CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

The Summer of Never-Ending Heat in the Age of Genocide

Photo by Tobias Rademacher

This is a summer of extreme heat that refuses to end. Record temperatures have fallen one after another across Germany, Czechia, Poland, Denmark, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Italy and beyond. Germany recorded provisional highs above 41.7°C. Czechia reached 41.9°C. Poland broke a century-old mark. Denmark logged its hottest day since records began in 1874. Italy has faced successive waves, with temperatures repeatedly climbing past 40°C in the center and south, red alerts covering much of the peninsula, and electricity demand hitting record levels for July as air conditioning pushed the grid to its limits. Hundreds of millions of people have endured days above 35°C. Nights brought little relief. The World Health Organization linked more than 1,300 excess deaths to the early phase of the heat alone. Later provisional figures covering only part of the continent already point to tens of thousands of excess deaths across the back-to-back waves of 2026.

Scientists have been unambiguous: heat of this intensity and earliness would have been virtually impossible without human-driven climate change. Europe is the fastest-warming continent on Earth. What was once called a once-in-a-generation event has become annual. The scientific consensus has been consistent for decades. The 1.5°C guardrail of the Paris Agreement and the repeated warnings of the IPCC have been treated as optional language rather than binding limits. Governments have continued to expand fossil infrastructure, delay meaningful emissions cuts, and subordinate climate policy to growth, military spending, and short-term political calculation. The result is not a surprise. It is the predictable outcome of ignoring what the science has long made unavoidable.

The social effects are immediate and unequal. Schools without air conditioning become dangerous. In Milan and other Italian cities, nursery and pre-school classrooms have recorded internal temperatures of 32–36°C. Parents have organized collections to buy portable units. Teachers and children work and learn in conditions that would fail any serious occupational-health standard. Across Europe, many school buildings were never designed for sustained extreme heat; relatively few are........

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