Summary

In the chapter “Heat Death,” Wallace-Wells describes in visceral detail the direct effect of rising temperatures on human bodies. At five degrees of warming, he writes, “according to some calculations, whole parts of the globe would be literally unsurvivable for humans” (39). He cites deadly heat waves that have already occurred around the world, such as the European heat wave of 2003 that killed as many as 2,000 people a day – which, at four degrees of warming, Wallace-Wells says will be “a normal summer” (41). He adds that growing urbanization only magnifies the problem of high temperatures – asphalt and concrete and “everything else that make a city dense, including human flesh, absorb ambient heat, essentially storing it for a time like a slow-release poison pill” (46-7). Wallace-Wells concludes the chapter with an excruciating physical description of what happens to the human body when it dies from overheating...