THE MET OFFICE’s first ever red warning for extreme heat ought to focus minds on how we cope with such temperatures.
We cannot dismiss this as a freak heatwave. All 10 of the hottest years since records began in 1884 have occurred since 2002.
Global warming is with us. We see its effects in the hundreds dying in a heatwave currently gripping Europe. In the greater frequency of tropical storms and severe floods, in the wildfires and the longer, bleaker droughts.
Compared with many countries in Africa or Asia, the problems caused by warming temperatures in Britain may seem minimal, yet we are poorly adapted to handle them.
Despite the regularity of extreme heatwaves, these still spell chaos for public transport as our rails are not built to cope with prolonged hot weather.
Few private residences have air conditioning and thousands of schools and offices lack it too. Most housing is poorly insulated, as the Insulate Britain direct action group highlights.
To say that governments are not doing enough to address climate change has become a pious observance. The UN says it, scientists say it. Most politicians say it.
Governments respond by setting targets for “net zero” carbon emissions by such-and-such a date, with progress monitored through byzantine systems allowing emissions trading and offsetting.
The more ambitious targets are already being cast aside in the developed West as the threat to gas imports caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen Germany fire up the coal plants and Washington entreat Saudi Arabia to pump more oil. The grim reality is that, as things stand, Britain is doing nothing at all to address global warming.
Our government is certainly not investing in a more resilient railway. On the contrary, it is engaged in a destructive war on the railway and the people who work it — determined to slash thousands of jobs and undermine the very viability of the service simply to crush a strong union and the dangerous example it sets: that workers who act collectively can secure better pay and working conditions.
There is no effort to move people out of cars and onto public transport. Our public transport network is patchy, unreliable and expensive.
There are some regional efforts, largely by Labour authorities, to promote public ownership of buses to reverse the vandalism of privatisation that has choked off vital transport links across the country. But there is no plan from government.
Our politics is a broken record. Tory hopefuls intone their “cut taxes and deregulate” formula while the public and even their own members show no enthusiasm for it.
Now Liz Truss explains that the way to solve a housing crisis is not by targets for more housing but by deregulation.
Higher insulation standards for new homes? Forget it. And wait, didn’t that cause the Grenfell fire that burned 72 people to death? The message from the Tories is: who cares?
Let the market decide, and if a cash-strapped population and an unregulated industry that plays fast and loose with human life combine to deliver a new era of cramped, dangerous, badly insulated homes? Well, it’s only the little people who will have to live in them.
We need a sea change in political approach. We need sustained investment in adapting our homes and public buildings.
We need a public transport revolution involving massive investment in an expanded rail and bus network. We need to bring energy back under public control so a transition to renewables can be planned rather than left in the hands of the very people profiting from fossil fuels.
None of that is on offer from the Tories — or from Labour under its “new management,” which involves tame acquiescence to a system that has set our world alight. The political alternative must be fought for from the ground up.
