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A new piece by Local Storytelling Exchange brings together people’s experiences of extreme weather: from tree planting to preventing waterlogged cricket pitches, to shading schools from the rising heat. Amidst growing climate impacts, Exchange are sharing stories and multimedia content to highlight how people in Britain are already adapting to extreme weather, including heatwaves, drought and floods – and spotlighting that they can’t do it alone. Here are a couple of quotes from contributors:
“It’s really challenging when you have relatively small classrooms with up to 30 children and multiple adults. When it’s over 30 degrees in the summer, it’s suffocating.”–Rona Mackie, head teacher at Guildford Grove Primary School
“Houses in Scotland are built to retain heat, which is great in the winter, but it’s problematic if you’re getting temperatures of 30 degrees and your flat is sitting at 27 or 28 degrees for a few days on end. The consequences of that could be massive ” – Dani Waddell, manager of Crossroads Youth and Community Association (also covered in the Glasgow Times)
Polling by YouGov – carried out in mid-August after the UK’s summer of five record-breaking heatwaves – shows only a quarter want to see another heatwave (25%), while two-thirds of people are not hoping it ‘does not happen’ (65%).
The polling comes the same week Richard Tice of Reform drew criticism for telling people to “enjoy” the heat, to reap it’s benefits (such as British winemaking), while suggesting that the only way to respond to climate change is to adapt.
This, along with the new polling, spotlights how heatwaves have become another politically divisive issue.
While a sizeable number of Reform voters do not hope for more heat (48%), they are by far the most likely group to say they are hoping for another heatwave (42%). The rest of the political spectrum do not share this view (just 21% of Labour and 12% of Green voters agree, for instance).
New polling by YouGov for Friends of the Earth reveals a high level of public support for the introduction of national maximum workplace temperature limits. 79% of people backed this measure amidst a summer of heat extremes in the UK, while just 10% were opposed. 11% said they don’t know.
The poll – carried out at the end of July following successive UK heatwaves – also found that:
As climate impacts intensify, who should pay for the costs?