Was this then the summer when Climate Change finally came to make itself at home in the consciousness of Western Europeans? In recent years, we have watched from a distance as extreme weather-related disasters have struck different regions across the planet in turn. Australia, Greece, and the West coast of North America have experienced devastating wildfires, and widespread death and destruction. Storms, severe floods, and landslides affected upwards of 30 million people in the Philippines and Vietnam in 2020 alone. While this year, in Africa, there is growing consensus that Madagascar is suffering through the modern world’s first climate change-induced famine. This new phenomenon compounds the already worsening conditions in much of Sub-Saharan Africa.
Is it reasonable to say that Western Europe was without its own ‘flagship’ climate change episode prior to the July 2021 floods across Germany, Belgium and other countries? In my own view, there has certainly been an imperceptible shift in thinking when it comes to climate, and man-made emissions this year. It might have something to do with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and a heightened awareness of our world’s fragility. Maybe people are beginning to realise that things can go wrong rapidly, and when they do, they are rarely ever the same. Whether a newfound awareness leads to mitigative action is up for debate.
In July, when torrential rainfall caused flooding that led to the deaths of 196 people in Germany, and 42 in Belgium (with other countries impacted to a lesser degree), climate change forced itself to the front of the news cycle. The release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2021 report followed in August, and suddenly, the mother of all crises was front page news. From Deutsche Welle to the BBC, news stations across the continent were dominated with reports disseminating the critical information outlined in the IPCC’s report. One key piece of information zoned in on was the research indicating man-made global warming has increased the severity of downpours in the flood-impacted regions by up to 20%.
The IPCC were unequivocal in their assertion that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the primary cause of the increased number of extreme weather events. The World Weather Attribution group connected climate change with the horrific heat-dome covering much of Canada and the United States, and noted a correlation between the Australian bushfires of 2020, and increased periods of dry weather. Forecasting, led by the same group, has indicated extreme rainfall to be between 1.2 and 9 times more likely to happen in the flood-ravaged European countries due to the climate crisis, and that these rainfall events will be between 3% and 19% more intense (Kreienkamp et al. 2021).
Will this information hit home? Are the public going to put enough pressure on the politicians to incite changes in the continent’s climate policies? Do the politicians, and major industrial players care? We know that Western European countries are major polluters. We understand that on an individual level, many of us consume far too much, and can change our lifestyles for the better. We are fortunate to live in a relatively secure part of the world in terms of resilience in the face of a changing climate. But we owe it to the rest of the world, many of them so vulnerable to the volatility and violence of climate change, to limit our emissions now. Is this is the summer where things change for the better. Is this the summer where Western Europe was finally woken up?
Bilbliography
Kreienkamp, F. (2021). Rapid attribution of heavy rainfall events leading to the severe flooding in Western Europe during July 2021.
IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press