The heatwave media formula is still extravagantly weird: all stock photos of ice-creams and suns with their hats on. It is time we recognised this extreme weather for exactly what it is
I think I must be on someone’s Rolodex of killjoys, because whenever something good happens – schools break up, summer holidays start, the weather’s nice, it’s Christmas, it’s Easter – I get a call from a talk radio show asking if I’ll come on and explain why that’s bad, actually. Usually I say, in the nicest possible way, that I don’t want to: sure, kids are much more annoying when they’re not at school; yes, it’s irresponsible to fly; no, Christmas isn’t magic, it’s an orgy of overconsumption; yes, Easter was pillaged from pagans (probably?), and Christianity itself is the imperialist template (arguably?) – in which case, the last way we should mark it is with a Creme Egg. But I just don’t want to be that person. Let someone else ruin everything for a change.
On Friday, however, I agreed to make the argument the next morning on LBC that heatwaves aren’t a treat, they’re a problem. We have to do more than just ready our infrastructure for the more intense temperatures to come: we have to bring our narrative a bit closer to reality. The climate crisis isn’t tomorrow’s problem, it’s today’s, and its impacts aren’t better conditions for vineyards in Kent, they are a broad-spectrum enshittification, in which everything, from bus journeys to growing dahlias, becomes harder, and takes longer, and is worse. It was, in other words, exactly the kind of true, unlovely thing that I don’t like being the person to say, and I don’t know why I said yes – it’s possible that I was just too hot.
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