This is no time to be toasting our scorching summer
EVERYBODY loves scorching Scottish summers like this one.
Beer gardens. Ice cream vans. Trips to the seaside that don’t give you frostbite. What’s not to like?
But the extreme temperatures witnessed worldwide this year are nothing to celebrate.
The summer of 2018 may be remembered as the season when climate change finally came home to roost. Or, more accurately, to roast.
During the first five months of this year, almost every continent experienced record heat. May was the 401st consecutive month in which temperatures exceeded the 20th century average.
Across the globe there has been carnage.
Wildfires in California and Greece have caused dozens of fatalities.
Japan officially designated its heatwave a natural disaster after 65 deaths were recorded in a week.
In India, three people were killed fighting over water.
Meanwhile, a bleak scientific report revealed tens of thousands more heat-related deaths will occur every year if more is not done to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
These fatalities will not just be in far-flung places.
It’s thought an average of 540 people died every year in Britain as a result of heatwaves between 1971 and 2010.
That figure is expected to quadruple to 2160 in the period between 2031 and 2080. And heat-related deaths is just part of the havoc the changing temperatures will bring. The UK Government’s own Climate Adaptation Plan – sneaked out quietly last month – also predicts floods, water shortages and disruption to food supply will be a problem.
Despite this sobering analysis, there is still not a single political party in the UK taking the issue seriously enough.
The Conservatives have been sitting on their hands since coming to power in 2010. Labour aren’t much better.
Closer to home, the Scottish Government talk big on reducing carbon emissions while continuing to champion the oil industry and pursue tax breaks for airlines.
And we can only hope the recent weather will remind the Scottish Greens they’re meant to be environmentalists and not sugar-free nationalists.
Climate change is here. It’s probably too late to fix it. But shouldn’t we at least try?