Europe’s Summer of Fire: The New Normal?
About this episode
The episode discusses the impact of climate change on wildfires in Europe and the media's response to these events.
Europe is burning. Wildfires are still alight in the hills outside Bordeaux and the countryside west of Madrid. More than 300,000 people across France and Spain have been forced from their homes, and both countries remain on high alert as they enter the fourth heatwave of the summer. As we publish this episode, new fires are breaking out across Greece and Turkey. With the continent warming at more than twice the global average, a new frontline of the climate crisis has emerged. Meanwhile, nearly three in four UK newspaper articles about June's record heatwave made no mention of climate change, and into that gap come competing narratives: arson conspiracies, weather manipulation, "it was hotter in 1976". Are we being gaslit? Tom is joined by Friederike Otto , co-founder of World Weather Attribution, to unpack what so much coverage is missing. Are these extreme events being caused by climate change? How do we know? And how can we tell a better story? He then speaks with Emma Howard Boyd , former chair of the UK Environment Agency, now chair of the UK's new National Heat Risk Commission. She has spent her career translating slow-moving climate risk for institutions built to move…
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