The headlines trumpet it as a triumph: ‘Western Europe temperature records smashed – UK’s heatwave preparedness hailed as gold standard.’ And indeed, the mercury has soared to unprecedented heights, from Paris to London, from Berlin to Madrid. But let us pause before we pat ourselves on the back. This is not a victory lap. This is a wake-up call from history itself.
We have seen this before. The Roman Empire, in its complacent decadence, faced climate shifts that turned provinces into deserts. The medieval warm period brought plenty to some, but collapse to others. Every golden age has its weather, and every civilisation believes its infrastructure is invincible – right up until the moment it is not.
What does our ‘gold standard’ preparedness actually amount to? A few extra NHS phone lines? Leaflets handed out to the elderly? Trains that grind to a halt because the tracks buckle? This is the response of a society that has confused comfort with resilience. We have built a world of air-conditioned offices and iced lattes, yet we cannot keep the Underground running without turning it into a sauna.
Meanwhile, on the continent, the narrative is eerily similar. France’s nuclear reactors are throttled back because the rivers are too warm to cool them. German factories shut down for lack of water. The Alpine glaciers – those eternal sentinels of European history – are retreating faster than a French army in 1940. And we call this ‘preparedness’?
The real sickness is intellectual. We have lost the ability to think in centuries. Our politicians plan for the next election, not the next generation. Our media obsesses over today’s temperature record, while ignoring the slow rot of infrastructure, the erosion of community bonds, the decay of civic virtue. The Victorians built sewers and embankments that still serve us. We build apps and call it progress.
But let us also talk about national identity. The British stiff upper lip is now a meme, but it was once a survival mechanism. A people who endured the Blitz, who rationed for years, who rebuilt from rubble – they understood heatwaves as an inconvenience, not a crisis. Today, we close schools because the playground is too hot. We advise people to ‘stay hydrated’ as if they were toddlers. We have become a nation of soft palms and weak spines.
Do not misunderstand me. Climate change is real, its effects are dire, and we must adapt. But adaptation without character is just surrender. The Romans built aqueducts; we build Twitter hashtags. The difference is the difference between marble and sand.
So by all means, celebrate the small victories. But keep one eye on the horizon. Because history teaches us that civilisations do not die from a single heatwave. They die from a thousand small failures of will, each one justified as ‘the best we could do.’ And then one day, the barbarians are at the gate – or the thermometer hits 50°C – and there is nobody left who knows how to fight back.
