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#Europe’s Summer of Reckoning Is ‘Just the Beginning’
The continent is experiencing some of its biggest #wildfires & highest temperatures ever. Residents are fleeing, leaders are struggling to respond & “it will get worse,” one #climate expert said.
#ClimateChange #ExtremeWeather #ClimateCrisis
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/world/europe/summer-heat-wave-fires-climate-change.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
One might think that, faced with mounting disasters, governments would act to save lives
The fossil fuel industry is killing us. Yet no one seems capable of facing down the threat, of combating it through action.
At some point, the dangerous greed of a few will necessarily end. The only question is whether common folk like us will be alive to see it.
The #wildfires threatening central #Spain & southwestern #France over the past 2 weeks may be small by American standards. In #Europe, though, they are tremendous. Some are the largest in their countries’ modern histories, raging in places not accustomed to fires of this scale: on the outskirts of Madrid, for instance, or near the ancient vineyards of Bordeaux.
Firefighters have been struggling to contain the #wildfires before another #heatwave descends on the region today, with temperatures soaring to 104°F (40°C). Last month was the hottest June on record in Western #Europe, & #climate experts say the continent can expect even higher temperatures in the future. The heat dries vegetation, making it more susceptible to fire. (It also exhausts firefighters.)
Ravenous #wildfires. Searing #heatwaves. Freakish #storms. The summer of 2026 has already shattered meteorological records in several European countries. On a continent that has weathered centuries of upheaval — ruinous wars, deadly pandemics — it is the weather itself that now has #Europe feeling close to a breaking point.
“ #Europe is ground zero when it comes to impacts” from #ClimateChange, said Johan Rockström, a Swedish scientist who is the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
“2026 is just the beginning,” Professor Rockström added. “It will inevitably get worse. It will get worse and worse and worse to the point where, I’m afraid, we’ll be passing the limits of adaptation.”
#Europe is not alone, of course. #Heatwaves gripped #Australia & #Japan this year. #Floods devastated #Kenya & #Angola. A snowstorm paralyzed the Eastern #UnitedStates. Developing countries in the Southern Hemisphere are still more vulnerable than wealthy Europe to the effects of a changing climate.
Yet no other continent has warmed as rapidly as #Europe, at nearly twice the global average since the mid-1990s. That has forced Europeans to confront, more starkly than others, the harsh realities of a changed climate, particularly in the summer, when their once-mild days have given way to furnacelike heat.
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