Hot, hotter, heat deaths

Our planet has a fever. In southern Europe, there is no end in sight to the heatwave. Forest fires are raging in northeastern Spain, France, Greece, and Italy, as well as in the US.

In Italy, a fire destroyed parts of the famous vineyards on Mount Vesuvius. In Spain, over 1,000 people have already had to be evacuated.

The Spanish heatwave has claimed its first victims. Farmers across southern Europe are complaining of losses in wine and fruit production. According to the journal Nature, deadly heatwaves could kill 246,000 people in Spain alone by the end of the century. Increasing soil sealing and too little green space in cities are exacerbating the problem.

Now the heatwave is also heading for Germany, where July was downright cool.

The hot “Julia” is bringing Sahara heat to our country. Temperatures could reach up to 40 degrees in the next few days, for example in Freiburg, Frankfurt, Karlsruhe, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne—in Spain, Italy, and France up to 44 degrees, and in Turkey even up to 50 degrees.

Anyone who still denies climate change must be stupid and blind, or at least emotionally numb. Because July was only the third hottest month on record globally, some people in this country already believed that climate change had taken a break. But they were far off the mark. The scientific findings paint a very different picture.

Northwest of Tokyo, the record temperature climbed to 41.8 degrees Celsius at the end of July. Now the country is plagued by flooding and rockfalls in addition to the heatwave. With temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius, large parts of Iraq are without power.

The fever of the entire planet cannot be lowered by slowing down the expansion of renewable energies, Ms. Reiche and Mr. Merz. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that between 2030 and 2050, more than a quarter of a million people worldwide will die each year from heat-related causes.

Climate change deniers from Trump to the AfD may wake up yet, but by then it will probably be too late, because the greenhouse gases we are sending into the atmosphere today will continue to affect the climate for centuries to come. Climate change is a matter of survival for humanity.

Source

Franz Alt 2025 | Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator