Some don’t like it hot: melting roads, raging wildfires and an energy crunch

By Bo Franklin

Spaniards know that the way to live with sweltering summers is to down tools during the hottest part of the day, then come to life during the long, cooler evenings. That folk wisdom has wilted in the heatwave engulfing western Europe. In the past week Madrid has sweated through five noches tórridas (torrid nights), the official term for a nocturnal temperature above 25°C. On Sunday the city held a minute’s silence for a street cleaner who died from heatstroke.

In the countryside in Spain, Portugal and the south of France, wildfires are raging. This year almost 30,000 hectares have been scorched in Portugal, an area five times the size of Manhattan. On July 15th the pilot of a fire-fighting aircraft died when his plane crashed while dousing a blaze in the north of the country. And water is becoming scarce. The Po valley in the north of Italy is experiencing its worst drought in 70 years. Some olive trees are not producing fruit, and growers of arborio rice expect a poor harvest.

Some refuse to let the heat beat them. The organisers of the Tour de France have brought in water trucks to soak the roads and stop them from melting before the peloton passes through. That does little to cool down the competitors, however. One described the stages as “horrible, a furnace”.

Even Britain is working up a sweat. It is either a green and pleasant land or a perpetually drizzly outcrop, depending on whom you ask. But the mercury is forecast to reach 40°C in London, a record. Britons are noticeably less accustomed to extreme temperatures than their neighbours. Vets have told worried dog owners not to shave their pets (the fur helps to keep them cool), and schoolteachers are fretting over whether to let children compete in their annual sports days.

It is not just Europe that is burning up. In central China temperatures have risen above 40°C. One woman on a Shanghai street, when asked by the BBC what she made of the heat, likened it to being in an air-fryer. Air-conditioning is common in many buildings, but this may lead to another problem: an energy crunch. As happened in India during a period of extreme heat this year, power stations are facing a huge increase in demand. In Zhejiang province, an important manufacturing centre in the east of China, some factories have been subject to power rationing.

The oppressive weather has refocused many people’s attention on the need to tackle climate change, which had been bumped down governmental to-do lists by covid-19, the war in Ukraine and surging inflation. It is tricky to ascribe individual heat waves to rising emissions, but scientists agree that global warming increases the chances of them happening. In Britain, four of the contenders to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister scrambled to commit to net-zero emissions after weather forecasters predicted a scorcher. But record high temperatures in Texas earlier this month did little to dissuade Joe Manchin, a Democratic senator, from blocking President Joe Biden’s package of climate measures. Even while millions of people feel the heat, some politicians remain frozen. ■

Images: ©Martin Parr / Magnum Photos, Bloomberg, Getty, AP