Climate change is no longer tomorrow’s problem

Britain continues to swelter under a heatwave that has seen the mercury rise to 30C and above in some places. The latest spell of intense heat, the third so far this year, has already had severe effects; wildfires have erupted across parts of the country, trains have been disrupted due to struggling infrastructure, and 2,700 people in England and Wales are thought to have died as a result.

The science is clear – human-caused climate change is fuelling the intensity and frequency of these types of events. What was once rare enough to be an anecdote about a very hot summer many years ago has now become commonplace every summer in the UK, and the nation isn’t built to cope with it. And yet most media stories about the latest record-breaking heatwave failed to mention the climate crisis.

We are no longer at the point of talking about how to stop the effects of climate change for future generations – it’s here now and will only get worse without greater action to tackle emissions. The government’s work on achieving net zero has been ambitious, much-needed, and broadly popular. Rather than pandering to Reform, Burnham’s government should double down on this goal.

Prevention of further harm to our planet is vital, but adaptation is now equally as important. Much of Britain was built to deal with a much cooler climate, and so a national effort has to be made to help the nation deal with more Mediterranean weather each year. That goes beyond air conditioning and legislation around maximum temperatures in the workplace; it has to include revamping swathes of our transport and infrastructure network to be able to cope with regular intense summers.

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However, with events in the Middle East and a relentless cost-of-living crisis, there is a real threat that efforts to mitigate the climate crisis will be put on the back burner and kicked down the road for another couple of years. What we have experienced this summer proves that we do not have that much time to address the challenges of the climate emergency.

It is striking that, had the death toll from the heatwave come from a single catastrophic event, it would have dominated the political agenda and media headlines. When those lives are lost gradually through extreme weather, however, the sense of urgency too often dissipates.

Climate change is not a future threat waiting on the horizon. It is already claiming lives in Britain today. The longer we treat each heatwave as an isolated event, rather than part of a growing crisis, the greater the human cost will become.

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