United for Tomorrow
3 years, 1 month, 22 days, 3 hours
30 May 2026
‘The history of the future has to be about agreements’.
Last Saturday we bought a paddling pool. It came from the toy store in town, but it isn’t for children or grandchildren. Filled with cold water it has provided us with some respite from the blistering heat that has been experienced across Western Europe the last 10 days, which saw temperatures hit 35 degrees in London on Tuesday, the highest temperature recorded in London in May since records began.
The small cold pool is our own little form of climate adaptation. But not everyone is in a position to mitigate the effects of ever more extreme climate events, and governments are proving slow to recognise the urgency and seriousness of the challenge, notwithstanding the now regular episodes of floods, droughts, and extreme heat across the world.
Perhaps the UK’s Climate Change Committee had seen the forecasts of what was coming when on 20 May they published their latest report ‘A Well Adapted UK’. Their warning is clear: ‘By the middle of the century, the UK’s climate will be much more extreme than today. Hotter heatwaves could see 92% of existing homes overheat, creating dangerous conditions for vulnerable people. Peak river flows will be up to 45% higher, last longer, and be seen more frequently, driving increased flooding. Drier summers will mean shortfalls in water supply could reach over five billion litres per day, making drought more widespread’.
The report goes on to argue cogently that the benefits of climate mitigation massively outweigh the benefits, and that a systems approach is needed to recognise the interconnectedness of transport, energy, water and agriculture, where a climate induced failure in one sector could cascade catastrophically through the others.
So we need collaboration. Unfortunately, humanity’s track record on that isn’t good. The report implies that keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels is already a lost cause: 'Even under ambitious emission reduction scenarios, global warming will reach 1.5°C by about 2030. The world is currently heading towards around 2°C warming by 2050 and close to 3°C warming by 2100.’ Asked in the recent Outrage and Optimism podcast ‘Sir David Attenborough at 100’, how confident he felt about us being able to address the worst impacts of climate change, Sir David replies: ‘The nature of Homo sapiens is to be aggressive... That has to change... The history of the future has to be about agreements.’