Every year, we are told the latest summer of climate disaster will finally be a wake-up call.
Europe has had its wake-up call. The evidence is written in the dead.
Germany alone has recorded an estimated 9,800 heat-related deaths since the start of the year, while more than 5,000 of those deaths were tied to the late-June heatwave that pushed temperatures toward 42 degrees Celsius in some regions. Across the continent, the record-breaking heatwave is believed to have caused more than 20,000 deaths in a single week. Over the past four years, the World Health Organization estimates that heat has killed more than 200,000 people across the continent.
Massive blazes near Bordeaux and Madrid have forced evacuations on a scale not seen since the Second World War. By recent estimates, close to 500,000 people have been displaced across Europe in a matter of days.
France has recorded its first known pyrocumulonimbus firestorm, a phenomenon in which fires generate their own weather systems, producing powerful winds and lightning NASA has described as a “fire-breathing dragon of clouds.” Scientists warn that these types of fires are no longer manageable. “We have entered an era of fires that cannot be extinguished,” warned Victor Resco de Dios, a professor of forestry at the University of Lleida in Spain. “These are fires that burn with the intensity of several atomic bombs.” A new analysis conducted by scientists at World Weather Attribution concluded the late-June European heatwave was the most severe and widespread ever and was only made possible due to the fossil-fuel supercharged climate crisis. Researchers found that the conditions behind Spain’s fires were made 20 times more likely by global warming. In France, the likelihood of such events has at least doubled.
“This is the most severe and widespread heatwave to have ever affected this large a region of Europe,” said Dr. Theodore Keeping, an extreme weather research associate at Imperial College London and part of the World Weather Attribution team.
We found that in the last 50 years, during which time the planet has warmed by 1.1C, the chance of a heatwave like this has changed immensely. This event would not have been possible in June without climate change. But do we expect this to be a cool summer going forward? That’s absolutely the case.
And fires are no longer confined to southern Europe. Norway has experienced its largest modern wildfire, destroying more than 100 homes. Greece continues to evacuate communities as firefighters are killed on the front lines. Massive fires are also blazing in Türkiye’s Antalya province, which is ironically set to host the next UN climate conference in November. Even soggy wet Scotland has battled significant blazes searing the Cairngorms Mountains in the country’s highlands.
Rivers across Europe are drying up to the point they are exposing Nazi shipwrecks. Across the continent, rivers are shrinking into emergency channels, with the Rhine so low that cargo barges are running at a fraction of capacity and the Danube, a major oil shipping lane, dropping to historic lows that have disrupted fuel imports, irrigation, and river traffic. In the UK, authorities have declared historic drought conditions across half of England and all of Wales while the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government has just approved a massive data centre near London’s famous Brick Lane despite widespread local opposition. Its proximity to the City will allow high-frequency investment traders to shave milliseconds off their transaction times.
Scientists are increasingly rejecting the palliative mainstream consensus that this horrific summer represents the “new normal.” It is “just the beginning,” said Johan Rockstrom of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
It will inevitably get worse. It will get worse and worse and worse.
All over the world, political responses have begun to reflect this urgency. The stage performance of multilateral climate diplomacy practiced every year at COP has been flipped on its head by the world’s first Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels held in April in Santa Marta, Colombia, attended by 67 countries. Global investments in renewable energy are surging amidst the worst oil crisis in history driven by the war on Iran. Renewable electricity generation is forecast to rise by more than eight percent this year, lifting its share of the global power mix from 33 percent in 2025 to 37 percent in 2027.
The sobering reality of the coming El Niño is provoking climatologists to use language like “mind blowing” and “astounding.” 2027 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record. The infamous Paul Revere of climate science James Hansen is cautioning to “beware media hype.” Hansen and his colleagues have laid out evidence that record temperatures will be proof of an underlying acceleration of global warming, not just natural El Niño cycles.
The age of fossil fuels will end on terms written by ever expanding catastrophe.
Get outside and enjoy what remains of this summer; it may well be the coolest one we experience for the rest of our lives.
Christopher Logstrup is a student writer, NDP activist, and trustee candidate for the Limestone District School Board in Kingston, Ontario.