Heat stretches the limits of imagination because imagination is so often visual, and the visuals of heat are often images of absence: people not outside, events not attended, deaths not recorded. We often depict heat by showing the means by which people evade it. Look at the children splashing in the spray of fire hydrants; look at the families... See more

The word tropic derives from the Greek tropikós , meaning “a turn” and once referred to the point at which the sun reaches its apogee at the solstice. To call a place tropical is to place it at the imagined center of the Earth, where heat resides, within the celestial realm where the sun hangs high. The tropics are now expanding at a rate of 30... See more

Where were you when New York City’s climate was reclassified from humid continental to humid subtropical? I was in a borrowed apartment on 101st Street, overlooking the west side of Central Park. The apartment belonged to a widower, a man who kept a gun in a filing cabinet that he warned us not to open. His hallways were lined to the ceiling with... See more

A crisis, by definition, should abide by binary logic—either there is one or there is not. It’s harder to see a crisis as a creep or ever-worsening condition. This binary between crisis and non-crisis demonstrates one of the many ways in which our classification systems fail in the face of climate breakdown. We cover our eyes from both consequence... See more