Five major heatwaves have swept across Europe so far this year. These extreme events have had an impact on the health and wellbeing of millions of people.
By Alison Gaughan
The poorest are hit hardest, unable to afford air conditioning and forced to work in unbearable heat. Changing weather patterns across Europe and North America are causing hotter, drier summers, health emergencies, a crisis of food production due to drought, and ideal conditions for wildfires. While this article is being prepared, wildfires are burning in eleven European countries.
Over a third of a million people have had to be evacuated and over 30 have died. Meanwhile, 10,000 have perished from the heat alone. The fires this year have been particularly ferocious, with strong winds fanning the flames. The fires themselves have created thunder clouds, which in turn set off new blazes. Long-term impacts include damage to farms and factories and the life-shortening health effects of breathing wildfire smoke.
It is now beyond credible deniability that the increasing CO2 and therefore heat in the atmosphere is man made. Yet fossil fuel burning is not slowing down. Even if all fossil fuel use was stopped now, it would take many years for the climate to recover. As it continues to increase, we can expect climate breakdown to accelerate.
Rising militarism and the far right
Capitalist geopolitics pushes firmly against any action on climate change. Increasing militarisation and war leads to a vicious circle of climate damage (military activity is the cause of 5.5% of world CO2 emissions), resource scarcity and migration, leading to more flashpoints.
Funding is channelled away from (insufficient) green initiatives into military spending. The rapidly-expanding AI bubble increases emissions even further with datacentres’ huge appetite for energy and water.
The rise of far-right politics is perhaps the worst culprit, birthing a new wave of climate denialism that seeps into mainstream discourse. The Trump administration has just paid a German company to switch from renewables to gas and vows to ‘drill, baby, drill’. Reform UK politicians repeat their ‘net stupid zero’ refrain. Right-wing climate ‘sceptics’ have even used misleading data to claim that Europe is having its ‘quietest year ever’ for wildfires.
The right has no solutions for the working class
Anti-green policies are often sold (including by the right) as helping the working class by saving money, keeping costs down and protecting jobs. Even some trade union leaders have been sucked into this false accounting. But it is workers and the poor who suffer the most from the effects of climate change. Climate denial is not anti establishment as the far right would sell it to us. It is because they, the capitalist establishment, profit from dirty energy.
The rich cause the most climate damage and yet are most insulated from its effects. This will continue as long as a capitalist system prioritises profit over people. We need a just transition, with workers retrained into climate-friendly industries, along with fully nationalised energy production and ultimately a planned economy under democratic workers’ control.
