Heat wave: Europe’s future is sizzling
Airport runways melted in London, while wildfires ripped across Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy. There is “no room for doubt: Climate change is here” in Europe, said Juan López de Uralde in El Diario (Spain). Temperatures rocketed to dangerous levels across the continent last week, topping 104 in the U.K. for the first time and leading numerous countries to declare heat emergencies. At least 1,700 people died of heat-related causes on the Iberian Peninsula, including a firefighting pilot whose plane crashed in Portugal’s northeast and a Madrid street sweeper who was “literally struck down by the heat” while working. Year on year, Europe has been heating up faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, said Kevin O’Sullivan in the Irish Times. That’s because the jet stream is now more prone to splitting, leaving “an area of weak winds and high-pressure air” that allows heat to build up and bake us. Even cool, green Ireland cracked 91 degrees. “All this will force lifestyle changes and radical changes to water usage.” No longer can Europeans simply endure the rare brief hot spell, because these are no longer rare or brief. We will now be facing “frequent extreme temperatures over prolonged periods.”
European agricultural ministers met in Brussels last week to tell us what we already know—that heat and severe drought threaten our food supply and our very survival, said Afonso Camões in the Diário de Notícias (Portugal). Rice and wheat crops are failing, and farmers need bailouts. But “pious talk” and subsidies are not enough. We have to get proactive, such as by paying firefighters “for the fires they manage to prevent.” As we begin the painful process of adaptation, we’ll need new rules “for the hot new world,” said Kathrin Werner in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany). Right now, workers are expected to show up in excessive heat. German law says you have to keep working, even outdoors or in a non-air-conditioned space, unless it is over 95 degrees—a point when “nobody can function properly”—and even then, you can only go home if the boss has done nothing to mitigate the temperature. That will have to change.
It’s time to apologize to Greta Thunberg, said Riccardo Luna in La Repubblica (Italy). Many of us mocked the Swedish teen when she started the Fridays for Future school walkouts to demand action on climate change. That movement is now active across the globe, and representatives from 55 countries met here in Italy for its conference this week. Sorry, Greta. We are all starting to understand “what you meant when you talked about drought, fires, and melting glaciers.” Italy alone has seen all of those already this year. It is up to us, the voters, to force our leaders to make the tough choice to ban fossil fuels and plastics. Such a massive societal change will hurt the economy in the short term. But not doing it is hurting us right now and will rob our children of their future. “Do we have the courage to try to create a better world?”