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Living through Europe’s record-breaking heatwave got me fired up to take action for our future.
It is June in London, and I am lying in front of a fan trying to will myself to write this story. But I can’t. Not out of lack of interest, or even discipline, but because I am so hot that I cannot sit upright.
My every movement is slowed down, as though I must pass through sticky molasses just to lift my arm. My brain, too, is melted, focused on surviving the next few days, rather than telling the world about it. But you are reading this piece, so I survived to tell the tale!
Sounds dramatic, I know, but that was how I felt. Surviving through England’s warmest June since records began in 1884 marked the first time in my life I felt directly impacted by climate change. Sure, I’ve experienced unusual Canadian winters and unnaturally wet British summers that have since become more common. What was different this time was that I was scared. If it is this unlivable when I am 20, I thought to myself, what will it look like when I am 40, 60, 80?
I was staying in a room on the top floor of a house with no air conditioning, which certainly made the discomfort more acute. But I was in no way the person most affected by the heat. More than 1,000 schools across England and Wales closed early, and hospitals declared critical incidents as heat-strained equipment failed. A London double-decker bus burst into flames at a depot in Westbourne Park, destroying the bus and two charging points and forcing a nearby Tube station to close.
Greenpeace warned that surface temperatures of between 50–60°C (122–140°F) were recorded around London, peaking at 65°C (149°F) at a roadworks in Holborn. The heatwave also swept across France, Germany, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia, Italy, Austria, and western Ukraine, with more than 1,000 deaths linked to the heat in France alone, according to Al Jazeera.
At the few social events during the heatwave that I managed to drag myself to, discussions centered on our need for air conditioning. Like everyone else, I would have been overjoyed to get some respite from the heat in an air-conditioned room. But that’s a band-aid solution, one that highlights our harmful belief that we can dominate nature — that we deserve to keep living a life of comfort, insulated from the world we are changing.
I firmly believe technological advancements will be crucial to surviving the next 100 years of climate chaos. That being said, I think it is high time we start looking at these heatwaves as what they are.
We all talk about them when they happen. Then, as soon as the temperature climbs back down, we move on. What if, instead, we used these moments of discomfort to ask ourselves if we are living in line with our values?
You don’t even have to experience a climate disaster to do this. Just imagine yourself experiencing it. Imagine your friends, parents, children, and even the grandchildren you may never meet experiencing it.
Then, use your eco-anxiety for good: Turn it into eco-action. Yes, it is a cliche, but every little bit helps, especially if your actions inspire others. Don’t wait for the disasters. Start now.
