As wildfires rage, the world is backsliding on climate action. This can’t go on | Bill McGuire

Five years ago, I wrote an open letter asking climate scientists to speak out against fossil fuels. Now governments are in retreat, it is surely time to act France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave beginsSuch is the astonishing scale of the wildfires burning at the gates of Bordeaux and Madrid, that if they had happened 20 – even 10 – years back, they may well have shocked the world into taking action on the climate crisis. But like the proverbial frog in a pot of slowly heating water, we have become inured; not only to the ever more devastating impacts of climate breakdown, but increasingly to the actions needed to bring global heating to heel.Even as more than 35,000 wildfires rage across the surface of our world, and as we continue to rewind our planet’s climate so it resembles hotter episodes from its distant past, governments and trading blocs are very deliberately turning away from climate action.Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London and author of The Fate of the World: a History and Future of the Climate Crisis Continue reading...