The White House seems committed to ecocide. The EU should harness the power of the single market to force it to change course
Are we understanding it yet? As Europe burns in the west, the south and the north, are we grasping the fact that our economies, food systems, political stability and even our ability to plan for the future, will all be charred in a world on fire?
Paris got a taste of what is in store for us Europeans when, weeks ago, fire ripped through Fontainebleau forest, a bouldering paradise and one of the world’s first natural reserves. But the wildfires currently threatening Bordeaux and Madrid, which experts are calling the most extreme seen in Europe, are apocalyptic in comparison. In the Gironde region around Bordeaux, tens of thousands of hectares have burned, creating an unpredictable “thunderstorm of fire” as the region’s chief administrator called it. More than 200,000 people have been displaced in the largest peacetime evacuations in France’s history. Only the bravery of firefighters, dozens of whom have been injured, is keeping the fires within mere kilometres of Bordeaux and its more than a million inhabitants.
Alexander Hurst writes for Guardian Europe from Paris. His memoir Generation Desperation is out now
