When the Earth Burns

Heat Waves and the Urgency of Now

In the northern hemisphere, we have just left high summer when temperatures soar and pools are inviting. Where I live, there were four heat warnings in July. Seeing the warnings always reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's climate novel The Ministry for the Future. The opening scene depicts a devastating heat wave in India that kills 20 million people in a single week. The wet-bulb temperature—a measure combining heat and humidity that determines when the human body can no longer cool itself—reached lethal levels. It reads like apocalyptic fiction.

Until you look at the temperature records from 2024 and 2025.

2024 was Earth's hottest year on record, with global temperatures 2.30 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century baseline. July 2024 was the hottest month ever recorded since global records began in 1850—the 14th consecutive month to break temperature records.

In Delhi, nighttime temperatures reached 95.4°F on June 18, one of the hottest nights the city has seen in decades. These aren't daytime highs—these are the temperatures that should allow human bodies to recover. When the night offers no reprieve, when sleep becomes impossible, when even the darkness burns—this is when heat becomes a weapon against life itself.

The heat didn't discriminate by borders or wealth. Las Vegas broke its all-time temperature record at 120°F. By September, 664 deaths in Phoenix and 342 in Las Vegas were linked to heat illnesses. In Mexico, at least 155 people died from heat-related causes, with 2,567 suffering from heat stroke and dehydration. Even 157 howler monkeys in Tabasco and Chiapas died from prolonged heat—animals better adapted to tropical conditions than humans couldn't survive what we had wrought.

In Europe, at least six tourists died hiking in Greece during extreme temperatures. The Mediterranean became a furnace, with the Adriatic Sea reaching its highest recorded temperature at 85.1°F.

Scientists expected 2025 to bring relief. La Niña conditions typically cool global temperatures. Instead, January 2025 was the hottest January ever recorded globally.

"The heat waves across much of the oceans have become larger and stronger, so the influence of La Niña is being overwhelmed," Jennifer Francis, an Arctic expert at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, told Mongabay. "The Arctic has been warming about four times faster than the globe as a whole, and right now it's running a dangerous fever."

By June 2025, Portugal and Spain broke national records when temperatures surpassed 115°F. Analysis found that around 2,300 people may have died during a 10-day European heat wave, three times higher than would have occurred without climate change.

In Robinson's novel, the Indian heat wave catalyzes unprecedented global climate action. Twenty million deaths seemed impossible when the book was published in 2020. But over the past 12 months, 4 billion people experienced dangerous heat intensified by climate change. Not twenty million. Four billion. Half the planet.

During a Brazilian heat wave, the heat index soared to a record 144.1°F, testing the limits of human heat tolerance. We're not gradually warming—we're lurching into new temperature regimes that threaten civilization itself.

Heat waves in major U.S. cities have tripled from an average of two per year in the 1960s to more than six per year in the 2020s. The heat wave season is now 49 days longer than it was in the 1960s.

Every fraction of a degree matters now. Every year of delay makes the eventual reckoning more severe. The technologies for rapid decarbonization exist. The money exists. What's missing is the political will to treat this like the emergency it obviously is.

Robinson's fictional heat wave was a single event. Our real heat waves are killing thousands and threatening billions, month after month, year after year. The difference is that we can still choose to write a different ending.

The Ministry for the Future doesn't need to be fictional. It can be us, today, demanding the emergency response this emergency deserves. The heat waves of 2024 and 2025 aren't just weather events—they're recruitment calls for the fight of our lives.

The question is: Will we answer?

Resources to Expand Your Understanding

​A Scary But Hopeful Novel About Climate Change​

"The Ministry for the Future does a better job than any other book I’ve read of playing out, in a dramatic but realistic way, how high temperatures can literally kill people."

​Heat Waves​

How to deal with the heat

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