Fevered

Book excerpt: Beyond images of emaciated polar bears and drought-cracked lakes, there remains a major part of climate change's impact that the media has neglected: how our health will suffer from higher temperatures and extreme weather. From spiraling rates of asthma and allergies and spikes in heatstroke-related deaths to swarms of invasive insects carrying diseases like dengue or West Nile and increases in heart and lung disease and cancer, the effect of rising temperatures on human health will be far-reaching, and is more imminent than we think. In Fevered, award-winning journalist Linda Marsa blends compelling narrative with cutting-edge science to explore the changes in Earth's increasingly fragile support system and provide a blueprint—a "medical Manhattan Project"—detailing what we need to do to protect ourselves from this imminent medical meltdown. In the tradition of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Marsa sounds the alarm on a subject that has largely been ignored by governments and policy makers, and persuasively argues why preparedness for the health effects of climate change is the most critical issue affecting our survival in the coming century.