The European continent, that bastion of temperate order and bureaucratically maintained infrastructure, is collapsing under a heatwave of biblical proportions. Germany, Denmark, and the Czech Republic have ground to a halt. Trains fail. Roads buckle. The elderly die in their flats. The British tourist, that peculiar creature of sun-lotion and bewildered entitlement, finds himself stranded at an airport in Hanover, wondering why the air conditioning doesn't work. This is the Fall of Rome, but with more ice cream vendors.
Let us pause. A heatwave is a meteorological event. But the paralysis it causes is a political and cultural one. The German railway system, that miracle of punctuality, now a damp memory. The Danish commitment to bicycle-friendly cities rendered absurd when one cannot breathe. The Czechs, stoic and sensible, reduced to fanning themselves with copies of the European Union treaty. This is not merely weather. It is a judgement.
We have built a civilisation that depends on climate control. Our data centres, our glass towers, our fragile supply chains. And when the mercury climbs, the thin veneer of modernity peels away. We are back in the medieval village, huddled under shade, praying for rain. But our prayers are in English, and they are addressed to a tweet from Ryanair.
The British travel chaos is a farce within a tragedy. Ten thousand Britons stranded, their holidays ruined. But holidays from what? From the very weather that is now their enemy? We mock the Spanish for their siesta, but they understood something we forgot: the sun is not a friend. It is a tyrant. And we have no emperor to appease him.
I see a deeper decay. This heatwave is a symptom of intellectual decadence. We refused to listen to the scientists, or we listened and did nothing. We replaced action with hashtags. We built wind farms but not resilience. We preached sustainability while jetting off to Ibiza. Now the bills come due. The heat does not care for your carbon offset. It does not care for your vegan diet. It simply is, and it is merciless.
What is to be done? Not more talk. Not more committees. We must adapt or perish. That means planting trees, but it also means building differently, living differently, thinking differently. It means admitting that our way of life, our glorious liberal consumerism, is incompatible with a stable climate. It means the end of cheap flights and 24-hour supermarkets and the right to complain when your train is delayed because the tracks have buckled.
But we will not do this. We will blame the government, or the EU, or the immigrants. We will demand that someone fix it, someone else. And the next heatwave will be worse. And the one after that, worse still. Until there is nothing left to fix.
So let the tourists sweat. Let the trains stop. This is not an interruption. This is the end of an era. And we are not ready.
