Critical Summer Extremes
This summer was the hottest ever recorded in UK. We have suffered five heatwaves, the most severe drought ever recorded, many thousands of excess deaths, many farmers losing around half their crops and some near bankruptcy, school closures, travel disruption and an NHS under heavy pressure and much more. There have also been devastating fire outbreaks, one quite close by in Stourbridge that destroyed homes and could have caused very serious extra infrastructure damage. I am not convinced that this government is taking the problem with the sort of seriousness that is needed.
2026-09-02
It’s hard to reconcile the latest spin from environment secretary Angela Eagle with our lived reality. In the article she correctly identifies healthy ecosystems and policies to restore wetlands, but fails to confront just how far the UK is astray of its 30% protected by 2030 international committent. We are at about 4% now. The government has no policy to progress this except to ask private land owners to make it happen – hardly in her words “taking these challenges head on”.
In May the government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) produced its fourth report in 20 years on Climate Risks. It admitted “there has been little progress on preparing ourselves for the changing climate”. No wonder – Climate Adaptation has a government team of only 20 people working on it (out of 6600 DEFRA employees)! In contrast, there is an Artificial Intelligence Commissioner at the Cabinet table because it is deemed Critical Infrastructure. So new data centres can be forced upon any community, and water companies must always supply them whatever shortages may arise.
We have the wrong priorities. This summer highlights the urgent need to implement the CCC’s adaptation recommendations in full and to coordinate action across all government departments. We need a Commissioner for Climate Adaptation in cabinet.
Let’s look at water in more detail. The BBC article titled The race to stop England running out of water says: “The kind of increasingly frequent heatwaves we have experienced and greatly reduced rainfall that we could see over successive summers with climate change, plus a projected increase in demand for water, have raised the prospect that England could at some point run out of water.”
Some of it is down to our changed usage pattern – think daily showers versus a shared weekly bath! Households use 60% of our water, but the amount has doubled in 50 years. There is an argument for increasing the price of water because it is a precious resource. Then we should be thinking about capturing grey water, either from rain or from its primary use like showering or washing clothes and dishes, and reusing it to flush the toilet or water the garden. At the moment, we're using world-class drinking water to cool data centres, and to irrigate our golf courses. We should simply ban data centres from using potable water supplies and require them to use closed-loop systems.
Finally there are leaks, and building more water storage – read the article!