'Keir Starmer Must Break His Silence on the Climate Crisis Driving the UK's Extreme Temperatures'
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This coming weekend is the third anniversary of UK temperatures hitting 40C hit for first time ever. Since then, countless new records have been broken. In 2023, some areas had a quarter more rainfall than normal, making the year one of the ten wettest for England and Northern Ireland since 1836. May 2024 was the warmest on record and that Spring was the wettest and warmest ever too - until this year smashed that last record. There have been three heatwaves already this summer and June became the warmest month for England.
These facts and figures can sometimes feel as relentless as the heat, but put simply, as a new Met Office report on the state of the climate puts it, record-breaking and extreme weather has become increasingly commonplace over the last decade.
For the majority of us here in the UK, a nation notoriously obsessed with the weather, the effects of this change still feel relatively benign - sunnier days and longer, drier summers, what's not to like? However, headlines about Wimbledon running out of water and fans collapsing in the sweltering heat might hint at what's to come. So too might the extreme wildfire and drought warnings - reservoir levels fell at nearly three-quarters of sites in June and are below average in all regions.
Revealed: The £264 billion Price Tag of the UK's Carbon Capture Strategy
Critics argue the technology is a "dangerous distraction" to the real measures required to tackle catastrophic man-made climate change
Stuart Spray
But with the Government mostly silent about what we need to do to adapt to the ever-shifting new normal, most of us can be forgiven for thinking everything's under control.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The Government's own climate watchdog has warned that the UK's preparedness for extreme weather events is inadequate, disjointed and piecemeal. Despite that 40-degree watershed moment back in 2022, the Government doesn't even have a heat strategy in place. It hasn't introduced a maximum safe temperature for our workplaces, to mirror the minimum below which it's considered unsafe to work. And that has consequences for us all - for our communities, our public services and our economy.
Researchers at UCL and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have warned that extreme heat could lead to an extra 30,000 deaths a year in England and Wales by the 2070s, putting an already strained NHS under immense further pressure. London alone saw an estimated 263 people dying in the 23 June - 2 July heatwave. We are clearly in the midst of a public health crisis, and one that's barely being acknowledged by the Department for Health.
The fire services are having to respond to a much higher number of fires this year than normal, yet their funding is still being cut in real ter
Packed with exclusive investigations, analysis, and features
SUBSCRIBE TODAY
This coming weekend is the third anniversary of UK temperatures hitting 40C hit for first time ever. Since then, countless new records have been broken. In 2023, some areas had a quarter more rainfall than normal, making the year one of the ten wettest for England and Northern Ireland since 1836. May 2024 was the warmest on record and that Spring was the wettest and warmest ever too - until this year smashed that last record. There have been three heatwaves already this summer and June became the warmest month for England.
These facts and figures can sometimes feel as relentless as the heat, but put simply, as a new Met Office report on the state of the climate puts it, record-breaking and extreme weather has become increasingly commonplace over the last decade.
For the majority of us here in the UK, a nation notoriously obsessed with the weather, the effects of this change still feel relatively benign - sunnier days and longer, drier summers, what's not to like? However, headlines about Wimbledon running out of water and fans collapsing in the sweltering heat might hint at what's to come. So too might the extreme wildfire and drought warnings - reservoir levels fell at nearly three-quarters of sites in June and are below average in all regions.
Revealed: The £264 billion Price Tag of the UK's Carbon Capture Strategy
Critics argue the technology is a "dangerous distraction" to the real measures required to tackle catastrophic man-made climate change
Stuart Spray
But with the Government mostly silent about what we need to do to adapt to the ever-shifting new normal, most of us can be forgiven for thinking everything's under control.
In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The Government's own climate watchdog has warned that the UK's preparedness for extreme weather events is inadequate, disjointed and piecemeal. Despite that 40-degree watershed moment back in 2022, the Government doesn't even have a heat strategy in place. It hasn't introduced a maximum safe temperature for our workplaces, to mirror the minimum below which it's considered unsafe to work. And that has consequences for us all - for our communities, our public services and our economy.
Researchers at UCL and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have warned that extreme heat could lead to an extra 30,000 deaths a year in England and Wales by the 2070s, putting an already strained NHS under immense further pressure. London alone saw an estimated 263 people dying in the 23 June - 2 July heatwave. We are clearly in the midst of a public health crisis, and one that's barely being acknowledged by the Department for Health.
The fire services are having to respond to a much higher number of fires this year than normal, yet their funding is still being cut in real ter
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