“Suffering the effects of heat waves is not inevitable, but a political choice”

2023-08-23 19:00:25

46.4°C in the village of Gythio, Greece, 45°C in Cyprus, and the European record of 48.2°C in Jerzu, Sardinia… The summer of 2023 was one of the hottest in Europe, and it continues to be.

France is also affected by a late and intense heat wave, which impacts a large part of the country with, in several departments, temperatures approaching or exceeding 40°C.

Since the hecatomb of 2003, in addition to concentrating important environmental issues, heat waves have taken on, for the public authorities but also for citizens, crucial sanitary and public health issues.

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However, despite the growing importance of taking into consideration the health issue relating to heat waves, each year the heat waves are becoming stronger and more frequent. With global climate warming scenarios of +2.2°C to +4.8°C, by 2050 the number of heat waves will double worldwide, and their frequency will even increase ninefold by at 2100.

The causes of these increases are known and all the world’s climate experts tell us: climate change amplifies and will amplify the risks of extreme heat episodes, thereby increasing the number of people who are exposed to them. Figures being more convincing than words, it is estimated that the heat wave that hit France from June 15 to 19, 2022 would have been ten times less likely to occur in a climate not warmed by human activities.

Three fields of action

All the same, it is not appropriate here to point the finger at global inaction in the face of the climate emergency. Rather, it should be shown that suffering the effects of heat waves is not a fatality, but a choice.

Make no mistake. It is not a deliberate choice of the populations to die of heat in their apartments transformed into real kettles, but it is, on the contrary, a political choice not to do everything in our power to adapt our territories.

Because, yes, it is possible, and even a duty, to adapt to what is becoming the climatic norm. It is observed that the areas most sensitive to heat waves are urban areas. Indeed, cities, because of their minerality, their low rate of vegetation but also their high concentration of human population, are heat traps which will become, if the climatic trajectories are confirmed, no man’s land summer: uninhabitable as soon as the heat of summer comes to the fore.

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