Britain’s heatwaves killed thousands – we need to wake up

If there’s one thing British people do well, it’s chatting about the weather. 

It’s our go-to small talk subject, filling awkward silences while we patiently stand in queues. 

But the dramatic heatwaves that have gripped the country over the past weeks deserve a different kind of conversation than the one we’re used to having.

Because this isn’t about idle chat, but a deadly serious crisis. 

I was saddened, but not shocked, to see the figures from Imperial College showing that 2,700 people and counting have died as a result of excess heat this summer. 

At the peak of the June heatwave, that worked out to around 440 deaths a day. My heart goes out to each and every one of those families who have lost a loved one far too soon.

The people hit hardest are, as ever, those already closest to the edge: older people in flats that turn into ovens, people with heart and lung conditions, disabled people, outdoor workers, and the homeless. 

But while they’ve borne the sharpest consequences of this human-made cauldron, its effects are being felt right across society.

Research carried out for Greenpeace last week showed almost a quarter of people had someone in the household who felt physically unwell. 

Six in ten workers said their workplace was too hot to bear, nearly one in ten called it unsafe, and almost a quarter had to throw away food that spoiled in the heat. More than half say their homes need serious upgrades just to cope with the next one, but most couldn’t afford that themselves.

For thousands of people, the struggle proved fatal. 

And yet the response from Westminster hasn’t come close to matching the seriousness of what’s actually happening. This can’t be met with a ‘keep calm and carry a disposable water bottle’ shrug. Nor can it be filed under fond memories of roasting hot beach trips and 99’s on the pier.

What we actually need is a proper national response, and it has two parts.

Greenpeace is calling on the Government to publish an Extreme Heat Strategy: protections for workers who currently have no legal right to stop in dangerous heat, upgrades for schools so no child is stuck in a classroom turned sauna, and funding to heat-proof the hospitals, care homes and public housing where the people most at risk actually live. 

When asked, almost half backed a levy to fund this placed on the highest-emitting companies.

Which brings us to the second part.

Putting an end to our chaos-inducing reliance on fossil fuels causing this extreme weather in the first place. 

Depressingly, the most noise being made in politics right now is from those advocating for more drilling in the North Sea – with some indication that soon-to-be Prime Minister Andy Burnham may be open to the idea and the fossil fuel companies that stand to profit. 

The Met Office has projected that by 2056, days of 45°C could be our new normal, a figure that would have sounded like science fiction a decade ago. No longer. 

For a glimpse of what’s coming sooner than that, we don’t need to imagine anything, we just need to look at countries a little further down this same road. Southern Europe has spent the last few summers burying its heat dead by the thousand, its hospitals overwhelmed, its wildfires eating through towns that never used to worry about them. 

India has faced extreme heat so severe that outdoor labour becomes genuinely dangerous for millions of people for weeks at a time.

None of this is unavoidable. Every death, every sleepless night, every spoiled meal in a fridge that couldn’t keep up, can be linked to a political choice to keep burning fossil fuels long after we knew better.

That choice can be unmade. It requires a government willing to treat this as the emergency it is, not a topic for polite conversation.

If Burnham wants his government to be taken seriously as a climate leader, he should appoint a Chancellor with the right intentions and expertise to build an economy that moves away from polluting industries and is resilient to a worsening climate crisis.

So yes, we need to talk about the weather. 

Not the way we usually do, as a way of filling silence or avoiding the real subject. 

We need to talk about it as a matter of life and death, a national emergency hiding behind small talk, and a warning that will only get louder the longer we wait to actually listen.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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