AC Won't Save You from the Heat Dome

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1:35Jeff, welcome. How does it feel to be the heat guy?

1:42Well, not so good. Jeff Goodell is a journalist who writes about climate change. I mean, it's like, I would rather be like the ice cream guy or something like that. You know, that would be more fun. For a couple of years now, Jeff's been our go-to guy on heat. So when I heard about the impending heat dome in the eastern U.S., I figured Jeff would have a little advice. I live in Austin, Texas. I mean, my whole life is planned around heat. Five months of the year, it's really hard to do much of any kind of physical activity or anything outdoors during the day. I mean, we joke about it here, about living vampire lives.

2:26Jeff's an optimistic guy. He knows he can't prevent the heat, not without major structural change. In the meantime, he wants all of us to get better at living with it. Well, I do feel like people are kind of, in my little sample group, asking more intelligent questions, that they're not thinking that all they have to do is, you know, put on sunblock and they're fine. You know, they understand that sunblock doesn't help with heat exposure. I mean, so I think we're beyond the sort of, I feel like there's been a little bit of a movement in kind of cultural knowledge about heat. Can I make a counter argument to you?

3:06Sure. I was thinking about D.C. because, of course, Washington, D.C. has huge July 4th celebrations, but then especially this year where there's going to be the 250th birthday celebration. And I was reading about what the celebration would entail. It means a whole bunch of people descending on the National Mall to watch this huge fireworks display. It's supposed to be 100 degrees in Washington. This year, the National Park Service is banning coolers, lawn chairs, even a whole bunch of drink tumblers, like if they're metal. And people are advising folks to get there really early for a firework show that might not begin until 10.30 or 11 p.m.

3:49at night. That sounds like a nightmare to me. Yeah, it does sound like a nightmare. We have an administration that is, you know, not, shall we say, overly concerned about climate in general and things like individual heat waves in particular. Yeah, there's supposed to be four hydration stations all around the National Mall, it's just hard to imagine that with thousands of people over 10 or 12 hours, that's going to be enough. Oh, it most certainly won't be enough. Would you go to this July 4th celebration in D.C. if you were there? Oh, God, no. No, no. I mean, because I'm not interested in sort of exposing myself to those kinds of conditions.

4:33I don't want to sit out in the heat all day and all night to watch fireworks.

4:41We're hitting boundaries of what we can tolerate, and who knows what will happen during this July 4th celebrations, but I'm sure that there will be a lot of people who have, you know, sort of heat problems, and there is a point when you simply can't hold these events in the middle of the day because it's so hot.

5:07Today on the show, the heat dome is about to descend. So we've got a survival guide. And not just for this week. I'm Mary Harris. You're listening to What Next. Stick around.

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9:10Okay, I want to back up and explain how you became the heat guy. for this show, but just generally. You're the author of a book with a really menacing title, The Heat Will Kill You First, Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. Not really mincing any words there. And I do think it's important to stress that death from heat really is happening right now in front of our eyes. The current estimate is that 1 ,300 people have died as a result of the week-long heat wave in Europe. Does that number surprise you? No. In fact, I was just reading a study this morning by a scientist, a U.S. scientist named Chris Callahan, who I happen to know his work very well.

9:54He's a highly respected, really great scientist. And he just came out with an assessment of 20 ,000 deaths in Europe just this last week. Yeah. So, you know, to be clear, these are not counting death certificates, right? These are modeling exercises of expected deaths versus excessive deaths. It's a very well-proven kind of modeling exercise. If anything, it underestimates. It's used widely in all kinds of scientific assessments. Are all those deaths going to be processed as heat deaths? Like, will the families know, like, oh, this was the heat? No. Why not? Because heat's not like a gunshot. It doesn't leave a mark on you.

10:37It doesn't say, oh, here's where the bullet entered, the heat bullet entered. You know, heat does things like provokes heart attacks, right? I mean, a lot of these are deaths by heart attack. And the only way they get defined in a kind of death certificate sense is if you have an investigation into the scene where you learned that this person was in a room that was, you know, 104 degrees for six hours. And I mean, it's a contextual analysis, right? So that's what makes all of this understanding the risks of heat so tricky is that it doesn't leave a mark on it. But nevertheless, by looking at like large scale trends in deaths, it's possible to make pretty accurate assessments of how many people died.

11:27I think that I'm correct in saying that the scientists would argue that these numbers are pretty accurate. What they'll never be able to tell you, though, is if there's 20 ,000 people who died during the European heat wave, the names of each one of those 20 ,000 people. Yeah. Part of what I like about your work is that you gather so much evidence in all kinds of directions in order to make the case about how the heat and climate change are impacting people. So you're not just talking about like there's a heat wave, there's deaths. You're also talking about side effects from the heat, stuff that will be long lasting for people, permanent kidney damage, speeding up your biological clock.

12:14I found that so interesting. I wonder why you think it's important to build that kind of evidence up too. To me, I looked at it and I thought, wow, this is a whole other case to make about why the heat is bad. a case that might reach a different person than someone who might be moved by death data. To me, the question that kind of really drove me to write this book was, first of all, a personal experience I had with heat almost fainting and passing out on the streets of Phoenix one day and made me understand how dangerous heat is. And that was a big revelation to me because I had been covering climate change for 15 years at that point.

12:57It never occurred to me how dangerous, personally, extreme heat could be. So that was one of the prompts. But I was also very fascinated by, you know, the sort of larger force of heat and how it changes everything. We're already seeing some of these side effects, like the kidney damage and things like that in hotter countries, right? Yeah. And it's also interesting to me, also the psychological stuff, right? There's a lot of new research coming out about the psychological impacts of exposure to heat. Everything from, you know, political violence to murder rates, to lower test scores, to divorce rates.

13:34I mean, I mean, we all know this intuitively, right? I mean, I know on a hot day here in Texas, you know, I get cranky and we all do when it's hot, right? I did not know about the divorce rates, Jeff. Yeah, well, just be careful. You know, I think a lot of people look at the heat and they immediately think think what we have to do is get people cooler, get people into AC. And that's just like a strategic, like life-saving intervention that you do in the crisis, right? Like I live in New York City. Our mayor is already talking about cooling centers. When the World Cup was in Qatar in 2022, they air conditioned the outside.

14:15You know, these are things you do on an emergency basis, I guess, as you need to. But reading your work, I could not tell what you really thought about AC and its value. You clearly use it. I'm assuming you are air conditioned at this very moment. I certainly am. But can you explain your divided feelings about it? Wait, so you want me to tell you the truth about my feelings about AC? Yes, I do. Let's get real, Jeff. I didn't expect this. I feel ambushed. No, I think it's a really interesting and complicated question. And I think that you alluded to that in the way you asked it, because you said something to the effect of, I want to ask you about cooling and then immediately went to AC.

15:04And I think that that is, for me, the distinction. I think what's really important in thinking about this and drives my way thinking about this is getting access to cooling for as many people as possible, especially during these extreme events, because it will save lives. There's no question about it. But of course, AC also emits chemicals that cause climate change. Yeah, but ACs are getting much better. And to me, you know, that's a sub-problem. I mean, we're building these big data centers and things. I mean, I'm all for, I understand very well the urgency of cutting emissions, but I think that the urgency of saving lives now in real time is really important.

15:49But that doesn't mean that AC is a quick fix for this, right? That doesn't mean that all we have to do is air condition the world and everything will be fine. Why not? Well, first of all, we're not going to air condition the world. There's 700 million people on the planet who don't even have access to power, much less air conditioning. And these are the people who are most vulnerable anyway, right? And so the notion that we're simply going to just air condition everybody is just false. And it doesn't mean we shouldn't try. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't incorporate air conditioning much more into our lives in ways that are as sustainable and as unintrusive as possible.

16:31And certainly Europe has a major problem with that right now. And that's why we're seeing, you know, there's no question that a lot of these deaths we talked about are linked to a lack of air conditioning. But let's be real. We're not going to air condition. You know, outdoor workers are not going to go walk around in an air conditioned bubble. I have guys across the street working on the roof in Texas here in the heat. You know, I mean, it's unbelievable what they deal with. They're not going to have air conditioning. They need places to go cooling. You know, they go sit in their trucks in the middle of the day to cool off.

17:04And so they need air conditioning in that way. But also when you think more broadly about this idea of the Goldilocks zone and the real impacts of heat on our world, we're not going to air condition the oceans. We're not going to air condition the fields where our food grows. You know, we're not going to air condition the forests. I mean, the implications of heat are so far beyond the idea of... Our own comfort. Right. Exactly. I like what you're saying there about like we can't air condition the forests and the oceans because it does like place us in this... It's a global phenomenon. It's a planet-wide phenomenon, climate change.

17:45And that really is clarifying, I think. And you've written about this comfort aspect, the fact that we have like this comfort blindness. The people who have access to comfort and air conditioning, they just kind of can't see the other people. Or when they do, they don't think about them the same way they think about themselves. Like you quoted an architectural historian who says, comfort indicates that one's risen above the inconsistencies of the natural world and triumph. And this person later goes on to say, comfort is destroying the future one click at a time, which is pretty damning. Yeah.

18:22Well, I mean, it's really true that what we're really talking about is an addiction to comfort here, right? And I had a really interesting conversation with, after my book was published, a really top architect who's in the U.S. who's built, I don't want to say his name because our conversation was over drinks and not for attribution sort of. We're getting the off the record stuff. Yeah. But I said to him, I said, you know, and he's built, he builds all these amazing buildings. And I said, you know, can't you build these amazing buildings without air conditioning? Do you have to air condition them?

18:59You know, do we have to spend all this money and power air conditioning, these incredible structures that you build? And he said, absolutely not. I hate air conditioning. I know exactly how to build these fabulous buildings without air conditioning. I don't want it. I would way rather not do it that way. I sense there's a but here. There is a but. And the but is my clients won't let me. They want to be the one who says, I want it to be 72 degrees and I want it to be 72 degrees all the time. I don't want it to be 73 degrees. I don't want it to be 71 degrees. Or maybe I want it to be 69 right before my meeting, and then I want it to be 74 after my meeting.

19:40Or, you know, they want control. They want comfort. They don't want the vagaries of nature invading their lives if they're going to pay X million dollars for a building by this guy. So I think that this idea of connection to comfort is really underplayed in this air conditioning world. We're just not, you know, prepared at this state of evolution to subject ourselves to the whims of nature. Even if it kills us. Even if it kills us, right. After the break, if we can't air condition ourselves out of climate change, what can we do?

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22:01So I want to talk about solutions because that always gives folks something to aim towards versus just like, oof, this is terrible. And you've written about solutions. Sure. Can we talk about the building thing in the AC? Yeah. Like you've argued that instead of air conditioning everything, we have to redesign our worlds to live with the heat, you know, make use of shade and airflow and insulation, light colors. You've just laid out why that's not going to happen at mass scale, especially not for the tippy top of the richest of the rich. But I mean, you live in Austin, Texas. would you give up your AC to live in like an adobe building with a breeze well that's a that's a great question if it were a well-designed adobe building that you know um that actually did cool in a in a in a um effective way yes I mean I part of my book tour I went to India and um this was again after I finished the book but I spent a lot of time looking at buildings there that were built pre-air conditioning where they used wind towers and cooling ponds to kind of focus breezes through homes and buildings.

23:22And they were astonishing. They were awesome. It felt like air conditioning to me, you know? I mean, would I live in one of those? Absolutely. Would I live in a adobe house that just had a window that could open in the middle of Texas? Maybe not. But I can certainly imagine a structure that doesn't have air conditioning that I would happily live in. I hate air conditioning. I mean, I understand its virtue and I use it. I actually even tried, I thought as a thought experiment here in Texas to be really, you know, a gonzo journalist, I would try writing my book without air conditioning. Whoa, how'd it go?

23:58It worked for about two weeks. And those two weeks were in January. Yeah, exactly. So it's, you know, I understand the urgency and the practicality of air conditioning for saving lives and for productivity and for all kinds of reasons. I'm not against air conditioning. What I'm against is thinking about it as a solution for heat. It is one of the solutions for heat. There are many others. But it strikes me we don't even agree on the basics when it comes to keeping cool. Like two or three years ago, didn't Texas pass a law that prohibits cities and counties from requiring water breaks for outdoor workers.

24:39Yeah, but that's not about heat. That's about racism. I mean, that's not... Whoa. I mean, it is. Yeah, that's truth. But I mean, how did it work out for the heat, though? It is also about heat. Well, I mean, yeah, but it's mostly about racism and about other things. So obviously, none of this stuff is purely about any one thing. But that gets into the inequality of the heat. Totally, which is the big story of heat. If there's one sort of the deepest theme of the heat story and of thinking about how we're going to deal with heat now and in the future is this question of inequality. In my book, I think I talked about it as the cooled and the damned.

25:22The cooled and the cooked, I think you were in one thing. I think that was in a Times opinion piece I did last summer because they didn't want me to use damned. They wanted me to use cooked instead. Not because I couldn't say damned in the time, so they just somehow thought that it was a better juxtaposition. And maybe they're right. I don't know. They were there for the alliteration. Right, exactly. But the idea is the same, that there's this kind of divide and growing divide, which I fear AC will accelerate if we're not careful about deliberately designing programs and ways to get it into the hands of people who might not be able to afford it otherwise or have access to it otherwise.

26:03I mean, I wrote in my book and spent time in Arizona with people in housing projects who had AC but couldn't afford to run them more than like an hour a day because their electric bills would go up and they didn't have much money. And so they were doing a kind of heat arbitrage. I mean, you've written about how one different kind of solution that I hadn't thought about was insurance for workers who are regularly exposed to heat. How does that even work? Like it's happening in India, I think you said? Yeah, and it's still going on. And in fact, they're expanding. And it's a really brilliant idea and one that shows that these solutions that we're thinking about aren't necessarily costly.

26:46Who buys the insurance? Like who, and how does it work? It's a parametric insurance. so that it's targeted at, in the broadest case that I know, garment workers in India who have to deal with these extremely hot factories and outdoor market workers also. And so the idea is that when the temperature hits a certain level, and a certain degree it's set, that's why it's called parametric insurance, when it hits a certain level, they get a payout for their day's wages. and they don't, so they don't come into work. It's a snow day, but for heat. Exactly. And that kind of thing is really smart. And it's really, seems like from what I know of this program is it's still expanding and it's still in its sort of early days, but it's pretty effective.

27:41And the workers themselves buy it or the factory owners? Factory owners, yeah. You know, thinking about the next few days, how hot it's going to get, I find it notable that what we're going to deal with is really a new normal. Like, it's just evident in the fact that I call you up every summer and we have a conversation about the heat. But we keep trying to make what we're experiencing new again. like right now we're talking about the heat dome in the united states before that in europe there was a lot of talk about how they experienced an omega block heat wave which means essentially just like the heat like if you look at it on a satellite it looks like the omega character like it's not i don't know it's not that notable to be honest right um the names are cute the names are memorable They get us talking, but I wonder if they do something else, which is they make this heat feel strange or outstanding.

28:49Would we need to be thinking about it in a different way? Yeah, that's a great point. The first thing I think I would respond to is your idea of a new normal. I think that the operating kind of paradigm of what's happening is more like a new abnormal, because I think what is hard to grasp about heat and climate change more broadly is that it is making our climate more dysfunctional from what we knew. Right. And so more we don't it's not that the old patterns are not holding anymore. And I think you're right about, you know, how do we process this? And one of the things that I am most afraid of, thinking about, you know, our annual heat chats that we will be having for the next rest of our lives, hopefully.

29:42Put me in your calendar for approximately one year from now. Exactly. What I really worry about, and I actually think about this with my kids, is the idea of kind of what scientists call shifting baselines, right? So that we, and I even feel that here in Austin. It's like, okay, it's really, I woke up the other day, I looked at a quarter to six, it was 90 degrees outside already, right? And so. Holy cow. Yeah. But it's like, okay, that's another day in Austin, you know. And what you're talking about is like frog in the pot syndrome, right? Exactly. And I think that that's a real thing. I think that one of the things that I worry about in this sort of evolution of thinking about this the most is simply the acceptance of it.

30:26And like, oh, 20 ,000 people died in the heat wave in Europe. Oh, that's too bad. Well, you know, last year it was 15 ,000. And, you know, that's a bummer. But, you know, carry on, you know. And that's just what summer looks like now. Summer just looks like people dying in the heat. It looks like I can't go out. You want to go for a bike ride in the middle of the day? Are you crazy? I don't want to die. I'm not going to go for a bike ride in the middle of the day. Let's do that in January. And so it becomes this thing that we just sort of work around and accept. Summer will be a time when Mary and Jeff talk about heat.

31:02And, you know, and that, you know, I'm sorry that our Uncle Fred had a heart attack in July. and it was hot and he should have known better than to walk down to the 7-Eleven, you know?

31:18Jeff, I'm really grateful for your time. Thanks for coming on the show again. Great to talk. Jeff Goodell is a contributing writer at Rolling Stone and the author of the book The Heat Will Kill You First, Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. And that's our show. What Next is produced by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme, and Patrick Fort. Paige Osborne is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD. Mia Lobel is our executive producer of podcasts here at Slate. Ben Richmond is the senior director of podcast operations. And I'm Mary Harris. Go track me down in Blue Sky and say, hey, I'm at Mary Harris.

31:56Thanks for listening. Catch you back here next time.

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