Environmental writer, ER doctor address violence, climate change, more at sold-out ASU event
Environmental writer and author Jeff Goodell (center) along with emergency room physician Dr. Rob Gore (right), engage in a discussion about health, environmental crises, the epidemic of violence, vulnerability, leadership and community engagement as part of the annual Social Cohesion Dialogue event on Wednesday, Nov. 20, at the Marston Exploration Theater on ASU’s Tempe campus. Foundation Professor Lois Brown (left), director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, was the moderator for the event. Photo by Charlie Leight/ASU News
“The difficulty of understanding the consequences of heat is amplified by conventional notions of what it means to be hot. In pop culture, hot is sexy, hot is cool, hot is new…”
That excerpt was read by Jeff Goodell from his bestselling book, “The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet,” during a sold-out event on Nov. 20 at Arizona State University’s Tempe campus.
The environmental writer, along with activist and physician Rob Gore, were the featured authors at this year’s Social Cohesion Dialogue, which took place at ASU’s Marston Exploration Theater. The powerful conversation about health, the environmental crises, violence, vulnerability and community engagement drew more than 220 people.
Gore is an emergency medicine physician and author of the just-published book, “Treating Violence: An Emergency Room Doctor Takes On a Deadly American Epidemic.” He works in Brooklyn, New York, in the same neighborhood where he grew up.
The pairing of a journalist with an emergency room doctor — and the subject of climate change and violence — may seem puzzling at first, but host Lois Brown drew them into an intelligent, engaging and “cohesive” dialogue.
“Every year we pair a nonfiction book with a memoir,” said Brown, an ASU Foundation Professor of English and director of ASU’s Center for the Study of Race and Democracy. “We do that because memoirs appeal to certain people and narrative nonfiction appeals to other people. They often start with the book they are drawn to and then become curious about the other featured book and why the two have been paired. And that’s when the magic happens.”
Gore linked the subject of heat with violence, noting that the heat can kill people in many ways.
“I have been working in a trauma emergency room and been on call for 24 hours, and in the summer, the hottest days, people are the most violent,” he said.
'Aha' moment
During the event, Brown asked the authors about the “aha moment” that inspired their work; Goodell responded with what he described as his “holy sh--” moment.
In 2001, The New York Times sent him to West Virginia to report on the comeback of coal. At the time, he thought coal mines were only a part of the Charles Dickens era. The material from the assignment later went into his book “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future.”
He remembered looking at what he thought was a crane on the horizon and it turned out to be a drag line pulling the top of the mountain off. Instead of going under the mountains to extract the coal, they were removing the mountain.
It was then that he saw the consequences of securing our energy from fossil fuel.
His book uses science, statistics and storytelling to sound the alarm about climate change and “global warming” — a term he says sounds gentle and soothing rather than dangerous and deadly.
Gore said he did not have a specific epiphany but more of a gradual and evolving awareness that culminated on a quiet evening in the emergency room in Chicago’s Cook County Hospital — one of the largest trauma units in the nation.
It was a rare night where no one had been shot or killed and his white colleagues were lamenting the fact that they were bored — that there was no excitement.
“Damn. They were hoping that someone that looks like me” was going to come in, he recalled. “I was going to be their excitement.”
Gore said he was jumped and robbed when he was 11. It was considered a normal part of life in his neighborhood, which was plagued by violence, poverty and crime at an alarming rate. He went on to become a doctor and later determined that vulnerability and violence were a public health crisis.
Gore created Kings Against Violence — a nonprofit that works to eliminate interpersonal violence from the lives of young people through advocacy, peer leadership, community mobilization and social justice. He has dedicated his life to this cause.
The role of responsibility
The three also discussed the issue of responsibility.
Goodell said that the latest science that can directly connect extreme weather episodes to climate change can create more accountability and responsibility.
He said that oil companies have been hiding a lot of information for many years and that they are starting to look like the tobacco industry, making billions of dollars in profits.
“Maybe some of it will go to people to deal with the problems their profits caused,” he said.
Gore said the lack of a sense of responsibility often comes when people in leadership positions are detached from the violence and ensuing trauma that pervades the lives of patients of color and their families. That leads to a lack of urgency and funding.
“People don’t feel responsible unless it is personal,” he said.
Gore is never detached. He is regularly required to make death pronouncements — looking in the eyes of Black mothers, some who have already lost a child to violence and telling them the horrific news.
In his book, Gore shares statistics and personal stories of what he witnessed working in New York, Atlanta, Chicago and other big cities. Personal stories that may touch people in positions of power and create the much-needed sense of responsibility and urgency.
At some point in each dialogue event, Brown invites the authors to ask questions to each other.
Gore asked Goodell what advice he would give students about how they can become more engaged and concerned citizens. The writer offered simple and achievable solutions.
“It goes back to finding what you are particularly suited to do,” he said, “finding your superpower and putting it to use.”
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