Climate Change Turned Summer Into a Warzone
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- Rebecca Solnit argues in a Guardian US column that climate change has transformed summer into a 'climate warzone,' with an estimated 20,000 people dying in extreme heat across Europe earlier this year and summer now evoking dread rather than delight across temperate zones.
- Wildfires across Europe and North America have killed firefighters and destroyed 600 homes in eastern Washington, while a conflagration west of Bordeaux, France — described as four times the size of Paris — prompted 220,000 evacuations, the largest peacetime evacuation in French history.
- Phoenix, Arizona has grown so intensely hot that people suffer severe burns from falling on superheated asphalt, and Solnit recounts fearing for her survival when Needles, California was forecast to hit 116°F (46.6°C).
- Ruidoso, New Mexico has been repeatedly battered by flood and fire in recent years, with Solnit noting that monsoon rains in the region are less reliable and often more violent when they arrive.
- Solnit invokes Bill McKibben's 2011 book Eaarth, which frames climate change as equivalent to moving from the gentle, stable planet humans evolved on over 12,000 years to a more perilous, unwelcoming one.
- Solnit characterizes the climate movement as a peace movement to end the 'war against nature,' and points to youth-led lawsuits against climate polluters and governments as efforts to recover the stolen joys of summer.
- Smoke from climate-fueled fires now hangs across Europe and North America, dimming sunlight and creating toxic air, signaling that what was once a shared seasonal pleasure has become an immaterial loss alongside the material toll of destroyed homes and species.
Why it matters: By pairing the 20,000 European heat deaths and France's 220,000-person evacuation with the erosion of summer as a shared cultural joy, Solnit reframes climate action as a fight not just for survival but for the freedom and pleasure of future generations — a moral expansion aimed at audiences unmoved by purely material cost arguments.
