Wildfire smoke in Spain. Photo by Jaume Moya/Wikimedia Commons.

Every year, we are told the latest summer of climate disaster will finally be a wake-up call.

Europe has had its wake-up call. The evidence is written in the dead.

Germany alone has recorded an estimated 9,800 heat-related deaths since the start of the year, while more than 5,000 of those deaths were tied to the late-June heatwave that pushed temperatures toward 42 degrees Celsius in some regions. Across the continent, the record-breaking heatwave is believed to have caused more than 20,000 deaths in a single week. Over the past four years, the World Health Organization estimates that heat has killed more than 200,000 people across the continent.

Massive blazes near Bordeaux and Madrid have forced evacuations on a scale not seen since the Second World War. By recent estimates, close to 500,000 people have been displaced across Europe in a matter of days.

France has recorded its first known pyrocumulonimbus firestorm, a phenomenon in which fires generate their own weather systems, producing powerful winds and lightning NASA has described as a “fire-breathing dragon of clouds.” Scientists warn that these types of fires are no longer manageable. “We have entered an era of fires that cannot be extinguished,” warned Victor Resco de Dios, a professor of forestry at the University of Lleida in Spain. “These are fires that burn with........

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