Shayla Love has written an article that appeared in the June 1, 2026, edition of The New Yorker. In the hardcopy version of the magazine, Love's article was assigned to the "Brave New World Dept." It was titled, "Breeding Ground." Online, the title provided for Love's article is a lot more explanatory: "Our Warming Planet Is a Petri Dish for New and Deadly Microbes."
I am suggesting that you read Love's article, which is truly eye-opening. I think that the link I have provided will let you do that, but I do subscribe to the magazine, so it may be that non-subscribers will be stymied. I hope not!
What Shayla Love tells us is that hot temperatures are leading to rapid and massively significant evolutionary changes in the various "bugs" to which we have, over millennia, built up resistance.
We are unprepared to deal with the "modified" microorganisms that are now evolving to protect themselves from the ever-hotter temperatures being experienced virtually everywhere on Planet Earth. I have previously written about Ministry For The Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson, a work of "fiction" that is based on real facts. It paints a pretty horrible picture of what increasing temperatures, like the ones being charted all over the world this summer, can do to us. We are in pretty deep trouble already, without taking into account the phenomenon that Love is writing about. If her article doesn't alarm you, you are not paying attention.
Here is a link to an article in Grist, which I picked out pretty much at random. Its title is, "Western Europe just set the record for its hottest June ever." Love's article makes clear that the dangers of increasing heat are much greater than the fact that heat can kill us directly, as temperatures get too high. The record-breaking temperatures we are experiencing are probably going to get to us indirectly, by way of deadly microbes, long before we get start having to deal with conditions like those described in Kim Stanley Robinson's novel.
No time for further delay! We need to modify everything, and make fighting against global warming our top priority - worldwide! See if the Shayla Love article doesn't convince you that I am right about that.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/06/01/our-warming-planet-is-a-petri-dish-for-new-and-deadly-microbes
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