It’s estimated that around 500 people died during British Columbia’s recent heatwave. In the town of Lytton, nestled in the mountains of western Canada, on the same latitude as London, the temperature hit 49.6C on June 29. That’s hotter than it’s ever been in Miami. The next day, most of the town was incinerated by wildfire.
This is the twelfth consecutive year of above-average temperatures in the wider region, and the records are not just being broken, they are being smashed (in this case by 4.6 degrees). A severe drought, the most widespread on record, and warming mountains have contributed to a high pressure “heat dome” that, among other things, melts snow. As Lytton burned, further down the road there were flood warnings.
The scientific consensus is that this is linked to man-made emissions. The good news is that politicians are taking action and that the market, too, is adjusting: fossil fuels look increasingly unpopular at the same time as the cost of renewables is falling. The bad news is that what we’re doing now would probably have been a game changer 30 years ago, but today is too little too late. Canada suggests that climate change models, dismissed as alarmist, might have been too conservative. We are already up 1.2C on pre-industrial levels; we’re anticipated to hit 1.5C by early next decade.
The UK Government is doing a lot of good things, and our emissions are way down, but between Brexit and Covid, the greatest challenge of our time hasn’t been given the prominence it deserves, and it doesn’t help that Blighty, though beset by rising temperatures and flooding, enjoys generally clement weather, persuading some that we can just ride this one out. They’re wrong. When, say, food becomes insecure or millions try to migrate here, you will suddenly be very conscious of what’s going on in Africa and Asia.
