Our European environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan answers your questions on the climate after reporting on the shocking heatwave that continues to scorch its way across Europe, covering everything from the lack of preparation to ways to deal with the heat

SFischer157 asks: Does the current swing to the right have its root cause in the climate crisis (social media and other factors like the pandemic aside)? People don’t want to change their lives, when clearly we need worldwide, coordinated, radical change to reduce emissions. It feels hopeless and as an individual I feel powerless to do more than I already do (mostly vegan, try not to fly more than once per year, e-bike for commuting to not use the car).

Ajit: I don’t think there’s evidence to suggest it’s a root cause, but I have wondered a lot whether it contributes. If you scroll through the social media feeds of far-right leaders in most western European countries, their top topic is migration/crime and the second is typically climate/energy. Yet if you speak to their voters, at least in Germany, where I live, it quickly becomes clear that opposition to climate policy is at most a minor issue.

That paradox is reflected in polling data. How can it be that less than 10% of the public denies the science of climate change, yet far-right parties who do so consistently get more than 20% of the vote? The obvious answer is that people are voting for them for the core issue of migration, not climate. But what is less clear is why these parties spend so much time bashing climate action. There are plausible suggestions that it plays well to fossil fuel lobbies many are linked to. A more convincing theory, I think, is that the far right sees itself as having already won the fight over migration – now it needs new battlegrounds to differentiate itself from mainstream parties.

Ajit: Not necessarily. El Niño – a natural warming weather pattern in the Pacific associated with violent weather - brings hotter global average temperatures. While this helps some heatwaves reach punishing new heights, the effects on European summer are harder to predict. Analysis from Copernicus suggests temperatures in June and July in El Niño years are not significantly different from their monthly averages over the last half century. It’s a different story for August and September, though, when much of Europe is considerably hotter.

It’s worth adding that, so far, scientists I’ve spoken to are more worried about the timing of El Niño than its likely strength. This year it’s striking when fuel and fertiliser prices are high, foreign aid budgets have been gutted, and many poor countries are either in debt distress or at high risk of it.

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