This article first appeared in the Autumn edition of Birdwatching magazine
Déjà vu struck as I watched the news reports on the unprecedented heatwaves in May and June 2026. Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1976, as a community worker, I created a play scheme in Bolton we called the Kids Festival. As temperatures soared, we had organised games and fun events. We had plenty of tap water on hand (who bought water in bottles back then?), but there was barely a thought of heat exhaustion. We didn’t worry about an unshaded Granma watching her grandchildren running about in the heat of the day. In the month it ran, the only casualty, apart from scraped knees, was one staff member who fainted having sat in an airless tent all day.
Were we tougher back then? Nope, because although the heat was high, the humidity was low. Sunburn was a danger, but heat stroke not so much. We all sweated, all summer, but cooling breezes helped us lose heat. Vanishing reservoirs and hosepipe bans became a thing, until the drought broke and we just shrugged and carried on. Those news reports were just as full of sweaty reporters asking banal questions of the least articulate passers-by they could find, just like now. The question then was ‘how do you like this weather?’, and the headlines mostly ‘Phew, what a scorcher!’ as all records were broken.
This time around, the one big difference is the slowly growing awareness that Global Warming is as real as the Covid pandemic, both of which are still denied by the world’s self-interested, stinking rich leaders. Media moguls report the financial crisis of rising fossil fuel prices, but are outraged by the economic ‘cost’ of Net Zero moves. Us plebs might be aware that fossil fuels are costing the earth, but leaders are sticking to short term fixes to the world economy, instead of long-term fixes for planet earth!
Being decrepit, means I can take the moral high ground on air travel. As I can no longer do it, I can condemn all who exacerbate climate change by expanding oil production to keep the planes in the air… mind you, as weather worsens and the stratosphere gets nobbled, turbulence might soon force more of us stay grounded.
On a birding trip to India, I experienced heat exhaustion on a small boat on the upper Ganges watching Gangetic Dolphins and Indian Skimmers. Slowly overcoming the nausea and light-headedness, sipping cold water on an airconditioned bus, I gave no thought to the locals who had to work in those conditions to survive. Maybe, the fear of just how hot we Europeans will be in twenty years’ time, will spur us into global action, in a way that the plight of everyone in the tropics has not. I might have taken spare bins to Gambia and over-tipped in Sri Lanka, but when I retreated into my air-conditioned cabin in Kenya, I gave little thought to the guys in the kitchen preparing dinner for us tourists. I was outraged in the Karoo at night, when the power was turned off and our rooms turned into sweatboxes.
Writing this in my study, breathing the cooled air, I congratulate myself on having anticipated changing weather patterns before the herd. The truth is, my air con unit is adding to global warming in general and upping the air outside by between 8 and 17 degrees, curling the buddleia leaves and evaporating the water in the birdbath.
Just another selfish individual thinking I’m alright Jackdaw. We urgently have to become part of the solution, not go on being part of the problem!
