What can humanity do about heatwaves?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 748 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It's still spring in parts of the Northern Hemisphere, but the world faces scorching hot temperatures. Summer heat has arrived early, setting records, claiming lives, and expected to get worse. Who's responsible and what should be done about it?
In this episode:
- Johan Rockström (@jrockstrom), Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
- Jeff Goodell (@jeffgoodell), Author of “The Heat Will Kill You First”
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Sarí el-Khalili and Khaled Soltan, with Ashish Malhotra, Tamara Khandaker and our host, Malika Bilal.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Our lead of audience development and engagement is Aya Elmileik and Adam Abou-Gad is our engagement producer.
Alexandra Locke is the Take’s executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera’s head of audio.
Connect with us:
@AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and YouTube
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, it's about to be the hottest summer in the northern hemisphere on record. Again, |
| 0:18.0 | a heat wave in India has led to at least 41 deaths. |
| 0:23.2 | Mexico's brutal heat wave is not sparing anyone. |
| 0:26.5 | The US joins a number of southern European nations in the grip of a heat wave. |
| 0:31.6 | From Dallas to New Delhi, how will people get through another hot summer? |
| 0:39.0 | I'm Malika Bilal and this is the take. |
| 0:48.5 | The science is clear and has been communicated for the past 30 years |
| 0:53.9 | and still we're not moving the right direction. |
| 0:57.0 | I don't get depressed. I get angry. |
| 1:00.0 | This is world-renowned Swedish scientist Johann Rothstrom in the Netflix documentary Breaking Boundaries, The Science of Our Planet. |
| 1:09.0 | He's an author and professor in Earth System Science |
| 1:13.9 | at the University of Potsdam. He's also the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate |
| 1:19.6 | Impact Research in Germany. Professor Johan Roxton, welcome to the take. It's really good to have you. |
| 1:28.7 | So let's just dive right into what is sure to be a very hot summer. |
| 1:34.2 | Scientists around the world have confirmed something many people who suffered through a sweltering summer last year may have already understood. |
| 1:41.9 | And that is that 2023 was the hottest year on record, |
| 1:46.2 | shattering all other modern records. And 2024 could be on track to be even warmer. So why is |
| 1:54.2 | this happening? Well, before coming to why it's happening, let's just reinforce your starting |
| 2:00.6 | statement. |
| 2:01.7 | It's the warmest temperature on Earth over the past 100,000 years. |
| 2:06.8 | We've never had this warm temperature since we left the last ice age 20,000 years ago. |
... |
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