Analysis Of The Big Heat By Elizabeth Morbert

Just because it is not happening here, it does not mean it is not happening. That is what reporter Elizabeth Kolbert would have said to the entire American population on climate change if she could go back in time. Kolbert, in her New Yorker article “The Big Heat”, argues that Americans have been extremely busy handling insignificant situations happening in their regional level that they have forgotten to deal with the most atrocious social issue of all: global warming. At the begging of the article, Kolbert emphasizes on how indifferent Americans have been for several years regarding this matter. To enhance her argument, the author writes, “in the Arctic, Americans were told (again and again and again), the effects were particularly dramatic.”

As far as she is concerned, Americans only pay attention to regional-level issues. She reports the extremely dry and hot conditions in some states of the United States and the savagely violent thunderstorms in other states. The author portrays the heat wave that reached Indiana and Colorado by saying, “temperatures rose into the triple digits for ten days, reaching as high as a hundred and seven degrees.” After, she describes a long line of thunderstorms named super derecho that took the life of at least thirteen persons. Kolbert illustrates these two events in the United States to force Americans and politicians to view climate change as an issue of great concern to the country. Yet, she later mentions that “along with the heat and the drought and the super derecho, the country this summer is also enduring a Presidential campaign.” Elizabeth Kolbert touches upon the coming Presidential campaign to emphasize (again) that Americans keep spending their time in what they believe to be much more important issues than the destruction of our