Fire! Beasts! It’s Getting Hot and Biblical in Europe.
Reading Time: 5 minutesThe continent’s heat wave is already catastrophic. It could have been much worse., Europe record temperatures: France, Italy, and Germany’s heat emergency of wildfires, travel restrictions, and loose lions.
It’s a bad time to go outside pretty much anywhere around the world, whether you’re fending off heat domes in the American South or North Africa, trying to stay dry amid Asia’s pummeling monsoons and floods, or dodging the still-raging wildfires up in Quebec. Last month was the hottest June in global history and hottest-ever month period, marking a record that may yet be surpassed in the July we’re sweating through right now—which has already seen some of the most searing days on record. This atmospheric wrath is inescapable everywhere you squint, but to really understand the toll it’s taking, just look across the boiling Atlantic Ocean to the Earth’s fastest-warming continent, Europe—where wildfires are spreading uncontrollably, tourists and homeowners alike are finding themselves displaced from their shelters, a second heat wave is touching down after a week-old superstorm, and … a lion’s on the loose?
This is far from the first time Europe has sweltered under record-breaking heat waves. More than 35,000 Europeans died during the infamous heat wave of August 2003, and last year’s scorchers left a death toll of more than 61,000. But 2023’s heat killers have rolled out in a layered, unprecedented, shocking fashion. The recent spate of triple-digit temperatures (as measured in Fahrenheit) landed due to something called an ‘anticyclone’: a high-pressure aerial region where hot atmospheric air, surrounded by winds that blow away from its center, collects over a landmass and sinks down to the earth’s surface—bringing a bit of our sky-high climate, already choked with heat-trapping greenhouse gases, down to earth. Depending on how far you are from an anticyclone’s high-pressure center, you could be in for rains and floods fueled by air-trapped moisture, or insufferable heat carried within the dome. Last week, one such anticyclone, unofficially nicknamed after the three-headed hound of Hades from Greek mythology, formed over North Africa before crossing into southern Europe and drifting to the northern regions, leaving nothing less than a rampage trail of heat-related destruction. This week, a different anticyclone, named for Hades’ ferryman, also drifted from North Africa toward Europe’s outer-region nations, consigning Italy to crisis mode.
These high-pressure heat systems, which are leaving outdoor laborers to die, travelers to faint, and necessary gadgets like cars and phones to roast, are more than enough to deal with on their own. Greece, for one, has had to adapt by restricting tourist-site visits as well as construction and delivery worker hours. But that was before forest fires began spreading across the country’s islands and closed in on capital city Athens, necessitating civilian evacuations, highway closures, and assistance from firefighters based in fellow European Union countries like Romania, Italy, and Spain. The latter was an especially generous move, considering that forests on Italian and Spanish islands are also combusting and fueling widespread blazes, in a plight similar to Switzerland’s. Over in Germany and France, meanwhile, heat is sapping water from the all-important Rhine and Rhone rivers, threatening an essential shipping route for the Germans and an important nuclear-energy-production source for the French.
This misery is set to last through the end of the month—and because most Europeans don’t have air conditioners, they can’t just wait it out by staying inside. Hundreds of German workers, for their part, are stuck outside hunting a lioness on the loose outside of Berlin. We don’t know yet where the big cat came from, but we do know that it’s probably not safe to have it bolting across the city, since it was first spotted feasting on a wild boar. Ironically, fear of the lion is pushing common Berliners to stay inside their homes, an apt reversal of humans’ longtime encroachment on wildlife territory.
Perhaps the most saddening, frustrating aspect of this European nightmare is that 20 years ago, after losing too many people to the still-infamous early-century heat wave, governments promised to build resilience and protection against the next heat disaster. In the years after 2003, France set up a National Heat Wave Plan that involved expanding cooling centers with A/C, green spaces like public parks and gardens, water-bottle distribution networks, and a mass warning-dispatch system. Germany beefed up its rail system to make it less vulnerable to excess heat. Barcelona expanded green foliage on its schools and converted concrete-heavy lots into green ‘climate shelters.’ Europe is often seen as a global leader on adapting to climate change—which, yes, was a core driver of the 2003 heat wave and remains a key factor in more recent disasters. The region has embraced renewable energy sources, public transit, car-free spaces, and international agreements to lower greenhouse-gas emissions, protect biodiversity, crack down on plastics pollution, and hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its harmful impacts.
To be clear, all this work has had a profound, measurable impact, helping to reduce fatality rates from heat waves and cut down on harmful pollution and emissions. But Europe’s current struggles show this hasn’t been enough. Some of that is for reasons out of its control, certainly—domineering emitters like China, the United States, India, and Japan have simply not carried their end of the bargain when it comes to global cooperation on climate mitigation—but there were several unforced errors along the way, too. For one, the post-financial crisis austerity regime that wracked the EU after 2008 prevented many of its member governments from making even heftier investments in clean energy, public health, and general environmental protection. A baffling, persistent reliance on natural gas as a ‘bridge fuel’ poured tons of highly potent methane into the atmosphere, spurring global-warming feedback loops. And now, pernicious forms of climate denial are infiltrating European authorities, as manifested through targeted persecution of climate protesters, reluctance to transition away from natural gas and internal combustion engines, failure to improve upon commodity-driven agricultural practices, and local government obstruction of efforts to scrap outdated fossil-fuel-powered transport and climate-control technologies for environmentally friendly, energy-efficient alternatives. That very obstruction, of course, has been enabled by politicians who turn concepts like urban density into culture wars and then dismiss the environment as a point of concern. Take, for example, how Sweden’s relatively new right-wing government decided to ax the country’s environmental ministry, or how far-right Spaniards, gearing up for a key national election this weekend, are hoping to gain power by attacking climate solutions such as bike lanes and low-emission zones. Oh, and by demonizing Asian and African climate refugees.
A lot can change in just a couple decades. Europe’s zeal to shade itself from extreme heat invited notable successes, but its limited approach made fatal miscalculations. The thing is, without even those measures, the current anticyclone-driven dystopia would have been far more catastrophic. If Europe now decides to stop even trying, it can expect future summers to grow successively worse.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/07/europe-heat-fires-travel-german-lion.html
Ref: slate
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