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In this excerpt from The Pocket Guide to Planetary Danger (WH Allen, 2025), author Jacob Thoma, Professor at the SOAS Centre for Sustainable Finance, University of London, examines the existential threat facing humanity: heat. As the impacts of climate change increase, Thoma argues that heat will become a risk that no one can avoid.
We live in regions that will be flooded by rising sea levels. We have food systems that depend on certain climate conditions. And we have created economic structures, trade networks, and social dynamics based on certain temperatures.
Moreover, we are not alone in this world, and the rapidly changing climate threatens the flora and fauna with which we share this planet. Some of us perceive this as a problem – although, admittedly, not all of us.
The key questions then are: How vulnerable are our systems to climate change? What are the costs of impacts or shocks to systems (such as displacing people from flooded areas or suffering casualties from extreme weather events that are made more likely by climate change)? What are the costs of adapting to these impacts? How can we negotiate the fairness and distribution of these impacts? And, crucially, what are the costs of preventing these impacts in the first place?
Here's a quick overview of the climate discourse. Except for heat. Heat is a different story, because we can't survive above a certain temperature.
Of course, the heat problem is linked to climate change, so at first glance it may seem like I’m making an artificial distinction here. Global warming is heat, and heat is global warming. But the point is that it creates a nearly uncontrollable risk that cannot be mitigated by adaptation, at least not within the current technological paradigm.
This is different from almost all other effects of climate change. We can maintain habitats below sea level, as the Netherlands does, with dams and adaptation. It may not be possible to do this everywhere, and we may decide that it is not worth the economic trouble, but at least we have the means.
We can change food production patterns, we can change economic cycles, we can irrigate, we can create water, we can do all of these things. Some of these solutions are expensive and have significant non-financial costs to health, cultural capital, and social well-being. But they can be done.
Heat is the final boss. Heat is another level. Dying from heat itself may not seem like anything new or unusual. It happens everywhere, as people with poor health, the elderly, and the sick cannot regulate their body temperature effectively on hot summer days.
And heat-related deaths can affect young people, too. One of the first “proven” victims of climate change was a six-year-old boy from Toyota, Japan, who collapsed in a park during a morning excursion and died by midday.
When I think about how heartbroken our indifference is, I remember him. Cases like this will happen more often because of climate change, but of course, as any self-respecting climate skeptic or denier will tell you, we can also expect fewer deaths from cold temperatures.
Indeed, there is reason to believe that in terms of pure temperature, temperature-related mortality has actually declined in recent decades, not only due to improved adaptation but also due to warmer winters.
Over time, that pendulum – as global warming approaches 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (2.7 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels – will swing the other way, with some estimates suggesting that annual climate-related deaths could reach 10 million by the end of the century (not including indirect deaths from climate poverty, conflict, etc.).
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