“Hot as hell,” “heat dome,” “unprecedented red danger zone,” and “boiling planet,” with this anxious language headlines in the Western press described the recent heat waves, as if the crisis was no longer passing news about the weather, but rather a warning of a world that is changing faster than its cities, homes, and playgrounds can adapt to it.
What is striking about this wave is not only that it broke new records, but that it seemed as if it belonged to another time that was beginning to impose itself on the present.
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What was until recently a rare or unlikely event has come to dominate the details of daily life: housing, work, health, and even the continuation of major cities and sports tournaments in the shadow of a summer whose rules are no longer what they were.
Impossible heat
In an opinion piece in the New York Times, David Wallace-Wells says the recent European heat wave has revealed three major facts.
- The first – according to an estimate conveyed by the writer – is that a wave of this intensity occurred in a climate before the industrial revolution, and it would be a rare event that the region may only witness once every 26 thousand years.
- As for the second, the author quotes it from an analysis by the “World Weather Tribunal” group, which states that the probability of a heat wave of this size has become more than 100 times greater since the major European heat wave in 2003.
- The third – according to Robert Rudd of Berkeley Earth – is that what seemed to be an exceptional event is no longer so if measured against the reality of current warming, not a stable climate that no longer exists.
Wallace Wells notes that such a wave was, until recently, almost beyond the imagination of human civilization, but in just two decades it has turned into a possibility that may be repeated every few years in Western Europe.
Hence, the writer believes that the question of Northern Europe’s unpreparedness for this heat finds part of its answer in the fact that these same conditions were unimaginable a short time ago.
Stuffy houses
Wallace Wells argues that the slow spread of air conditioning in northern Europe cannot be reduced to a cultural or political situation, but rather is linked to a different climatic history.
The cities there are old and their buildings were designed to retain warmth in the winter, while the nature of the windows and roofs and the high prices of electricity make installing cooling devices more expensive and complicated.
But at the same time, Wallace stresses that adaptation must spread at a faster pace, because Europeans are paying the price for slow adaptation.
The writer reported that Europe – according to several measures – is more vulnerable to heat deaths than poorer and hotter regions, pointing to previous waves in 2003, 2010 and 2022 that left tens of thousands of heat-related deaths.
The Fox website goes in a similar direction, saying that only about 20% of European homes have air conditioning, compared to about 90% in the United States of America.
He adds that Europe records the highest rate of heat deaths per capita among the continents, and that more than 61,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes in 2022 alone.
Air conditioning debate
According to Fox, air conditioning devices have become a subject of debate on both sides of the Atlantic. While Americans see the solution as obvious, which is to turn on the air conditioners, some Europeans view air conditioning as a false solution that may exacerbate the problem, as the site quoted French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
But Fox says that air conditioning is not a moral sin, nor a symbol of freedom as some Americans treat it, but rather an ordinary technology that performs a useful function, like a refrigerator and a heating system.
In a world that is getting hotter – the site adds – cooling has become a tool for protecting life, not a sign of luxury, especially in nursing homes, hospitals, apartments located on upper floors, and schools.
As for Wallace Wells, he warns against turning the crisis into an exchange of accusations between continents or political factions, because the problem – as he writes – is deeper than a dispute over air conditioners. It is the difficulty of rehabilitating a large part of the physical structure in Europe to withstand a rapidly changing climate.
Sports under the sun
The crisis does not stop at homes and cities. In Bloomberg, Akshat Rathi and Oscar Boyd discuss the future of sports on an increasingly hot planet, from water breaks in the World Cup, to moving the Tokyo Olympic Marathon a thousand kilometers north, to air-conditioned stadiums in the World Cup in Qatar, and shortening some stages of the Tour de France.
Jessica Murphree, a professor at the University of North Carolina who specializes in the impact of climate change on sports, says that athletes are already pushing their bodies to their limits, so any additional increase in temperature will have a toll on the body, mind, and economy.
She adds that thermal illnesses related to exertion do not result from physical exertion alone, but rather from its combination with high air temperature.
Murphree warns that heatstroke is not a theoretical danger, but rather a medical condition that may be fatal, and it does not concern athletes alone, but rather includes farmers, construction workers, and everyone who works or performs physical effort in harsh conditions.
It also indicates that some environmental dangers may make playing itself impossible, from damage to stadiums to the destruction of entire sports facilities due to climate disasters.
World Cup in a new look
According to Bloomberg, climate change poses two questions for sports: What does heat do to sports? What does sport do to the climate?
Major sporting events leave an increasing carbon footprint as their size increases, their locations multiply, and the intensity of travel of fans and teams increases.
Bloomberg’s “Zero” podcast points out that the current World Cup is the largest in terms of the number of teams, and is held in three countries, making it a candidate to have the highest emissions among the tournament’s editions.
Bloomberg provides estimates of 7.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, most of which is related to public travel.
Murphree says that the responsibility cannot be placed on the fans alone, because they move within a system chosen by the organizing institutions, especially since decisions regarding the number of teams, the match schedule, the distribution of stadiums, and the sponsorship of fossil fuel companies are taken before the fan reaches the stadium.
After summer
Fox concludes with a striking warning that says that the danger does not lie in the adaptation itself, but in turning it into a political badge.
When a home refrigeration machine becomes a symbol of right-wing or left-wing affiliation, more useful questions are lost: Who needs it to stay safe? How much does it cost? How can it be run on cleaner energy?
As for Bloomberg, Murphree quotes a more direct conclusion, which is that sports “will cease to exist if people are no longer physically able to practice them.”
Therefore, changing dates, moving tournaments, or introducing hydration breaks is no longer an organizational detail, but rather part of an attempt to preserve the game before the climate forcibly changes it.
Amidst the Western debate about air conditioning and concern over the future of sports, heat waves reveal a bigger question: How does a world that thought that some of its lifestyles were protected by climate and geography behave, then found that heat is knocking on the doors of cold cities and major stadiums with the same intensity with which it redraws maps of danger everywhere?
