{"id":563128,"date":"2026-07-28T07:27:17","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T07:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/563128\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T07:27:17","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T07:27:17","slug":"the-guardian-view-on-europes-wildfires-politics-must-catch-up-with-the-new-reality-editorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/563128\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardian view on Europe\u2019s wildfires: politics must catch up with the new reality | Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new and ominous word has entered the vocabulary of firefighters struggling to cope with the vast wildfire sweeping through south-west France. A pyrocumulonimbus<\/a> is a fire-generated thunderstorm that can whip up winds in unpredictable ways, making the containment of a blaze and assessment of its likely course far more difficult. A known phenomenon in North America and Australia, firefighters believe France is suffering its first in the Bordeaux region, as the country endures the consequences of the third major heatwave of the summer and prepares for a fourth.<\/p>\n

The dire statistics<\/a> of the ongoing fires in France and Spain tell a story of deepening devastation and human misery. A far greater expanse of French land has already been burnt this year, compared with the 30,000 hectares\u00a0during the whole of 2025, while 220,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in the Gironde. In Spain, the environment ministry has calculated that over 170,000 hectares have been affected, compared with 29,000 last year. Over\u00a0100,000 people have been forced to flee.<\/p>\n

Pedro S\u00e1nchez greeting emergency service workers. Photograph: Eva Manez\/Reuters<\/p>\n

As climate scientists long warned would be the case, Europe\u2019s wildfires are worsening in intensity, scale and duration as the planet heats up. When the Spanish prime minister, Pedro S\u00e1nchez, attributed<\/a> the current crisis to the effects of the climate emergency, he was stating the obvious. But to his great credit, Mr S\u00e1nchez has been among the few leaders to argue<\/a> that the European Union\u2019s green transition should be accelerated accordingly. Whether on funding adaptation efforts, or\u00a0driving the macro changes needed to slow the rate\u00a0of global heating, far too many others appear happy to fiddle while the continent burns.<\/p>\n

In June, for example, with spectacularly bad timing<\/a>, Emmanuel Macron\u2019s government sought savings by announcing steep cuts to a Green Fund designed to help local authorities address climate and environmental challenges. Across Europe more generally, amid persistent low growth and the fallout from Donald Trump\u2019s war on Iran, a false dichotomy is increasingly being drawn between green ambition and competitiveness. This month, under pressure<\/a> from countries such as Giorgia\u00a0Meloni\u2019s Italy, the European Commission unveiled proposals to weaken<\/a> the EU\u2019s emissions trading system, its flagship climate policy. If adopted, heavy\u00a0industry would receive free polluting permits\u00a0for longer and at lower cost.<\/p>\n

Calls for the dilution of green measures are generally accompanied by the assertion that Europe\u00a0needs to take a more pragmatic approach, at a time of geopolitical uncertainty and aggressive economic competition. The argument is wrong twice over: the faster the EU moves towards net zero, the better it will consolidate Europe\u2019s position in the global markets of the future. More fundamentally, as the appalling impact of this summer\u2019s wildfires vividly illustrates, the notion that climate measures are a kind of optional add-on, appropriate only when times are good, is wildly at odds with the developing reality.<\/p>\n

As a fourth heatwave hits Europe, temperatures in south-west France are predicted to hit 40C on Wednesday. According to a recent study<\/a>, if the warming rate of the last decade continues, the 1.5C limit set by the Paris agreement will be redundant by 2030. Yet, far from seeking to catch up with the pace of change, too many governments and leaders are seeking to put their foot on the policy brake. That is not realism; it is a dereliction of duty.<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new and ominous word has entered the vocabulary of firefighters struggling to cope with the vast wildfire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":563129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[242,85,46,141],"class_list":["post-563128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/563129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}