Europe's Heatwave: A Call For Political Courage

At a development conference in Seville earlier this week the UN Secretary General remarked that “Extreme heat is no longer a rare event – it has become the new normal.” The heat in Europea and the US give immediate truth to his remarks, but also offer an opportunity that policy makers should seize to win the argument about the urgent need for action to tackle climate change.

The last ten days have seen Europe swelter under a crushing heatwave. Portugal recorded 46.6. degrees C earlier this week (a record). Spain’s national meteorological agency reported June’s average temperature was a new record, with the overall monthly average standing 3.5C higher than the average from 1991 to 2020. In France, schools have been closed. In Italy, the government has banned outdoor work. Cities in Germany have imposed limits on water extraction. The UK is suffering from its worst drought since 1976 and recorded the hottest ever opening day of Wimbledon. Wildfires are ravaging Spain, Turkey, Greece and Norway. High temperatures on the East Coast of the US have left many people in hospital.

And we have only just left June behind us, with two full months of the Northern hemisphere’s summer still to come. If ever there was a moment which highlighted the urgency of tackling climate change and changing our behaviour in response to it, that moment is now…

But the reality is different. Growing public awareness of the disruption and the financial, social and political costs of the energy transition has been weaponised by hard-right, climate-change sceptic political parties which treat the climate crisis as just another facet of their culture wars, re-naming governments’ Net-Zero goals as ‘Net-Stupid’; mocking Europe’s heatwave, calling it ‘the summer’; removing climate change information from websites; or calling renewable energy plans ‘a utopian fantasy’.

The success of the attacks by the populist far-right on measures to tackle climate change has resulted in slowed implementation, delayed targets, watered-down commitments and backtracking on expenditure. Therese Ribera, the EU’s Commissioner for the Green Transition, has attacked the ‘political cowardice’ of mainstream political parties in taking the route of least resistance and not confronting the hard right’s narrative. She argues, correctly, that inaction will be considerably more expensive in the longer-term as societies will have to adjust to permanently higher temperatures, with implications for everything from schools, to hospitals, to transport to infrastructure.

The political mainstream, convinced of the need to act (but scared of doing so for fear of antagonising the hard-right, or alienating voters) lacks a coherent narrative or the political courage to respond to the siren-voices of populism which maintain there is either no threat, or that it is possible and desirable to delay the policy response and associated expense. It requires political courage to set out the (often difficult) facts and explain the need for expensive disruption to daily lives to a public which (generally speaking) believes that climate change needs to be tackled, but is reluctant to pay the financial and disruption costs that are inherent in doing so.

But failure to confront the populist message is as dishonest as the attempt to deny the facts of climate change. And ultimately, it brings significant risks for democracy itself – avoiding the difficult conversations about the urgency of the need to act and the changes in behaviour and attitudes that populations will need to accept (from water use to outdoor activities) will only exacerbate the voting public’s existing lack of trust in politicians when those risks become reality.

Tackling climate change will (and does already) involve making difficult decisions about prioritising spending (for example on sea and flood defences – which seem excessive until the risk manifests). Good government demands that politicians have faith in the public; that Governments trust the people with reliable and accurate information (from more reliable forecasting to explanations of how global heating increases the likelihood of destructive weather) to enable them to make choices about planning their own responses.

To return to the first paragraph. The current extreme heat crushing Europe should offer policy makers an opportunity to reclaim the narrative and refocus minds on the urgency and undeniable need to address climate change – both to mitigate its worst effects and to adapt to those we cannot mitigate.

The time is now. And the need for political courage and leadership has never been greater.