It’s Too Damn Hot

After the absolutely dreadful winter the UK experienced this year, I think many of us were so excited for the sun. Until we weren’t.

The heatwave this year has hit a new peak of 37.7 degrees Celsius on a random June Friday. The hottest June day EVER recorded in England, and we have more heatwaves on the way throughout July.

I think many people romanticise summer to what it was like when we were kids, a mild 25 degrees, scraped knees, begging our parents for change so we could run out when the ice cream van song played through our neighbourhoods, and then cooling down indoors.

Summers now include a billion cold showers, sitting in front of a fan with ice in front of it and hoping our pets don’t die from heat stroke as we take them outside at 5 in the morning. To put it simply, summers have become miserable for many people.

I live in a small, first-floor flat, where there is no escape from the heat, and I sit here typing this with the fan on full blast and the 5th ice pop of the day. But some people are experiencing summer even worse.

Many medications and chronic illnesses can actually make people a lot more sensitive to the heat, so while 35 degrees feels horrible for us, it can be dangerous for them. (Please check if your medication can cause heat sensitivity and stay safe in this heat!)

Across Europe, heatwaves claim more lives than gun-related violence in America does. The climate crisis is real, and it’s not going away any time soon. I remember when I was a kid, politicians claimed that switching to carbon-neutral energy solutions would take years. Well, it has been years, and things are getting worse, when we could have actively worked on making it better.

The scary fact is that it won’t be getting any cooler. This is probably our coldest summer from now on, and already the World Health Organisation said that 1,300 lives were lost from the European heatwave.

British architecture is built for mild summers and cold, rainy winters, meaning that our houses do not shelter us from the heat, yet the government is cracking down on houses that have installed AC due to the net-zero initiative. While the net-zero initiative aims to do good, our focus should be on the massive corporations that emit the vast majority of CO2 (Saudi Aramco itself is responsible for 4.5% of ALL global emissions); it is everyday working people who are being told to suffer.

Europe is not the only place suffering, though. Due to climate change, an estimated 220 million people in Africa are now exposed to drought, while many coastal towns and cities are constantly being flooded due to the rising sea levels. 16 of the 17 hottest years on record have happened since the year 2000.

It is also affecting agriculture; we could lose the remainder of the fertile soil in the UK in the next 30 to 60 years, causing food shortages and higher prices on food.

So over this summer, remember to stay hydrated, stay cool, and if the heat hasn’t absolutely scrambled your brain like mine, please research climate crisis charities!

Written by, Nat Synak