In a country that spends so much of the year encased in a cool grey murk, a few days of blazing sunshine can seem like a welcome novelty. Temperatures of 33 degrees were recorded in Ireland in the last 48 hours, breaking records in some places.
But novelty should not obscure the alarming truths that such abnormal heat suggests. In Ireland and elsewhere, more frequently occurring extreme weather is showing us how a rapidly heating planet is playing havoc with lives and livelihoods. It will leave many places more dangerous. Some will become unliveable.
Wildfires are raging across Europe and north America. Extreme heat has smashed records around the world in recent months, with heatwaves striking India and south Asia, droughts devastating parts of Africa and unprecedented heatwaves at both poles in March. Extreme heat warnings have been issued in France and Britain, where temperatures were set to exceed 40 degrees in some places.
Yet the gap between the reality of man-made climate change and political action to contain it or mitigate its effects have seldom been more apparent. As ministers from 40 countries gathered in Berlin on Monday for a two-day climate conference to discuss extreme weather, United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said the wildfires and heatwaves showed humanity was facing “collective suicide” unless it acted with the required urgency. “Half of humanity is in the danger zone, from floods, droughts, extreme storms and wildfires. No nation is immune. Yet we continue to feed our fossil fuel addiction,” he told the conference, which is one of the last opportunities to find agreement among key countries before the Cop27 climate summit in Egypt in November.
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Hopes for progress at Cop27 have waned recently, as the war in Ukraine and the emergence from the Covid pandemic have contributed to energy and food price rises, causing soaring inflation and a cost-of-living crisis. In the UK, the extreme heat has given an air of unreality to the Conservative Party leadership election, where climate policy has barely featured in debate. There is a similar disconnect in Ireland, where slow-moving Government talks on planned reductions to agricultural emissions have pitted Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan against Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue, who appears to see his role as defending the case for more limited action by farmers.
The extreme heat has shown that countries such as Ireland are horribly unprepared for the dangerous extremes that are becoming the new normal. Housing here is not built for high temperatures. Flood plains are being built on. Water and energy infrastructure is not keeping pace. The sense is of a political system that is looking disaster in the face but cannot muster the response needed to avert the worst.