374: Europe’s Summer of Fire: The New Normal?

00:10:26.220 --> 00:10:27.160
Tom Rivett-Carnac

That's really helpful. Thank you. So you look at the statistical likelihood of the outcome based on the concentration of greenhouse gases. I totally understand. Thank you for explaining that. I wonder if there's a missing gap in how we think about climate, because we talk about the planet being 1.4 degrees warmer, which feels small, but then the impacts can be tens or hundreds of times worse when it comes to individual instances. So is there a disconnect between the overall broad trend and the specific instances? Are we not bridging that gap in our minds when we think about what's happening to us?

00:11:02.420 --> 00:11:23.940
Freddie Otto

I think that definitely is just a psychological problem that we probably all have, that if we talk about 1.4 degrees of warming, that doesn't sound very much, because, I mean, if you go outside and it's 24 degrees or it's 25.4 degrees, it doesn't feel very different. But of course, these 1.4 are a global average, and that means that all the changes in temperature over the whole world and especially over the huge ocean is included in that. That means that the changes locally, especially in heat waves, but also in other weather events, are much, much bigger and are just not something that are well represented at all with this indicator of global warming. That is one reason of why we started to do World Weather Attribution because by talking about what's the role of climate change in an individual weather event, it allows us to connect our own and other people's experience of weather with what this really abstract figure of 1.4 degree or, well, when we started, it was only one degree of warming means.

00:12:19.560 --> 00:12:20.200
Tom Rivett-Carnac

Amazing. Then here's the really difficult question. Because through your work, we now understand that what we are experiencing in these exceptional summers and these terrible wildfires is caused by climate change which is caused by humans. Yet, this episode is largely about the slightly strange sense that we have, that the media is not really telling us the full story. Recent analysis in the UK is that 73 percent of articles that talk about the heat waves don't mention climate change. What's your assessment of what's happening there? People might say that's a conspiracy, they're trying to keep the truth from us. Others will say that's just not how journalism works. You spend a lot of your time trying to get accurate reporting in the media. Help us understand what's going on.

00:13:05.860 --> 00:13:31.760
Freddie Otto

This is a really good question and I'm not sure I have a complete answer to that because as you said, we've spent a lot of time trying to help the media to report accurately on this event and to explain the full causal chain, not only what happened and what that means for people from a meteorological side, but also why these events happen, and that's because of human-induced climate change. We have made a lot of progress actually in the reporting. When we started this work over 10 years ago, it was basically that every reporter said, you can't attribute individual weather events to climate change. That has over time changed. Now, every time we do a study, it is reported on and it is accurately reported on actually across the media. But we still find very often, as you said, that when we haven't done a study or when the study has been two weeks ago, and the heat wave is still going on, then that climate change angle is getting missed again. I think a little bit of that is that it still hasn't quite filtered through to all reporting that. You don't need to wait for a study, especially not when you talk about extreme heat, but also for the droughts that we've seen in Southern Europe. There are so many studies now that show that climate change does make them drier. Also for the fires, heat is a key component of these fires. Mentioning climate change is important and you can do it without having a study. I think that this is part of a broader understanding of you can't only talk about climate change if you actually have a concrete study. But you don't need to wait for the study because the evidence is so strong now. That I think is still something that is missing maybe in the understanding of a lot of journalists and of course, because climate change has been very politicized, especially in the last couple of years, I think a lot of journalists are trying to be extra careful not to overreach and therefore, then I think really err on the wrong side and not mention this unless they are absolutely dead certain. But of course, we can be dead certain now with these heat waves. But I think that is something that I think we just, especially to journalists and other people in the media, we have to explain that again.

00:15:35.900 --> 00:15:36.200
Tom Rivett-Carnac

Yeah. I mean, thank you for explaining that. I think that education and insight and information is always going to be really valuable. I wonder if the point you made there is the really important one, which is if you're writing for a paper that is maybe centrist or right of center, you're aware that we've gotten to a point where this is a cultural trigger. When you talk about climate, it seems to indicate a certain political point of view. Either they just don't put it in or their editors take it out, and we end up in this strange situation where we see that the world around us is behaving in a strange way. Yet you open the papers and it's not really mentioned. Do you think people really feel like they're being a bit gaslit by that situation?

00:16:14.800 --> 00:16:15.580
Freddie Otto

No, I think you're right. Of course, what I just said is for the journalists that are really in good faith and really want to get it right. But of course, I think you're absolutely right. There's also a lot of that might be even if they think it plays a role, they don't want to think about it too hard because as you said, it is a cultural trigger and it is something that they will then get in trouble with the editors. That is of course a big problem. I mean, that is the much, much bigger problem than that. We just have to get climate change out of this cultural war again and just talk about it as just the physical reality that it is. But yeah, I think you're a better place than me to say how we achieve that.

00:17:00.620 --> 00:17:02.140
Tom Rivett-Carnac

That's a role for all of us for sure. Freddie, we are huge fans of your work at World Weather Attribution. Thank you for everything you do. You've had such a big impact and really, really value and appreciate your perspective on this today. Thanks so much.

00:17:12.580 --> 00:17:13.160
Freddie Otto

Thank you.

00:17:20.020 --> 00:17:24.380
Tom Rivett-Carnac

Emma Howard Boyd, it is a joy and a pleasure to welcome you back to Outrage and Optimism. You, of course, were on some years ago, but it's nice to talk to you again. You and I each actually see each other a fair bit because we're on the board of ClientEarth together where you're the chair. But we're not here to talk to you about that because you actually wear many hats. And one if I can characterize you in a bit of a shorthand is you have been very much ahead of the game in calling, particularly in the UK but around the world, that we need to take adaptation seriously. We need to look at flooding. We need to look at heat. We need to, of course, we need to mitigate, but we also need to adapt to the changes that are baked into our system. You were giving evidence to a select committee on heat waves a few months ago. Since then, we have seen successive heat waves in the UK. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from their homes. This year feels different to me. Does it feel different to you? And have we passed over some kind of invisible threshold that we will look back and remember later? How are you interpreting this summer?

00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:20.580
Emma Howard Boyd

It does feel different. It feels like the impacts of the three, almost four heat waves and all the things that have gone alongside it are affecting more people. I now live in Bristol and led the London Climate Resilience Review. And I think when we had 40 degree heat and it was back in 2022, whilst it was broader than London, it feels like more of the country is having a much more detailed response. But yes, it does feel different. And there are many, many, many more people asking, suffering, feeling confused about what is happening. And I hope this does cut through in a very different way. But I think it needs us to be organizing in a very different way too.

00:19:17.460 --> 00:19:21.220
Tom Rivett-Carnac

Have we heeded any of the warnings that you've been giving us over the years?

00:19:21.900 --> 00:19:37.840
Emma Howard Boyd

I don't think we have got in a place that is ensuring that we're prepared for what scientists and others, including myself, have been calling out for, for quite some time. And I think it's quite shocking. I mean, I do listen to your podcast. And I think we all think back to that first chapter in Ministry of the Future. And that has been a reference point for me over many, many years since I first read that book. And it just feels like it is playing out big time in Europe, here in the UK. And I really do wonder whether our political leaders are taking heed of what it is that we're experiencing and how this is not just an environmental issue. This is a health issue. This is an economic issue. This is a security issue. And every minister, every secretary of state, every leader at a national level, at a regional level, and at a local level, should be thinking about how this could be impacting the work, the communities that they are responsible for and help protect them.

00:20:42.880 --> 00:21:01.280
Tom Rivett-Carnac

It's interesting, isn't it, because I mean, I think that many of us have perhaps labored under an assumption that at some point things would get to a point where the costs and the impacts were so evident, that the arguments that would be made for mitigation and adaptation would become easier. But as the risk gets greater, the urgency doesn't seem to be translating. How do you explain that to yourself, why that's not happening in a way that we might have thought that it would?

00:21:12.280 --> 00:21:20.100
Emma Howard Boyd

If you take heat, I think when you're living the heat wave, it feels so real. But almost as soon as they go away, you forget, you feel better. I mean, I've certainly felt across this summer that I've been living with a heat wave hangover as my body has not responded particularly well to some of the heats that we've been experiencing and the relentlessness of it. But it is silent. We don't necessarily see it. We now are seeing it in the fires. We are seeing it in the dryness of our landscape. I think that is when it becomes incredibly real. But it's very easy to forget very, very quickly and go back to the next big thing that a government needs to worry about. I think often the impacts and the scale of them, it has taken months to get the economic consequences, the health consequences. By the time we are notified by the UK Health Security Agency that there are excess deaths, it's nine months later, and we're probably in the middle of a cool period. So the news doesn't hit in quite the same way. So I am really pleased to see how some of our scientific organizations are now working a bit like we get with our weather attribution that after an event, that this is seen to be as a direct consequence of our changing climate. That we start seeing maybe a week, maybe 10 days, two weeks after a heatwave, what an early estimate of those economic consequences might be.

00:23:12.360 --> 00:23:20.040
Tom Rivett-Carnac

That's true and getting some of the feedback of the economic impact is going to help us and help citizens to understand what's happening. But you would be forgiven in way you and I are both sitting in the UK, but this is an issue in many countries, for being quite confused at the moment. I mean, I don't know who is doing the headlines and the front page of The Times at the moment. But famously in social media over the last few days, we've had various issues of The Times where there's been a big above the fold piece that says Net Zero Risks Blackouts or something like that. And underneath is a picture of an enormous wildfire and people fleeing from the scene. And these two things are kind of coexisting together. I'm talking to lots of people. It feels like something else is going on. There's a deliberate attempt to stop us seeing this. Do you buy that or do you think that we're just struggling to connect the dots in the media?

00:24:04.780 --> 00:24:07.160
Emma Howard Boyd

I wish I knew the answer. But if I'm thinking of the fires that are playing out in France and Spain in particular, but in other parts of the world, and then take the city of Bordeaux and knowing some of the industries, the businesses, the security organizations that are present in and around that major city in France, there shouldn't be a single chief exec of a company or a leader of a security group not thinking about the consequences of that fire, not just from the health and the lives and livelihoods of those thousands of people who are being disrupted right now, or the 240-odd homes that have been burnt down to the ground. But thinking about the real risk to those organizations from, whether it is explosions where heat can damage those businesses, I think whilst worrying about that dialogue, also understanding that maybe there's a whole range of other leaders who aren't necessarily thinking about climate from the perspective that you and I have been doing for many years, but will now absolutely have to be thinking about the risks to their businesses, to their livelihoods, to how profitable they are looking at their risk registers from something that is playing out in Spain, in France, but could over time start playing out here in the UK as well.

00:25:59.120 --> 00:25:59.480
Tom Rivett-Carnac

Yeah. No, it's such a good point. I mean, this podcast is obviously listened to in many parts of the world. As you say, this is going to affect, yes, the UK, but Germany, the Nordics. I mean, it's already in Canada. There's lots of different scenarios where this is happening. I'd love to ask you, because I mean, as you now look so many things that you, in the leadership that you've shown over so many years with the Environment Agency and the commissions you've been part of, including the heat work that you're doing right now, you have made recommendations for policy interventions that should be made by governments to help protect citizens. As you now look at how the UK is experiencing this summer, but also France and Spain, what are some of the recommendations that you have made, had they been fully implemented, would have made the biggest changes to what we're now experiencing?

00:26:45.580 --> 00:26:55.740
Emma Howard Boyd

So where we're seeing progress in this country and elsewhere is that mayors are taking action and delivering change. So one of the key areas of focus from the London Climate Resilience Review, which I was commissioned to do by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, was to focus on heat. In the absence of a national strategy for heat, focus on a strategy for London and a delivery plan. Now, I would have loved that to have been implemented immediately, and there were some recommendations that were, including holding an exercise called Exercise Helios, which was inspired of the then Mayor of Paris' focus on 50 degree, the potential for 50 degree heat in Paris. This was about having experienced two to three days at 40 degrees. What would London need to do to get ready for a week of 40 degree heat? That was implemented back in the summer of 2024. During London Climate Action Week, Sadiq Khan launched Heat Ready London, which was London's response, London's plan to take action on heat across all sectors. It was launched, interestingly, at Islington Fire Station alongside the fire brigade and with the commissioner for the London fire brigade. Because back in 2022, alongside the heat wave when we had a whole range of different impacts playing out, there was a ring of fire all the way around London. And over July 19th, 20th, it was the busiest day for the London fire brigade since the Second World War. And what that plan does is, and it's still at its relative early stages, I think we're going to be seeing more details of it come out this summer, shows what a mayor can do. And in the absence of that national vision for a heat strategy. But like many mayors in this country and many mayors around the world, it also depends on the right powers and the right finances being devolved to that local level.

00:29:21.680 --> 00:29:22.280
Tom Rivett-Carnac

Amazing. So thank you for that. And I want to ask you about, for somebody who spent 20 years focused on climate, this summer has shocked me. I mean, I think that the successive heatwaves, the way in which it has become enveloped into a normal narrative, but it feels anything but, to what degree can the right choices now make a fundamental difference to the trajectory of countries to stay in Western Europe for now over the coming decades? Can we adapt to this? This feels maybe unadaptable to, or is that not true? Wow.

00:29:56.300 --> 00:29:57.900
Emma Howard Boyd

I want to keep this optimistic. Okay, good. We have to make sure and understand that every decision we're making, we have a choice to build in that resilience or lock in that vulnerability. Now, whether it will be enough and whether there are choices that over time we might need to make, and this absolutely needs to be done, lockstep with reducing emissions and working at that global level. But if you take schools, just this February, the Education Secretary announced a 10-year estates program. There was a little bit on heat waves in that strategy document. We now need to ensure that it is absolutely key that every time we upgrade a school or build a new one that we're thinking about how children can learn and teachers can teach in that school. Whilst also thinking about what are the things that we need to do over the next 12 months that will help our children continue to learn in what will potentially be overheating schools as we face into an El Nino. Same with hospitals. We need to make sure that we are building hospitals, retrofitting hospitals for all the things that also need to take place, but making sure that they can continue to operate within the framing of temperature rise that we are now expecting. And just make sure that we are focusing constantly at those people who are most at risk and most vulnerable. And again, it is often the people who have done least in their lifestyle, who are the ones that suffer most throughout our heatwaves. I think focusing on communities too. I visited the other day in Bristol, a place called Hillfields Community Garden. They recently took on a sports hall that is powered by renewables. And when the local schools closed during the June heatwave, they were able to open the sports facility to local parents and children as a cool play area. So again, in our prioritization, make sure that we are investing early in places where people can go whilst we're doing longer term, perhaps over the next decade, retrofit programs to bring places up to a better place to deal with some of these heatwaves that we're now experiencing.

00:32:55.420 --> 00:32:56.860
Tom Rivett-Carnac

Emma, thank you so much. I think the analysis that you've provided over so many years around what we need to do is something that we need to take so much more urgently across the UK, across Europe, because as we've experienced with this summer, we need to do everything we can to mitigate, but these impacts are still accelerating. As you said very clearly, there are many things that we can do to make this more manageable. Really appreciate your leadership on this over so many years, and thank you so much for joining us.

00:33:21.800 --> 00:33:22.340
Emma Howard Boyd

Thank you.