alarmist. Thatโs scary. Iโm not an alarmist. Iโm a person who wants to communicate the scope and scale of what we face. I think a lot of coverage about climate is about futures and alternate futures. We all struggle to make it feel more real. But I really wanted the title to be about you and me and our neighbors and whatโs happening right this minute.
The heat wave is doing that for people in a visceral way. My book aside, itโs kind of freaking people out a little bit. Itโs very different than talking about the Doomsday Glacier or, you know, Greenland ice melting or even crop failures and things like that. Itโs like, what the fuck, I canโt even go outside and check my mail. Itโs too hot.
One of the things that Iโve been really struck byโand even the good climate reporters do thisโis this tendency toward binary. I canโt tell you how many interviews, weโll have a smart conversation, and then theyโll end with, โOK, so one last question: Are we doomed or not?โ Or, โIs there anything we can do?โ Some of it is obviously media shorthand, but itโs also this tendency toward casting this story in this sort of binary way.
