It’s hot in London right now. HOT. This - the 2nd European heatwave of 2026 - might not be front and center in the news in the US, but here in Blighty blast furnace heat is dominating the airwaves and the internet.
Yesterday morning at 8:30 it was already 80F. At 2:25pm, as I sat down to write this, it was 94F, which the Met Office promised would be the high for this week. Today, as I wrap up my rant, my neighborhood in London (which is down by the Thames, and so should be cooler than areas further from the river) will reach a high of 88F. Balmy!
Point of personal bias: I might actually be a polar bear. I am large, scary, and have pale hair. I loathe heat and eschew the sun. When a friend called our local star the Vile Yellow Orb, I cackled with pleasure and stole the moniker for my own use. I am happiest at temperatures under 65F. I love spring and fall, and absolutely adore winter. In summer, I sweat and bitch and hug the lee of buildings to stay in the shade. In winter, I frolic in the snow and am relentlessly cheerful. (This drives my husband mad.) The colder the snap, the better. So yes, I have a personal dog in this fight.
That said, the heat right now is brutal. It’s beastly. It’s savage. Scorching - sweltering - torrid - unbearable - dangerous - debilitating. Even people like my husband - people who relish the warm sun and think it’s too cold when the overnight temps dip below 60F - are freaking out. Because it is HOT. It is very, very, very HOT.
How hot?
CNN reporting “brutal, record breaking” temperatures in the UK.
Rare warnings: The UK Met Office has issued exceptionally rare “Red Extreme Heat Warnings” for today and tomorrow, with temperatures forecast to soar to at least 102.2 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Celsius), which would obliterate the UK’s June heat record of 96.08 degrees Fahrenheit (35.6 Celsius).
Hottest day on record in the UK, also from the Guardian.
Across Europe, schools, hospitals, care homes and workplaces have struggled to handle sweltering temperatures that stress organs and push people beyond what their bodies can handle. Coping measures this week have resulted in trains driving slower, hospitals cancelling appointments, schools closing early or completely, and hosepipe bans.
Shops, offices, and schools are closing in the UK, reports the Standard.
London is struggling to cope with an intense heatwave currently sweeping across the continent, as the UK recorded its hottest June day on record on Wednesday.
A rare Met Office “risk to life” red weather warning for the capital caused widespread disruption across the city, with shops, offices and schools being forced to close.
Hottest day on record in France, from the Guardian.
In southwestern France, staff at the Golfech nuclear plant switched off a reactor after discovering that cooling water drawn from a nearby river had warmed beyond the safe level of 28C, a spokesperson told AFP.
Record heatwave in France sparking widespread power outages, per the BBC.
France has recorded its hottest day since records began in 1947, its national weather agency says, breaking a record set on Tuesday as an early summer heatwave grips western Europe.
The national temperature indicator - an average of day and night temperatures across dozens of locations - hit 30C, up from 29.8C a day earlier.
Europe is sweltering under a deadly “Omega” heatwave, says Reuters.
At least 50 die in France as heatwave persists
Disruptions to power grid in France, schools shut in Britain
Italy puts 16 cities on alert, heatwave to intensify
Prolonged heat driven by the Omega block weather pattern
Here in London, in the far south of England, we are north of even International Falls, Minnesota, a city often referred to as “the icebox of the nation.”
Remember that no part of the UK is further south than the northern border between Canada and the US. That’s why sunset in London tonight will be at 9:22pm, while in NYC, it’ll be at 8:31. That difference of more than an hour speaks to how far north the UK is. It’s not expected to get hot up here. Not mildly hot, to be honest - and definitely not this hot. The fact that the UK has now broken 2 heat records already - one in May and one in June - is, frankly, horrifying.
In the north of Europe, the infrastructure was not built to withstand this weather. In the UK specifically, almost all housing is constructed to stay cozy and warm - not cool. Railway networks were built with steel that buckles in sustained 40C degree plus temperatures. Schools routinely do not have air conditioning - because they have never needed air conditioning. The UK was not set up for - was not constructed for - summers like this. Businesses are losing footfall. Schools can’t operate because children can’t learn in stifling heat. Gardens and crops are wilting and scorching. Elderly people in care homes are suffering and people without access to proper cooling are suffering and the range of what is affected by the heat is staggering, including schools, NHS facilities, zoos, transport, restaurants and food merchants, and construction.
But this piece isn’t just about me whining that I’m hot. Hundreds of millions of people are hot. People are suffering and dying in the brutal, unrelenting heat. Me? I’m mildly inconvenienced at most. I’ve got a couple of big fans, the hallway on my floor is cooled and I can open my door to let air in, and I’ve got a fridge stocked with bottled water and icy cold NA beer.
What this piece is about is the popular news coverage.
If you’re in the US you’re probably not hearing more than the odd headline. Over here, though, it is a saturation situation. And this is understandable: temperature records are falling, infrastructure is failing, people are dying.
Yet despite the gravity of the circumstances, television news about the heatwave is uniformly and gobsmackingly bad. It is silly. It is flaccid. It is deliberately obfuscatory. It skirts or hedges or ignores the central issue. It fails to connect the dots. It is partial and misleading, and that is morally reprehensible.
Headline after headline: “hottest day” and “record-shattering” and “deadly heat.” BUT WHY??? Where in these stories is the WHY of it all?!
You might call the news STUPID if it weren’t blindingly obvious that the pathetic coverage isn’t down to the people in the news business being dim or unlettered or uninformed. It’s down to a media ecosystem as a whole that is corporate-captured, craven in the face of toxic capitalism, and driven by the fiscal bottom line rather than a mission to tell the public the truth.
During the past couple of days - cowering in front of the fans, guzzling lemon water and copiously sweating - I have doomflipped through report after report on the weather conditions in England and across western Europe. I’ve watched “special breaking” bulletins and “The Big Story” wrap-ups and consumed lashings of Met Office statistics. And it’s struck me: 95% of corporate media (and many smaller, “independent” voices) are DOING IT WRONG.
Report after report covers the heat - comparing highs, predicting lows, and commenting on how unusual this all is - without ONCE delving into the causes, addressing the future, assigning blame to our use of fossil fuels, or reporting frankly about how this heat is connected to other stories, like tropical storms and drought and flooding and wildfires. Frankly, it is soul crushingly infuriating. The opportunity exists for the BBC and Al Jazeera and CNN and ITV and all the rest to tell the truth. The opportunity exists to convey vital information about the climate crisis and let people know what is coming at a time when they will be paying attention because it is miserable and hot and they are watching the weather report anyway.
With this brilliant opportunity for excellence in reporting, and for unvarnished, useful truth, the corporate-owned media (yes, I know that phrase describes the problem right there) WILL NOT report accurately or in any useful depth.
(Quick caveat: yes, there is a limited amount of excellent in-depth reporting being produced by legacy print media, most notably The Guardian. I’ve linked to a few of those articles here, in fact! But the TV news - the weather reports and “breaking” heat bulletins and so forth that are widely available on broadcast TV and YouTube - is hopeless, in ways that I am about to describe. And let’s face it. Most regular folks who are not motivated to do more digging aren’t going to seek out and read a vaguely science-y sounding article in The Guardian. They’re going to listen to a chirpy morning show clip about what weather to expect this weekend, and how Harriet’s going to demonstrate how you can now grow lovely Mediterranean plants in your garden in Leeds!)
Whether from a studio with fancy graphs or from a sunny beach or riverside cafe, no live television news reporting that I have seen honestly addresses the situation. Nothing I have seen thus far has impressed me with its insights about the coming calamity. Nothing I have seen so far indicates that anyone in the C suites is telling their news and weather desks to report on the climate crisis and how it is driving this massive heat dome. Even if the words “climate” and “change” are uttered in close proximity to one another, the mention is passing, the connection suggested to be uncertain or tenuous, or the topic not worth spending any more time on.
It is quite simply soul crushingly infuriating.
I’ll take one random example - a heatwave update on ITV a couple of days ago. It almost blew the top of my head off with the force of everything that was mealy-mouthed, obfuscatory, useless, and craven about it.
I tapped out bullet points on my phone after it was over. I intended to flesh them out with captivating prose and clarity of purpose and virtuously post it here. But honestly it’s ridiculously hot in the flat (even with my much-vaunted fans and my lemon water) I am snarly and itchy, and my brain is too boiled from spending the day in 90F heat to craft a splendidly argued narrative.
So without further ado, here’s the down-and-dirty version off the top of my red-faced, sweaty head. I added headers for clarity since, as noted, I am a tad fried and I want to be as clear as possible about what is enraging me right now.
Stupid / erroneous / misleading comparisons. ITV opened their report by comparing 2026 to a heatwave back in 1973. This is worse than useless. It establishes the notion that this wave is just one of a series, a series that was ongoing loooong ago, and so (unsaid but very much implied) how can this heat possibly be related to global warming? The clear and insidious message to the casual listener was, “well, it got hotter back when men wore comedy sideburns and a liter of shandy cost 27 pence. So hey! This is not so unprecedented!”
Relentlessly cheerful spin. The ITV reporter actually used the phrase “fun in the sun!” Fun in the sun!? As a talking point this could get people killed. But mostly it is horribly disingenuous and completely misses the point. THE WORLD IS WARMING because humans have burned too much fossil fuel and governments aren’t doing a damned thing to try to change this. (And no, I no longer count the worthless “Paris agreement” and the annual self-congratulatory cocktail parties in Davos and at COPout.)
Focus on a small group of people being affected, subtly suggesting that everyone else is gonna be just fine. This particular ITV report was only one of many that took pains to talk about the “elderly and vulnerable.” Yes, elderly and otherwise vulnerable people deserve attention and care, but they are not the only ones affected. A 30 year old man died on an athletics track outside of Paris this week. A 30 year old man on an athletics track doesn’t sound “elderly” to me. Or “vulnerable,” unless he had an undiagnosed health issue that only came to light when he keeled over.
“Sideshow” problem that shouldn’t be the focus, aka, “don’t look there - look over here!” The ITV report was also not alone in hammering on the subject of “water-related deaths.” I’ve heard a lot about these drownings. Yes: it is tragic. Yes: the people are dead. But the sneaky subtext of this particular reporting is clear: look at all the frolicking going on! The casual viewer is intended to hear “folks are out on the beach, paddling and bathing! This is enjoyable!” To which I say, oops - better be careful you don’t have too much fun in the sun, peeps. If you are elderly or vulnerable, you could die. To top off the spirit of general inanity, yesterday a report on the BBC featured a correspondent doing a live stand-up in France who quoted the French Swimming Association (?), who’ve been bleating that people need to learn how to swim, because if they knew how to swim, they wouldn’t be as likely to drown while trying to cool off from incendiary heat domes. Yes - a spokesperson said that, presumably with a straight face. Please make it make sense.
Inappropriate localization. The ITV report noted direly that the “heat is coming from Europe.” And yes, in this instance, that is a proximate cause. But this totally ignores the overarching reality that temperatures are rising GLOBALLY with climate change. To ignore that elephant in the room seems like a major omission, no? (In fact, we could widen the aperture here and also say that any report on a global warming-related weather event should also include at least one sentence tying the current event to other consequences of climate change, like wildfires or floods.)
Oddly reassuring graphics. ITV’s production team chose for the background graphic during the weather report voice over - what? Not a hot sun. Not a sweating sufferer. Not a heatmap of northern Europe. Nope! They chose a lovely photo of lush, lettuce green grass under perfect blue skies with fluffy white clouds: an idyllic scene that was in no way an appropriate backdrop for a fucking heat dome! Other reports commit this sin of “journalism” by using film of people diving off bridges into a refreshing river, pretty revelers lying out on the beach, kids eating ice cream, or humans otherwise disporting themselves in a carefree manner. Feh.
Baseless appeal to public opinion. There were no “man in the street” interviews in the particular ITV report that attracted my ire, but many other outlets feature them. These street polls follow a suspiciously similar script: (*) a few interviewees say things like “this is beastly!” and “my epilepsy is triggered by high heat and I hope my customers understand if I have to close the shop tomorrow” then (*) an equal number of people say they’re chuffed to bits by the warmth. Here in the UK they’re usually leathery, sun damaged white people of a certain age who chortle about how amazing this “spot of warm weather” is, and how much they love it. A BBC piece yesterday closed with the talking head grinning “make the most of it if you can!” over a shot of a bunch of middle aged women drinking spritzers at a sunny picnic table outside a pub.
The climate crisis is NOT A MATTER OF OPINION. It’s just not. And I get it - I do. If you grew up in Hull in the 1980s and your holiday of choice is Benidorm for the sun and cheap pints, these couple of sweltering weeks probably do seem like a lovely reprieve from typical UK temperatures, with spitting rain and cloudy skies. But the SUN and the HEAT are NOT NORMAL. And they are part of something that is real, and should be worrying to you, at the very least.
Alas, the average person watching a news report won’t be terrified. They won’t even be mildly discomfitted. Because they’ll hear nothing about the science and politics and physics of the situation. They’ll hear nothing about how the wildfires in America and the hurricanes in the Caribbean and the immigrants fleeing from drought in the global south and the devastating flash floods in Germany and Spain and all over the world are connected.
Instead what they’ll hear is reassurances that the heat will break soon, that a lot of people like it, that while it’s here they should have fun, and that anyway this is all just bad old Europe’s fault. And all of this useless babble will be bookended with fluffy, upbeat tripe about how Gladys down the precinct thinks it’s lovely to go without a cardie this week!
No context. No background. No science. No accurate comparisons. No connecting of the dots.
Everyone reading this knows WHY, of course.
The problem is capitalism. The problem is the system. The problem is the billionaires. The problem is supine governments and filthy money and rank stupidity among the elites who seem really to think there won’t be consequences for them if they don’t protect the vulnerable people (to be clear - that is ALL OF US) for whom they could be providing a minimum standard of care and proactive defense from looming danger.
I know battling that feels impossible. The task of informing our friends and neighbors about what is coming seems hopeless. And David Suzuki thinks we need to focus on our local “units of survival” right now. But we can’t do ANYTHING - even anything hyper local to try and save our own personal selves - if the basic information about the situation is being actively withheld from the citizens of the world.
The media isn’t stupid. It is compromised, and it is complicit. Yes there are good reporters and outlets doing good work and the internet is there for anyone to ask… but the easy, lazy way in which most people consume their news guarantees that a maximum number will remain woefully underinformed about the climate crisis.
So is it unreasonable to be absolutely outraged? No.
Am I asking too much? Also no.
Should it incumbent upon average folks with rent due and kids to cart to Little League and bills to pay and a crushing load of student debt to “do their own research” to find out the truth. Of course NO.
The media has a job. They are not doing it. Scattering a few crumbs (the Guardian) or mentioning climate change from time to time (the BBC) is NOT ENOUGH.
Please talk to your friends and family. Please let them know that the train is hurtling down the track in the dark and picking up speed, and the horse is out of the barn door and the cat is out of the bag and the darkness has been unleashed and here be fucking DRAGONS.
They deserve to know what’s going on. They deserve to not labor under the delusion that things will “get back to normal.” They also deserve to understand that what we are seeing now is not a “new normal.” Climatic conditions will only get worse, and everyone deserves to know that, with no fluff and no obfuscation and no bullshit. We have not reached a point of equilibrium. We’re not in a “global warming has happened and now suddenly life will be stable again” situation. We’re headed into a dangerous future and we need to prepare.
And to that end, your family and friends also deserve to know that they have the power to make their local governments HELP THEM. They have the power to GET WHAT THEY NEED.
Look at the Flamingo Revolution in Albania. The Albanians are not lying down to let the odious Jarvanka destroy a gorgeous island habitat for a monstrosity of a “luxury resort.”
None of us should succumb to hopelessness and let ourselves be abandoned to the storm.
The climate will continue to change and the globe continue to heat. But the people we have elected to represent us can hear our voices and change their policies to help us, not abandon us.
Infrastructure. Cooling centers. Flood and fire zone relocation. Improved early warning systems. Food rationing. A hardened grid. Better supply chain management. Agricultural policy.
Make them spend our tax dollars on those things. On solutions to help. On policies to ameliorate. On public safety and remediation and mitigation and support, not on ICE and AI data centers and grotesquely expensive missile systems.
It’s too late to stop what’s coming. But it is not too late to try and cushion the blow for as many people as possible.
One place to start is to get the truth out. Fuck the wholly owned corporate media. They are failing us spectacularly here.
This topic is unsexy. The situation seems hopeless sometimes. But the gathering storm of circumstances will soon conspire to catapult the climate crisis from “dry and niche” to immediately and personally compelling for a LOT of people.
My hope is that we can somehow collectively get out ahead of it and rally people to action before we’re mired in panic and chaos. My hope is that learning the truth of what’s coming can lead to some clear-headed action and careful planning, rather than reactive hysteria. My hope is that we can act together in ways we haven’t even imagined yet.
Maybe that’s your hope, too. It might be the only hope we have left.
Thanks for listening.
I’m sad to say that I don’t think climate change denial is only coming from “capitalism.” I think most people just don’t want to hear about it. The change required to REALLY deal with it is too radical. Living in a world without hydrocarbons means going back to preindustrial living standards. So called renewable energy is not an answer, for reasons laid out by Arthur Berman and others on Substack. We can’t even feed a fraction of the world’s population without hydrocarbon-derived fertilizers, and diesel to run the farm equipment and logistics systems that bring food to us in our vast cities. It is a frightening, incredibly depressing prospect to actually address climate change by implementing such radical changes, and most will avoid confronting it for as long as possible.
Neighbour farmer complained about the heat here. Shade under 40 and said “but what can we do? I told hime to stop breeding fuckin’ cows. Animal agriculture is the leading avoidable cause of the climate catastrophe and anyone can dump animal products today.