Spain<\/a>, and book into a coastal hotel after wildfires roared towards them. My son sent pictures on his phone. It looked terrifying. Not far from them, retired British couple Christine and Michael Chard, were burnt to death in their car and in Almeria uncontrollable blazes wiped out a small expat community killing seven Brits.<\/p>\n![\"Firefighters](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/3_FRANCE-WILDFIRE-ENVIRONMENT.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Firefighters attempt to control the wildfire near Lege-Cap-Ferret, southwestern France(Image: AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n
Closer to home as hundreds of wildfires spread across Britain, even parts of Scotland are ablaze, including Arthur\u2019s Seat in the middle of Edinburgh, and on my own doorstep 400 fish have died in a nearby park lake due to excess heat depriving them of oxygen.<\/p>\n
Europe has now become the world\u2019s fastest-warming continent, with its ice caps melting at an alarming rate and it will get much worse much sooner than we think. Meteorologists claim there is currently an \u201cunprecedented\u201d Super El Ni\u00f1o weather event forming in the Pacific, predicted to be the biggest ever seen, ramping up ocean temperatures which likely means severe food shortages, rising prices and an even hotter Europe summer next year.<\/p>\n
Ask any climate scientist who is to blame for this looming Armageddon and the virtually unanimous response would be \u201cus\u201d.<\/p>\n
Yet as a species we are whistling and looking away, the majority of us choosing to believe those politicians, businessmen and opinion-formers who are getting rich on the back of climate change denial who denounce anyone who warns of this crazed suicide strategy as \u201ceco-zealots\u201d, \u201cnet zero fanatics\u201d or the \u201cgreen Taliban\u201d.<\/p>\n
So we side with the old despots who ramp up oil production to fund illegal wars, boost economic growth and satisfy the demands of big businesses that bankroll them. Old men who get off on screaming \u201cdrill, baby, drill,\u201d knowing they will be gone before the planet descends into a death spiral. So why should they care?<\/p>\n
Every generation born after the Second World War, who has seen footage from the Nazi death camps, is dumbfounded at how humanity ignored the holocaust that took place under its nose.<\/p>\n
Unless we act, future generations will look back in anger at the way we ignored the truth-telling scientists and derided green campaigners as \u201cclimate Nazis\u201d when they warned we were making parts of our planet uninhabitable.<\/p>\n
The flames are now licking up on our doorsteps and if you\u2019re not the one filming it yet, you soon will be.<\/p>\n
I hope for the sake of my granddaughter\u2019s generation that humanity comes to its senses before it\u2019s too late.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1_GettyImages-2281102595.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
OPINION<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the impact of the European heatwaves hits closer to home, Brian Reade asks why as a species…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1111553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3843],"tags":[3070,2311,728,2461,699,62802,70,2880,16,15,416,732,2642],"class_list":["post-1111552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-british-economy","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-heatwave","tag-plus","tag-price-rises","tag-science","tag-taliban","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-viral","tag-wildfires","tag-world-war-2"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116983983764189266","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1111553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"mirror\"](\"https:\/\/www.mirror.co.uk\/assets\/mirror\/images\/premium-byline-mirror.svg\"\/)
<\/p>\n![\"Firefighters](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1_TOPSHOT-FRANCE-WILDFIRE-ENVIRONMENT.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/8_England-v-Ghana-FIFA-WORLD-CUP-2026-Boston-Stadium-Foxborough-Massachusetts-United-States-23.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n