Baby, it’s hot outside

Mark Hertsgaard has been covering the environmental beat for more than 15 years, writing for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Time, and working on his own books. His latest book is Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth, and it’s a doozy. Hot is a comprehensive overview of the complicated global impact of climate change and what is being done both to reduce carbon emissions and to adapt to unavoidable changes that will occur worldwide. But Hot is also an impassioned tribute to the author’s daughter, who will be living with the actions we—as a society—choose to take or avoid, especially in the next few critical years. Hertsgaard makes the impact real by looking at his specific California community, describing in detail roads and places that will disappear or be changed beyond recognition if even the most conservative universally accepted scientific predictions become reality.