Temperatures are getting hotter, and it will not be felt equally. Heat is now one of the greatest class dividers in America. In a guest essay for Times Opinion, the journalist Jeff Goodell calls this “the cooled and the cooked,” the two parties that Americans split into during blazing summers. The cooled are those who spend most of their days in air-conditioning; the cooked are those who must work outdoors in increasingly inhumane temperatures. Goodell has spoken to delivery drivers, oil field workers, farmworkers and others about what it’s like to work in scorching conditions with varying levels of employer support. Many of the drivers Goodell spoke to used trucks without air-conditioning, and some experienced health emergencies. “Yes, the heat sucks,” one delivery driver told Goodell. “But I need to pay the bills.” “The faster our world heats up, the faster the divide between the cooled and the cooked will widen,” Goodell argues. “Ultimately, it is symptomatic of the larger injustice of the climate crisis, which is that the people who have done the least to cause it are the ones who will suffer the most from its impacts.” Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
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