Inequality of heat extends to where we live and work. Access to cooling is a right for all

Changes social, cultural and architectural will be required if these once temperate shores are to cope with the temperatures of the global heating age

- Jeevan Vasagar

The British, famously, like to talk about the weather – but the topic functions as a neutral conversation-starter precisely because we don’t have to think about it. The climate of these islands is a fortunate one, rarely so cold that we need to send children out to play in snowsuits, Scandinavian-style, or so hot that it’s dangerous. Just varied enough to grumble about.

Last week, the WhatsApps on my street hummed with conversation about the weather and none of it was neutral. Schools were closing early. The running club had cancelled its midweek speed session. Council workers had strimmed a wildflower border, planted as a biodiversity measure but now a potential fire hazard. The weather is turning wild English grassland as tinder-dry as the hills around LA, so vegetation near housing must be cut back to create fire breaks.

The hot weather is forecast to break this weekend. Its lessons should stay with us. It is ingrained in British culture that heat is a welcome release in a cool, rainy country; the moment to take off layers and cram on to a train to the seaside. But such notions are rapidly being outpaced by physical reality. Global average temperatures are about 1.4C above pre-industrial levels, before we started pumping vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

It’s still possible – though unlikely – that humanity can keep the rise to below 2C by cutting emissions. Around the middle of this century, if the world warms by 2.5C, a summer heatwave in England could exceed 45C (with lower – but still extraordinary – highs in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland).