CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Naked Fossil Fuel Corruption

John Amos coal-fired power plant, Winfield, West Virginia. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair.

The 2026 heatwave is a global phenomenon, inflicting extreme temperatures on billions of people from the United States to Europe and South Asia.

Extreme heat is deadly. In Europe, an estimated 10,000 people have died from heat this summer, and the official count of a few dozen deaths in India and Pakistan is likely to be too low by several orders of magnitude, according to a recent scientific study.

Dozens of Americans died from heat over the Fourth of July weekend alone — a toll that’s still  unacceptably high.

Meanwhile, much of the country has been blanketed in smoke from wildfires in Canada and Minnesota, triggered by the hot and dry conditions arising from the heatwaves. Like heat, wildfire smoke is also deadly. A similar wildfire smoke event in 2023 led to an estimated 33,000 premature deaths in the U.S. alone.

Scientists have found that all of these regional........

© CounterPunch