Calls for a public emergency briefing!

by Ci Davis

As a fourth heatwave of the summer eases, what have we learnt? July rainfall has been 7% of normal. This has built upon the drought conditions of the previous year, and a hosepipe ban has only been avoided because of unprecedented rainfall in January and February. We have therefore experienced something climate scientists describe as a ‘climate whiplash’; rapid swings from one type of weather to another. The situation is a consequence of climate change that is making these variations more extreme and frequent. While it is tempting to feel relieved that earlier rainfall refilled our reservoirs, this risks distracting us from recognising that some serious harms are multiplying.

During the first two heatwaves of the year, there have been 2877 excess deaths in the UK, and while Sheffield has been spared these, in previous heatwaves as many as 24 additional deaths have been identified in the city. Agriculture is heavily impacted by the drought with crop yields and milk production declining by 20%. Conditions for farmworkers and outdoor manual workers have been gruelling, causing heat stress and fatigue but also high skin cancer rates as farmworkers receive 5-10 times the UV radiation of indoor workers. 

The heatwaves have had a severe impact on infrastructure and public transport systems, with the South Yorkshire Supertram forced to close all services when the temperature reached 34 degrees Celsius, and heavy speed restrictions were applied to railways due to the buckling of the metal tracks.

We are not out of the woods, as a ‘super El Niño’ building in the Pacific will have huge implications on the global climate in 2027 and seriously threaten global agriculture. It is expected that the region where the Niño builds will have a surface temperature 4.3 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 baseline, and well above the previous high when 40 million died from a resulting famine.

A message from ‘The People’s Emergency Briefing’, recently screened to a Sheffield audience and reported upon in the Telegraph, is the need for politicians and councillors to prepare for serious disruption and threat to life. The producers acknowledge “societies function best when difficult issues can be discussed openly” and call upon the government to “stage a prime-time televised briefing”. You can write to your MP and councillors and encourage them to support this initiative. Heat-induced wildfires in France and Spain demonstrate the tragic consequences of delaying action.