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When heat comes, it’s invisible.

 

It doesn’t bend tree branches or blow hair across your face to let you know it’s arrived.

 

The ground doesn’t shake.

 

It just surrounds you and works on you in ways that you can’t anticipate or control.

 

You sweat. Your heart races. You’re thirsty. Your vision blurs.

 

The sun feels like the barrel of a gun pointed at you.

 

Plants look like they’re crying.

 

Cars are untouchable. Colors fade.

 

The air smells burned.

 

You can imagine fire even before you see it.

JEFF GOODELL ’s latest book is the New York Times bestseller The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. He is the author of six previous books, including The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World, which was a New York Times Critics Top Book of 2017. As a journalist, he has covered climate change for more than two decades and is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. MORE

Jeff Goodell on Obama’s Climate Crusade for Rolling Stone