The wake-up call of summer 2026
So far this summer, we have seen forest fires in France, Spain, the USA, Belgium and Greece. For a long time, Germany was spared.
But last weekend, 300 hectares of forest burned in the southern Eifel. Dry forest, containing large quantities of ammunition from the Second World War. A force of nature is raging. In Germany, nearly 12,000 people had already lost their lives to heat-related causes by mid-July 2026.
But fires are raging across Europe, from Greece to the UK. The UK Prime Minister spoke of a ‘powder keg’. In southern Germany, the 30-degree mark had already been exceeded 56 times in Rheinfelden in 2026. Twenty-three countries around the world experienced their hottest July since 1940. The USA even had its hottest July in 130 years.
Forest fires were also reported last Friday in Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Hesse, Bavaria and the Saarland. Fires caused by drought are no longer exceptional occurrences, but apparently the new normal. The federal and state governments must face up to the fact that, by now at the very latest, climate change and its consequences are taking their toll here too, even if the federal government has not yet grasped the danger and the disaster in the Ahr Valley in 2021 has long since been forgotten and repressed. The Elbe, Danube and Rhine are now merely trickling along. The riverbeds, which lie dry except for the navigation channel, are a wake-up call. Germany has been drained.
The political situation is absurd: the more climate change deniers – such as the AfD here in Germany or Donald Trump in the US – simply repress the danger, the more brutally climate change advances. Biomass that was previously barely combustible now catches fire quickly due to the heat and drought.
For over 40 years, we in Germany have been discussing “near-natural permanent forests”, yet progress on forest conversion has been minimal. And local authorities are inadequately prepared for forest fires and evacuations. Better fire management alone is not enough.
Climate researchers such as Mojib Latif and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are warning of an increase in forest fires. Yet the federal government is attempting to solve the problem by using petrol to put out the fire. In other words, more lorries on the roads when the rivers have too little water. However, this is not the way to get to grips with the problems of climate change. As a result, climate change is rapidly turning into a climate catastrophe.
Through the wildfires, the drought and the heat, we are currently experiencing the wake-up call of the summer of 2026: Mr Merz, Mr Trump, Ms Reiche: please finally take off your ideological rose-tinted glasses when it comes to climate change and renewable energy!
Only through a rapid and complete transition to renewable energy can we still be saved.
