Herald Express: Britain boils this summer...is this the new normal?

I had just begun to unwind on Friday evening when the alarm went off, alerting me, along with the rest of the country, to the extremely high risk of wildfires after the driest July on record.

It was a reminder we didn’t need.

Turn on the TV and you’ll find the news laden with stories of climate breakdown.

Farmers lamenting potatoes being boiled in the ground by the extreme heat.

Wildfires larger than every professional football pitch in the country combined raging in the New Forest.

The Prime Minister, with smouldering, charred houses in the backdrop, warning we must face up to our changing climate.

I really hope he heeds this warning. Since he became Prime Minister, Andy Burnham has had precious little to say about the climate.

While his government has found time to interject on Westminster Council’s plans to limit vertical drinking, he’s kept relatively quiet on what is undoubtedly the most pressing issue of our time.

The government’s silence has left some feeling as though they are on their own, forced to soldier through. Nowhere is this sentiment clearer than in the NHS.

Data, obtained via a Freedom of Information request by the Liberal Democrats, found hospitals have recorded temperatures of almost 42C this summer, with surgeries being cancelled and staff collapsing from the extreme heat.

Of the 33 NHS trusts who complied with the FOI, the average ward temperature in July stood at 31.9C – far above the 28C which NHS England considers the absolute limit hospitals should reach without jeopardising staff and patient safety.

But it is not only NHS workers who have been feeling the heat. As I write this piece, passengers are facing major disruptions to bus journeys in north London and Essex thanks to Arriva drivers going on strike.

Pay and conditions are in the mix as usual, but what makes this strike notable is how prominently working in extreme heat features in the negotiations. Just one industry where people are grappling with adapting to our changing climate.

Another is construction; a study from the University of Reading found 67% of site workers are concerned about the health impacts of extreme heat. Nearly half had experienced a heat-related illness like heat stroke or dehydration.

What makes the above statistics even scarier is that this summer could be the coldest we experience from now on. As was made clear in the powerful National Emergency Briefing film, we are living through the most stable climate of our lives. In years to come we may look back fondly on this summer as a time when the temperature did not regularly breach the 40C mark.

Last week the Prime Minister chaired a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee to discuss the extreme heat. Shortly afterwards, he announced a temporary ban on the sale of disposable BBQs.

While I welcome that move, it feels almost laughably inadequate set against the scale of the challenge before us. Sticking plaster politics, favoured by Burnham’s predecessor, springs to mind.

What we need is the genuinely long-term, cross-departmental thinking climate adaptation demands. Banning disposable BBQs is fine, but is that really an answer? How does that help the NHS? Or those working in construction? Or bus drivers? Or anyone else trying to earn a living under extreme heat? It is a solution to a short-term problem when what is required is long-term strategic planning to prepare us for what is coming.

I can only guess that like every household the phones in Number 10 were dinging last week when the emergency alert went out. I hope they not only heard it but absorbed the alarm, taking it as a warning that they have to do the hard work successive governments have ignored.