When the siren sounded on Friday night, my first thought was fire.

Weeks of unrelenting sun in the normally soggy Peak District, where I was visiting my mum, have bleached green valleys a dangerously dry, crispy blond. One of her neighbours had earlier pointed out an ominous cloud of smoke on the horizon, coming from one of the wildfires raging all summer on the moor. When that harsh, discordant shriek blared from every mobile phone in the house, I was half-braced for an evacuation order, not what turned out to be a faintly melodramatic warning to the nation to lay off the barbecues. A false alarm, of sorts, but one that felt uneasily like a wake-up call.

Scientists can warn until they’re blue in the face about the consequences of what we’re doing to the planet, but nothing beats the visceral shock of idly scrolling on your phone and seeing panicky footage of flames leaping over suburban British fences, or terrified horses being turned loose from fields where the hedges are starting to catch light. A friend just back from the south of France, somewhere far enough from the raging wildfires there to be considered safe, was spooked by ash raining from the sky as she ate lunch in the garden: it felt like the beginning of an apocalypse, she said, or the opening scenes of a disaster movie. Something has shifted even in people who were once blase about the climate........

© The Guardian