On Friday, France recorded the highest temperature ever experienced at any location in that country. The 44.3° C reading (about 111° F) at the town of Carpentras is an all-time record, but it’s just part of a massive heat wave that has been baking much of Europe. The heat wave has closed schools and businesses unequipped to deal with such temperatures. It’s sparked record wildfires in Spain and led to water-rationing across several nations.
The five hottest European summers in the last 600 years have all come in the last twenty years. And 2019 is looking like it may provide not just the hottest day, but the hottest week, month, and year as the radically destabilized weather system continues to draw scalding air farther and farther north. Germany is experiencing it’s hottest June ever. Temperatures in Italy have turned deadly. And records have been shattered across at least six nations. The wave of hot air is also bringing up dust from the Sahara, prompting health warnings because of both temperatures and air quality.
And it’s not just Europe. The United States is also looking at record temperatures for June. Heat has spread across every region of the country, bringing triple-digit temperatures from the Southwest to the East Coast. The record heat follows record flooding. Record fires. Record storms.
And all of it is part of the climate crisis. All of it is coming because the Earth is now saddled with a level of carbon in the atmosphere that hasn’t been seen in the whole time that human beings have existed as a species. This is a whole new world—one that is distinctly inimical to the lives and civilization we have constructed.
That’s why European leaders are determined to come away from the G-20 with actual, enforceable progress on the climate crisis. And why Donald Trump is likely to find that Vladimir Putin and Mohammed bin Salman are his buddies in more than just their love for getting rid of journalists. The United States, Russia, and Saudi Arabia are likely to be the three nations that stand in the way of taking serious action on the climate—a toxic trio fueled by ignorance and greed.
Thanks to Trump, the United States is on the wrong side of history. And also thanks to Trump, history itself is at risk.
