Nature and climate crisis: adaptations need to “spread like wildfire”

Accelerating climate change and loss of biodiversity have created a global health emergency.1The record heatwave in France in 2003 was responsible for over 14 000 excess deaths. France has experienced higher temperatures since then, but its 2004 national heat wave plan meant that mortality was reduced by adaptations including better warning messages, heat reflective surfaces, housing insulation, safe cooling spaces, and shade trees in parks. In England “the possibilities for policy”2 have had a lower priority, and in 2022 the hottest days in England were associated with an estimated 4507 deaths.3 The heatwave season of 2022 served as a warning that the UK is not ready for extreme heat events.4English resources for adaptation are constrained by shrinking local authority funding. The biggest brake on action, however, is the difficulty most people have responding to a gradual, cumulative crisis. E M Forster described this fatal inaction vividly in his story The…
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