Recent unprecedented heatwaves in the UK may have killed thousands of people. Children are suffering in overheating schools. NHS trusts are straining under record-breaking demand. This all comes after climate extremes have even affected national security, with three of Britain’s five worst harvests coming since 2020, impairing food security.

This is what life looks like in the “adaptation gap”.

It’s the difference between the climate society is built for and the one that exists. For years, the government’s climate-risk advisers have warned of a yawningly wide gap. Yet the failure to close it has had little consequence for politicians.

There is evidence this is starting to change, but the political consequences are far from what we might have hoped for.

Spain gives an example. In October 2024, devastating floods hit the country’s Valencia region. Climate breakdown supercharged the disaster. But the climate-denying Vox party capitalised on the aftermath, using misinformation to weaponise anger at the way hundreds of people died in a disaster that many saw coming. While Spain is rightly praised for its investments in renewables, it has a poorer record on climate adaptation.

There’s evidence of this dynamic in the UK. For instance, persistent flooding in poorly adapted Wales has been followed by reports of a rise in Reform UK support. Reform’s lead spokesperson for Wales denied that the flooding was linked to climate breakdown and called such claims a “red herring”, preferring to focus on a failure to invest in flood defences.

So the politics of the adaptation gap is here, and it comes with political penalties. This is important for the incoming prime........

© The Guardian