As I write this, the fifth hot, deadly and costly heatwave of the summer, with temperatures of 35–40 degrees or more, is sweeping across the European continent and the UK. This could breathe new life into the climate movement that, before the 2019 pandemic, saw the world’s young people take to the streets.
All the signs suggest that August will be the fourth consecutive month of record-breaking heat and extreme drought in Europe. This is fuelled by continued emissions resulting in record-high concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and compounded by the latest El Niño event, generated by surface heat in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
The global level of CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere reached 425.6 parts per million in 2025. This represents a 53 per cent increase from pre-industrial levels, whilst emissions from fossil fuels set new records despite all the annual UN-led conferences on this threat since the early 1990s.
The first two of Europe’s summer months in 2026 were 2.79 degrees warmer than usual, according to the European observation service Copernicus, exceeding the previous record set four years ago.
Although this is precisely what the world’s climate scientists and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been warning about for decades, Europe’s capitalist politicians seem completely oblivious. They are fully preoccupied with military arms races, geopolitical power struggles and watering down demands for industrial decarbonisation, yet almost entirely blind to the greatest security threat facing humanity.
Heading Towards 2.7 Degrees
A German ‘National Interdisciplinary Climate Risk Assessment’, drawn up by leading climate scientists, intelligence and military strategists, last year warned that, in a world heading towards 2.7 degrees of warming above the pre-industrial average this century, a third of the world’s population would be living in areas too hot or too dry to inhabit by 2050, with destabilisation and political conflict even in Europe. This warning has made no difference.
The global five-year average exceeding 1.5 degrees is expected to occur before 2030. Globally, the last three years have been the three warmest on record and the last eleven the eleven warmest. Europe is the continent where the rise in temperature is greatest, already reaching 2.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels this summer.
As a result, power generation – including nuclear power stations – has been shut down across the continent; the tarmac has melted on German motorways; houses and hospitals have overheated; thousands of schools have been kept closed; and farmland has dried up.
Thousands of Fires
Most dramatic of all are the thousands of forest and grass fires, more numerous and more extensive than ever at this time of year. Right now, more than 200 fires are raging simultaneously from Portugal in the west to Ukraine in the east.
But as the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reports, global warming is triggering an increasing number of more intense extreme weather events across the globe.
In Tunisia, temperatures of nearly 50 degrees have been recorded. The orange, toxic smoke from 800 wildfires in Canada have this summer impaired air quality as far south as New York.
In China, the monster typhoon Dolphin has forced the dramatic evacuation of one million people, whilst this year’s monsoon rains and melting glaciers in the Himalayas have caused massive flooding in India and Pakistan as well.
The very largest of thousands of fires across Europe – 1,500 of which covered more than 30 hectares – have raged south-west of Bordeaux near France’s west coast and west of Madrid in Spain. These disasters have forced the evacuation of 220,000 people in France and 100,000 in Spain. In mid-August, another major fire also broke out in Belgium’s largest nature reserve.
According to the European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), by July more land had already been burnt in France in 2026 than during the whole of 2025, whilst forest fires in Spain and across Europe as a whole also exceeded previous record levels. Across the EU, 490,000 hectares had been burnt by the end of July, compared with a twenty-year average of 197,000.
Rivers with Low Water
Europe’s major rivers, such as the Danube, the Rhine and the Po, currently have such low water levels due to the drought caused by this record-breaking hot summer that they are no longer navigable for larger boats and barges. Another consequence of the record-low water levels and high sea temperatures is the disruption of agricultural irrigation and electricity generation. The latter relies on cooling systems at nuclear and coal-fired power stations. Furthermore, hydroelectric power is dwindling.
Romania was the first to completely shut down its only nuclear power station and declare a national state of emergency. Last week, according to the new Prime Minister Peter Magyar, the water level of the Danube at Hungary’s only nuclear power station, Paks, was just a few millimetres away from forcing the closure of the last functioning turbine. A regional state of emergency has been declared along the Po Valley in northern Italy, where the water level of the River Po was already 70 per cent below the average for the period 1991–2020 at the start of July.
In France, too, nuclear power stations near rivers and the sea have been forced to shut down temporarily due to dwindling water supplies and warm seas.
Rising sea temperatures have made swarms of jellyfish more common along the French coast. Despite having spent hundreds of thousands of euros since last summer’s closure on hiring fishing boats to protect the Gravelines nuclear power station in northern France from the “several tens of tonnes” of jellyfish that have blocked the pumping systems, the state-owned electricity company EDF has once again been forced to shut down the plant this summer for the same reason. This demonstrates that nuclear power stations are ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of climate change.
Climate-Related Recession
This summer’s extreme heat is expected, according to an analysis by the Dutch bank Triodos Bank, to cost the EU 180 billion euros. This will wipe out the entire 1% GDP growth expected in the EU this year. As for France, the country is predicted to slip into a climate-related recession.
Contributing to this are reduced output in European agriculture, with lower cereal harvests, reduced milk production and rising food prices; limited electricity generation and higher wholesale electricity prices; and disruptions to rail, road and waterway capacity.
All of this means higher prices for bread, pasta, muesli, porridge and flour. As grain is used as animal feed, this will also drive up the prices of meat, eggs and milk.
“It is by no means impossible that we could face a price shock similar to the one we experienced in 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine,” warns Helena Hansson, Professor of Economics at SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), in an interview with Dagens Nyheter.
The investment bank Goldman Sachs forecasts that global food prices will rise by 16% by 2028.
200,000 Lives
The worst consequence, of course, is the loss of human life. On 11 June 2026, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Regional Director for Europe, Dr Hans Henri P. Kluge, estimated that heatwaves in Europe over the past four years have claimed 200,000 lives. This figure includes confirmed heat-related deaths, indirect deaths caused by heat-related infrastructure problems, the consequences of wildfires, and excess mortality among particularly vulnerable elderly people, infants, and those with heart, lung and kidney conditions in 13 European countries.
Who is affected is primarily a question of class. Just as the communities that have contributed least to climate change are hit hardest, in every country it is the poorest – those without gardens or homes with good insulation, ventilation, access to clean water, affordable energy, secure jobs and healthcare within reach – who are least able to escape the heat, cool their homes or recover.
Instead of coming to their aid, the world’s capitalist leaders are ignoring all warnings, closing their borders, arming their militaries for new wars in addition to those already raging, cutting aid, and failing to provide the UN with even a fifth of the funds it has requested to protect the world’s 8.8 million most vulnerable people.
Perhaps the heat of this summer, in opposition to all this, may breathe new life into the global climate movement – led by school students – which faltered in the wake of the 2019 pandemic. One promising sign is that the climate march in Stockholm on 23 August was a major event. Hopefully, we can look forward to seeing ‘People Not Profit’ return as a slogan amongst young people who have begun to realise that a capitalist solution is not possible.
What is required is a swift, massive, equitable and democratically planned transition – on a global, national and local scale – of everything that is produced and not produced, of how we work, travel and live in harmony with nature.
The same applies to mastering the adaptation to an inevitably warmer and more unstable natural environment. In Europe’s most vulnerable regions, the challenge is already acute: to develop everything from fire protection to cooler housing, shaded streets and parks, locally produced food, heat-resistant hospitals, reliable water systems, public cooling centres, worker protection and early warning systems.
To succeed, this requires resistance to the destructive capitalist system that is unchecked in its plundering of both the world’s workers and nature, and is driving us towards war and environmental disasters – a resistance which, to triumph, must evolve into a social revolution and democratic socialism on a global scale.
