‘Keir Starmer Must Break His Silence on the Climate Crisis Driving the UK’s Extreme Temperatures’

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This coming weekend is the third anniversary of UK temperatures hitting 40C hit for first time ever. Since then, countless new records have been broken. In 2023, some areas had a quarter more rainfall than normal, making the year one of the ten wettest for England and Northern Ireland since 1836. May 2024 was the warmest on record and that Spring was the wettest and warmest ever too – until this year smashed that last record. There have been three heatwaves already this summer and June became the warmest month for England.

These facts and figures can sometimes feel as relentless as the heat, but put simply, as a new Met Office report on the state of the climate puts it, record-breaking and extreme weather has become increasingly commonplace over the last decade.

For the majority of us here in the UK, a nation notoriously obsessed with the weather, the effects of this change still feel relatively benign – sunnier days and longer, drier summers, what’s not to like? However, headlines about Wimbledon running out of water and fans collapsing in the sweltering heat might hint at what’s to come. So too might the extreme wildfire and drought warnings – reservoir levels fell at nearly three-quarters of sites in June and are below average in all regions.

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But with the Government mostly silent about what we need to do to adapt to the ever-shifting new normal, most of us can be forgiven for thinking everything’s under control.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The Government’s own climate watchdog has warned that the UK’s preparedness for extreme weather events is inadequate, disjointed and piecemeal. Despite that 40-degree watershed moment back in 2022, the Government doesn’t even have a heat strategy in place. It hasn’t introduced a maximum safe temperature for our workplaces, to mirror the minimum below which it’s considered unsafe to work. And that has consequences for us all – for our communities, our public services and our economy.

Researchers at UCL and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have warned that extreme heat could lead to an extra 30,000 deaths a year in England and Wales by the 2070s, putting an already strained NHS under immense further pressure. London alone saw an estimated 263 people dying in the 23 June – 2 July heatwave. We are clearly in the midst of a public health crisis, and one that’s barely being acknowledged by the Department for Health. 

The fire services are having to respond to a much higher number of fires this year than normal, yet their funding is still being cut in real terms.

And when the Chancellor is so fixated on driving up growth as the sole way to fund those public services that are crucial when it comes to helping us all stay safe, there’s precious little comfort in the findings of central bankers and financial experts that reckon climate change-driven extreme weather events could wipe almost five per cent off Europe’s projected GDP over the next five years.

Alongside urgently ending our reliance on the fossil fuels that are driving climate breakdown, it’s clear we should be making it much more of a priority to prepare properly for the impacts. We should be making decisions now that lock in resilience rather than vulnerability. 

Take schools, for example. Most of us can remember sitting exams in stuffy gyms or assembly halls, desperate to be anywhere else. As temperatures continue to rise, it makes no sense to subject our children and young people to this ordeal at times of peak heat. We should instead be reimagining the school year so they can perform to the very best of their abilities before the hottest times of the year take hold. And we should be supporting every single school to update their risk registers so that they are prepared for extreme weather events and to keep everyone in their care safe should the worst happen, whether that’s a wildfire or a flood. 

Businesses and households need help and support to prepare better, as well as to be protected from the impacts of climate chaos. Yet in the recent heatwaves, I’ve not seen any adverts at the bus stop explaining to people how to stay safe, heard nothing on the radio or seen anything on TV about the best ways to keep our homes cool. 

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One of the more welcome records that’s been achieved this year is the announcement of more funding for flood defences than ever before. That’s just the start, though. From natural flood schemes to creating ‘warm rooms’ in winter and ‘cool rooms’ in summer, from making it standard to fit cooling units under the Boiler Upgrade Scheme to grants that cover shutters as well as insulation, there’s so much more that will help. And, of course, every single new home, every single bit of new infrastructure must be flood-resistant and designed to cope with extreme heat and storms, as well as energy efficient and kitted out with renewables. 

From transport to our food and farming system, the climate emergency risks bringing our country to its knees. The railways are already struggling to cope, the cost of food is already rising because the hot weather is reducing yields. But with the right choices, we can bake resilience into every aspect of our lives – indeed, we must. 

None of us is safe from the impacts of climate breakdown – the flood waters and the rising sea levels don’t discriminate. But here at home and around the world, it’s often the poorest that pay the highest price for climate inaction.

So with the likes of Nigel Farage weaponising the net zero plans that will help protect everyone against even further climate chaos, trying to erode the climate consensus that has widespread popular support, it’s critical that we adapt fairly too – whether that’s by giving people grants not loans to future proof their homes or guaranteeing a livelihood for oil and gas workers.

Just like climate action to reduce dangerous emissions, preparing and adapting for a warming climate needs to be done in ways that tackle inequality at the same time. And it needs to be the responsibility of every single Government department. Only then can we begin to respond at the scale and with the level of coordination this long emergency demands. 

Keeping people safe is the greatest responsibility of any government. That’s why I have called on Labour to announce a new cross-cutting mission to sit alongside its existing ones – to protect the public against the growing climate threat. 

This moment demands nothing less. It would be a fitting follow up to the leadership the UK’s showed back in 2008 by passing groundbreaking climate change legislation.  And it would position the UK as the first major global economy to put adaptation on a serious footing  – and unlike the frightening temperature records that have become all too familiar, that really would be a first we could all celebrate.