Is The World Waking Up To The Climate Change Emergency?

The rain began falling in the Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany on 12 July – and didn’t stop. In just three days, more than double the usual rainfall for the whole month came down. The river Ahr, south of Bonn, burst its banks and entire villages were swept away. The devastation spread to parts of Belgium, Luxembourg and

The Netherlands too. By the time the rains eased, at least 120 people were reported dead and 1,000 missing.

As I watched the TV images of smashed bridges, torn-up roads and ransacked houses, it was hard not to come to the conclusion that next time it could be us in the UK. Indeed, homes in west London were hit by flash flooding earlier that same week. Nor was this the only ‘freak’ weather event seen around the world.

Just days earlier, on 29 June, temperatures in Lytton, Canada, had reached 49.6°C, Canada’s highest ever. Wildfires broke out and hundreds were evacuated as 40mph winds fanned the flames and triggered thunderstorms; 710,000 lightning flashes were recorded. Closer to home, the Met Office recently issued its first ever amber warning for heat – flagging the potential health impact – to cover parts of the UK.

As ever, it was environmental activist Greta Thunberg who dropped a truth bomb. ‘We’re at the very beginning of a climate and ecological emergency, and extreme weather events will only become more and more frequent,’ she tweeted.

Nor was she alone: suddenly, scientists, newscasters and weather presenters were directly making the connection, linking the climate crisis to the chaos on our screens.

I’ve been reporting on climate and nature for 15 years and this is the first time I’ve heard so many make that direct link. For years I’ve howled at the TV when a jaunty weather presenter has announced, ‘It’s a sizzler! Get the barbecue ready,’ putting a super-positive spin on a dangerous heatwave fuelled by climate change, fuelled by our addiction to fossil fuels.

Through all our human activities, and especially industry, we’ve created a huge amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide is the most abundant) – more than at any other time in history. Releasing these into the atmosphere is like throwing a blanket around the Earth, causing it to heat up. In short, for every degree of warming you go up, the more likely extreme weather events become.

We know what we have to do. We have known for some time. According to science writer Alice Bell’s brilliant new book, Our Biggest Experiment: A History Of The Climate Crisis, it was a female scientist, Eunice Newton Foate, who first noted that a world heavy with carbon dioxide could send temperatures soaring. But that was in 1856. This very much raises the question: what in the name of this good green Earth have we been doing since then?

The answer is complicated and filled with missed opportunities. There is no doubt that bad actors, led by oil companies, have more recently mounted a misinformation campaign that may well prove to have been catastrophic. Since at least 2009, there has been official scientific consensus that human-made emissions have been driving global heating, but our leaders have continued to play down the risks.

But as Alice notes, this is not something to give up on. ‘There is always something to fight for. Because 1°C is better than 1.5°, 1.5 is better than 2…’ Right now, we happen to be in the run-up to the UK Government’s hosting of the biggest and arguably most important climate talks ever – COP26 in Glasgow in November. We have a serious fight on our hands to make sure that our future isn’t trashed. But the best thing you can do is commit to climate action, at a state as well as individual level, and force all countries to cut emissions. Climatecoalition.org is the UK’s largest group of people dedicated to action.

As Sir David Attenborough puts it, we must come to an agreement ‘because unless we all agree, we are lost’. It’s advice we should take. Otherwise, we may look back on 2021 and think how calm and cool it was.