{"id":512,"date":"2026-07-02T21:42:54","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=512"},"modified":"2026-07-02T21:42:54","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T21:42:54","slug":"this-heat-is-fatal-we-need-to-talk-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=512","title":{"rendered":"This Heat is Fatal. We Need to Talk About it."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Fifty years ago, the recent deadly heat wave that shattered temperature records across Europe would have been virtually impossible. That\u2019s according to a new scientific study by the nonprofit World Weather Attribution. And they\u2019re not the only ones saying this. \u201cDriven by climate change and global warming, the phenomenon of the \u2018once-in-a-generation\u2019 heatwave is now occurring nearly annual[ly],\u201d said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization. At least 1,300 people have died, an initial WHO accounting estimated, as France, Germany, and other countries reel from the hottest temperatures on record.<\/p>\n

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Now it\u2019s North America\u2019s turn. This weekend, an estimated 250 million people across the eastern half of the US will face a ferocious heat wave, with temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in many places. Then it will be Europe\u2019s turn again, as another surge of extreme heat is projected to hit the continent.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the same story in Asia: China, Japan, and Korea all experienced their hottest summers on record last year. And in May, India was home to 97 of the world\u2019s 100 hottest cities, as temperatures of 45 to 48 degrees Celsius (113 to 118 degrees F), became routine. A report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace highlighted the scale of human suffering, pointing out that \u201croughly three-quarters of India\u2019s workforce\u2014about 380 million people\u2014labors in heat-exposed sectors, agriculture and construction above all.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too soon to know how many people will die from all this heat. Partly that\u2019s because heat \u201cis invisible,\u201d said Jeff Goodell, the author of The Heat Will Kill You First<\/em>, at a webinar that Covering Climate Now hosted on June 30 to help journalists cover extreme heat. \u201cWhen people die during heat waves, there\u2019s no sort of gunshot wound\u2026. So it takes some detective work on the part of officials and others to come up with good numbers about mortality rates.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, initial reports estimated that the landmark 2003 European heat wave had killed 15,000 people, a figure sometimes still repeated today. However, subsequent epidemiological analysis concluded that the actual death toll was nearly five times higher. Today, one expert has calculated that more than 20,000 people likely died during the June 2026 European heat wave. Although the study has not yet been peer-reviewed, its author, Christopher Callahan of Indiana University, applied vetted methods for estimating heat mortality to conclude that 5,210 people likely died in France, 4,543 in Germany, 3,163 in Spain, and 2,709 in Italy.<\/p>\n

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Despite the unequivocal link between climate change and extreme heat, a distressing number of news stories have not made the climate connection to this unfolding disaster. In the United States, the evening news shows of ABC, CBS, and NBC led their June 23 broadcasts with the European heat wave but \u201cfailed to mention climate change even in passing,\u201d reported the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy In Media. Given the advanced state of climate attribution science in 2026, that is simply not journalistically defensible.<\/p>\n

Civic-minded reporting can literally save lives. Journalists are part of what scholars call the \u201csocial infrastructure\u201d that shapes how communities experience and respond to extreme weather. In the short term, that means providing accurate, timely information about the dangers facing people and how they can stay safe. But the best reporting also explains why this deadly heat is happening in the first place: Humans have overheated the planet, primarily by burning fossil fuels, and this is making heat waves hotter, longer, and more frequent.<\/p>\n

One mistake journalists should particularly avoid is pairing extreme heat stories with photos or videos that portray the heat as positive, even fun, Saffron O\u2019Neill, a professor at the University of Exeter, said during the webinar. A peer-reviewed study O\u2019Neill and colleagues conducted of news coverage of the 2019 European heat wave found that \u201cfun in the sun [images] of people splashing around in city fountains, having fun at the beach,\u201d was common, she said. Scholarly analysis, she added, has discovered that \u201cif you have a story that pulls in different narrative directions\u2014[if] you have text that says one thing, this is a public health emergency<\/em>, and you have a visual that says something else\u2014people tend to go with the visual, they\u2019ll see [extreme heat] as not\u2026something they need to care about.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s indisputable is that more heat is coming. The soaring temperatures and sticky humidity brutalizing so much of the planet today are happening after average global temperatures have risen \u201conly\u201d 1.4 degrees C above preindustrial levels. But global temperatures are on track to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius and will keep rising, scientists say, until humans phase out the burning of fossil fuels. \u201cWhat scares me most,\u201d Patrick Galey, the head of fossil fuels investigations for the nonprofit Global Witness, said at the webinar, \u201cis that, if we continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to profitably poison us to death, this will be the coolest summer for the rest of our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Nation Magazine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":511,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-covering-climate-now","category-environment"],"yoast_head":"\nThis Heat is Fatal. We Need to Talk About it. - Atlas Living Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/atlaslivingmedia.com\/?p=512\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"This Heat is Fatal. 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