My personal experience of this week’s “heat apocalypse” in Europe involved discovering large globs of hot, sticky tar stuck to my leg after I trod in melted asphalt on a mountain road in France on Sunday afternoon: The road that I was walking on had Literally, the melting began..
I was standing on the melted road because the heat was so extreme that my car’s engine had overheated, and my kids and I ended up stranded on top of a steep mountain pass in the Pyrenees until a tow truck finally came to tow us down the mountain to a nearby town. Roadside assistance agencies around the continent predicted an increase of car breakdowns as temperatures rose.
Other Europeans were faced with even more dire emergencies. Fires engulfed vast areas of forest in Spain Portugal, Greece and Hungary, as well as the extreme heat that sparked wildfires and housefires in and around London. Europe is finally coming to terms with the terrible realities of climate change and the rampant fires that accompany it.
After days of record temperatures, calamitous fires in the forests, and an increasing number of deaths due to heat, France’s President Emmanuel has been elected. Macron called this week for the creation of a European-wide fire-fighting air fleet.
Touring the Gironde, a picturesque region in southwestern France hammered by the fires, Macron pledged a “major national project” of reconstruction and called for new rules and prevention plans designed to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.
Europe’s leaders have realized that the continent has got to play catch-up to shore up its infrastructure, and to protect its fire-vulnerable lands from wildfires.
European countries currently spend only 0.4 percent of their budgets on firefighting services. The German federal government has repeatedly refused to invest in fire-fighting aircraftThey believe that the country will not be affected by the megafires that have ravaged large areas of Australia and the U.S.
France does have one of Europe’s best-equipped firefighting fleets, but it tops out at 22 planes. These are not only the national fleets such as the one France maintains. the entire EU currently has a dozen firefighting planes that are pooled for use across national boundaries during fire emergencies. Clearly, that’s not adequate to the needs of this climate change moment. By contrast, California, which has been on the frontline of climate change-fueled fires for years, has more than 60 firefighting aircraft.
California has spent more than $1 billion on firefighting over the last decade. more than 1 percent of its state budgetThe Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The state is at least fortunate to have vast financial resources. Many of its neighbors aren’t so lucky; in one western U.S. state after the next, extreme fires have strained state budgetsIn recent years.
Now, as heat waves become more common and more ferocious in Europe, the continent’s governments (both in national capitals and in Brussels, headquarters of the EU) will also have to adjust upward the amounts they invest in fire prevention services, as well as in firefighting equipment and personnel. It will undoubtedly put pressure on state budgets at a time when Europe is in recession and suffering from stubbornly high inflation.
Taken as a whole, Europe has been caught remarkably unprepared by July’s heat wave. Thousands of people, most of them elderly, died last weekThe blast of hot, dry air slowly moved northward from the Mediterranean.
The heat has threatened to intensify the human dislocation caused by heat Europe’s already stark economic woes — its currency in decline against the dollar, inflation running at above 9 percent, its loss of stable supplies of Russian gas and oil. If Europe does fall into a severe recession later this year, no single factor will be to blame; but the hit to the region’s economy brought on by a string of debilitating heat waves will certainly be one of the causes contributing to the malaise.
Heat is a relative concept. In California or Texas, in Arizona or Oklahoma, summer temperatures a few degrees north of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (100°F) would barely raise eyebrows. Even higher temperatures, such as the 120°F sometimes reached in Las Vegas, Phoenix or Tucson, don’t tend to do quite the same damage that soaring temperatures inflict in Europe. People in the American West are used to such temperatures. Houses, public transport systems and office buildings are all designed to have air conditioning. In Europe, however, many buildings, both private and public, lack air conditioning. Many transit systems are also lacking and the population is not well-versed in how to navigate hot weather.
In Europe, electricity prices have risen so quickly that even those with air conditioning had to think twice before they used their systems. Electricity wholesale pricesFrom the winter of 2021 to early 2022, Spain and Portugal saw a more than 400% increase in their GDPs. In France and Greece, it was more than 300 percent. While not all of this has been passed onto consumers yet, it has been a significant part of the 12 months that led up to March. home energy prices around the EU increased by 41 percent. As oil and gas prices have risen, they have risen even more. Faced with Russian natural gas shortages, the EU announced a rationing plan to try to cut usage by 15 percentOver the next months. Vastly increased reliance on air conditioning simply isn’t possible in Europe at the moment, given current energy supply and price conditions.
When the heat soared to around 104°F in London on Tuesday, the agency responsible for managing London’s complex public transport systemIt was forced by the government to remind people not to travel on its un-air-conditioned trains or buses. Many businesses were forced to close their doors due to a lack of staff. In Scotland, the government appealed to the public to cut down on alcohol consumptionTo avoid people who are intoxicated from becoming dehydrated in unusual heat, Tuesday evening the London fire brigade was experiencing its busiest day since World War IIAs more than 40 properties were destroyed and many parks and heaths were blazed by the intense heat,
At Luton airportJust outside of London, outbound flight cancellations were made and incoming flights were diverted because a runway buckled due to heat. Railway tracksAround the country, also began to fail. Put simply, the U.K.’s infrastructure simply isn’t built to withstand triple-digit temperatures.
European leaders have been leading global efforts to establish meaningful climate change agreements for years. Yet, despite the strong rhetoric, when push came to shove last week, the continent’s preparedness for extreme weather events was shown to be inadequate. In the U.S. activists are pressing President Biden for a declaration of a climate emergency. Leaders in Europe, where people are more open to taking strong action against climate change than Americans, have known for a long time that this is an emergency. The crisis is getting worse by the day. This week has shown us just how dire things can get. It’s far past time to tackle this catastrophe with the focus and urgency it so clearly merits.
