The heatwave governments made

The heatwave governments made Europe is burning. Schools are closing, hospitals are bracing for a public health crisis, and rivers are running dry. Cities have become ovens, and millions of people are now living what scientists have warned about for decades. This is an extreme weather event. And it’s a political one too. For decades, governments made choices that have fuelled the climate crisis, and left our societies more fragile, more unequal, and less able to withstand what was coming. Public investment in a just transition has been cut. Environmental protections have been weakened. Rivers have been polluted, forests degraded, and cities built without enough green space to keep people alive in extreme heat. The natural systems that make life possible have been sacrificed for short-term profit and deregulation, and the results are now impossible to ignore. Across Europe, people are connecting the dots. In France, hundreds of thousands have mobilised against laws that would weaken environmental protections and expand pesticide use, ignoring both scientific evidence and the public interest. In Albania, the Flamingo protest, now in its fourth week, began around the protection of internationally important wetlands and has become something broader – a demand that governments respect the law and the public they serve. These movements look different on the surface. But they are asking the same question: who do governments actually serve? The ecological dimension of this crisis is where the consequences of political choices become most visible, and most irreversible. Wetlands store water and buffer communities from extreme weather. Forests and coastal ecosystems regulate temperatures and shield communities from extreme heat. Biodiversity underpins the basic functioning of our societies, and when these systems are destroyed, the effects are direct: more severe floods, more intense heatwaves, more destructive wildfires. Democratic failure shows up in rivers too polluted to swim in, neighbourhoods too hot to breathe in, and ecosystems that disappear while governments debate whether to act. Climate breakdown and democratic decline are feeding each other. A democracy that cannot protect the conditions for life is failing its most basic purpose. Rebuilding trust is urgent. It means treating nature as essential infrastructure. It means restoring investments in proven cost-effective solutions that protect communities, and rebuilding systems we depend on. It means enforcing the environmental laws that already exist, with genuine public participation. Radical? No. It’s just what governments promised to do. The mobilisation happening across Europe is a signal of a growing and dangerous gap between scientific reality, public concern, and political action. The question is no longer whether climate change is real. It is whether our democracies are capable of responding to it. Because in Europe right now, our governments and institutions are being tested just as severely as our ecosystems – and the heatwave has made the verdict visible. Text by Anouk Puymartin Photo: Shutterstock You might also be interested in: Stichting BirdLife Europe gratefully acknowledges financial support from the European Commission. All content and opinions expressed on these pages are solely those of Stichting BirdLife Europe. The European Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains. |