Going Green: We need to stop burning oil and gas

Yes, occasionally there are unseasonal spikes and dips in temperatures caused by natural variations such as El Nino but the difference is how frequently, how extensive and how extreme heatwaves are occurring. This is why the head of the UN said in response that the era of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived. This sounds so awful but the temperature records being broken in June and July in the Southwest of the US, Mexico, Southern Europe and China might seem like a few headlines but there’s so much more at stake.

Temperatures exceeded 50C in Death Valley in the US, as well as in Northwest China. That’s 122 in Fahrenheit – these temperatures are incompatible with human life because our own body temperatures are 37 degrees so in heat that warm, we’re constantly physiologically battling to cool down.

Wildfires have been prevalent across mainland Europe and even the islands in the Mediterranean have been impacted. Rhodes has burned, as have Sardinia and Sicily, there aren’t many places that haven’t been affected by the extreme heat which has seen the mercury rise as high as 48 and sadly, many lives lost and tourist economy turned to ashes.

The jet stream – the band of winds around the top of the globe that travel west to east have shifted south fixing a band of cooler, wetter weather over the UK, which is separated from the heat in mainland Europe .

But while the UK sits in wetter weather than we might like, it’s the knock-on effects of the heat and fires in Europe that are really concerning particularly for food production.

There’s a global olive oil issue as harvests that are already poor due to heat and drought are made worse by the prolonged heat and the repercussions of that won’t be seen until much later in the year.

Cereal crops have been decimated by the heatwave that lasted for weeks. Cereal production in Southern Europe is expected to fall by up to 60 percent and harvests in Portugal, Spain and Italy are the hardest hit.

The World Processing Tomato Council projected harvests of 42.5 million tonnes and those harvests haven’t been updated in light of the heatwave, but suppliers and market sources across Europe are anecdotally reporting those figures won’t be met – which means the crops will go to those prepared to pay the highest price.

Walter Zanre, CEO of Filippo Berio UK says northern Italian crop volumes are already down by 15 per cent and prone to further losses to the extreme heat resulting in scorched fruits. What will the heatwave do to the cost of pizza and pasta sauces which are family store cupboard staples and food banks often rely on for donations?

And it’s not just the crops – or lack of – that are the issue, extreme temperatures coupled with a lack of rainfall in June mean supply chains are affected as river levels – which are used as transport routes are at historically low levels. In Germany, transportation costs on the river Rhine have increased and traffic has declined as a result.

Last year, shallow waters meant freight boats in Europe could operate at just 25 to 35 percent of their capacity in case they ran aground in the lower water levels.

It’s easy to hope the weather patterns we’re seeing globally are an anomaly – that things with go back to “normal” but unfortunately they won’t. Attribution research, where they look at the cause of extreme weather, show the level of heat is impossible without human -induced global warming. The implications of the extreme weather we’re seeing are so far reaching, as a society we are still grappling with the full extent of them. One thing we do know though is that until we stop burning oil and gas, the planet will keep warming so we have to adapt and we have to go green and stop the carbon pollution.

REF Extreme heat in North America, Europe and China in July 2023 made much more likely by climate change – World Weather Attribution