Feeling the heat? Get used to it
It’s been a bit difficult to ignore the fact that Malta, right in cue with the start of summer, is going through an almighty heat wave.
With temperatures hitting the 40.2 degrees Celsius mark, Thursday was the hottest day ever recorded in Malta in the month of June, and the country was also the hottest place in the whole of Europe.
Many have been pleading for salvation from the heat, but weather forecasts indicate that any form of respite is unlikely at least for another week.
You’re not imagining it: the weather is getting hotter as every year passes.
2019 was the warmest year in the last decade, while 2020 was again warmer than average. Last January saw the warmest ever day registered for that month, while most months this year have been warmer than the norm as well.
What’s even more worrying is that the amount of rainfall is – quite literally – drying up.
2020 saw a staggering 203.9mm less rainfall than the norm, with January that year being the second driest on record and February being the driest on record.
2021 is following a similar pattern: January saw half the average in rainfall; February was amongst the driest ever with just 5% of the average rainfall registered; March saw just over half the norm in rainfall; April saw just one isolated shower, and May was completely dry.
Make no mistake, these are the effects of climate change for all to see (and feel). We are reaping the consequences of the decisions made in the past decades.
In October 2019, Malta’s parliament unanimously declared a climate emergency to much fanfare – but now, over 18 months later, we can see that in truth nothing tangible has actually been done to fight climate change.
Amidst all the political photo-ops and well-chosen statements about how climate change is going to be a much larger problem than the Covid-19 pandemic, the status quo has remained very much just that.
The word ‘emergency’ means that action must be urgent, decisive, and concrete.
Yet in Malta, the roads which harbour over 400,000 moving, polluting cars have continued to be widened, the fields have continued to be turned into asphalt and the trees – which can at least make facing the heat outside a bit more bearable – have continued to be chopped down.
The push towards renewable energy meanwhile remains, at best, weak. The PN continues to champion the interconnector, while the PL continues to laud the power station – and yet they miss the woods for the proverbial trees (the ones that haven’t had to make way for road works at least) and fail to recognise that renewable energy is the way forward.
What we’ve gotten instead are measures which – in the grand scheme of things – amount to simple greenwashing. Green walls, for instance, are nice, but they’re not going to solve the more pressing concerns.
Hopefully the heat serves as a reminder that an ‘emergency’ – like the climate emergency we are in – requires direct and immediate action.