That broke the record set only 24 hours earlier — 36.7°C on Thursday, which itself had broken the record set the day before that, on Wednesday. Three June records. Three days in a row.
This, unfortunately, is yet another very loud alarm bell. Climate change is not a distant theory. It is not a future debate. It is here, now, in the lives of people in Brighton and Hove. It is in overheated classrooms, disrupted travel and public services, pressure on health services and the growing vulnerability of older people, children and those with existing health conditions.
Last week, like many parents, we had to change our own plans because our child’s school could not operate safely with dangerously high classroom temperatures. As a council, we had to cut the working hours of our refuse collection and street cleaning staff to protect them from the worst of the heat. That is not an abstract policy discussion. It is daily life beginning to bend around a changing climate.
And yet, even as the evidence piles up around us, there are political actors determined to pretend this is not happening. They deny, dismiss or minimise the obvious reality in front of us. They call for more oil and gas extraction, dressing it up as energy security, sovereignty, or lower bills. What they do not bring is data or any serious engagement with the scientific evidence. They do not explain why doubling down on the fuels that caused the climate crisis (and, for the second time in only a few years, are turbo-charging the cost-of-living crisis) will somehow protect us from it.
The truth is that we no longer even need to frame this argument in terms of carbon emissions – although preventing large parts of the planet from becoming uninhabitable should really be motivation enough. The economic argument is now overwhelming too.
Our dependence on fossil fuels makes us poorer, weaker and more exposed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the more recent crisis in the Middle East have shown how quickly fossil fuel markets can become weapons of geopolitics. But even if we extracted more oil and gas from the North Sea, it would not give British households cheap British energy. Oil and gas are traded on international markets, by private companies, at international prices. More drilling might benefit producers, but it would do little to protect families from the global price shocks that have driven up bills. The real route to energy security is reducing our dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets in the first place.
And if you’re looking for jobs and drivers of economic growth, the UK’s net zero economy is growing around three times faster than the wider economy, at more than 10% a year.
Clean power is not just climate policy. It is economic policy. It is security policy. It is common sense. With all this said, we do need to be honest about the transition. It is not easy – we need more grid capacity, faster connections, better storage, fairer pricing and serious investment in warm homes and clean transport. But pretending that fossil fuels are cheap, stable or secure is a complete fantasy.
Here in Brighton and Hove, this Labour Council understands that. While, ironically, the last Green Council made no serious effort to decarbonise the city, we are making up for lost time, developing our plan to bring in the investment needed to decarbonise the city at pace and scale, building on our evidence-led roadmap covering heat, power, buildings and transport. Our project pipeline includes rooftop and ground-mounted solar, heat networks, building retrofit and EV charging. This builds on the work we’ve already done since we were elected in 2023, including large-scale rollout of rooftop solar generation and the best EV charging network outside London.
But cutting emissions is only half the challenge. As last week has shown, we also need to adapt to the climate impacts that are already locked in.
That means investing in coastal flood defences in Hove, including the Brighton Marina to River Adur scheme to reduce long-term flood and coastal erosion risk. It means rain gardens and sustainable drainage schemes in places like Norton Road and Elm Grove, designed to reduce local flood risk while supporting biodiversity. And yes, it means facing up to the difficult question: how do we keep people cool in a city that was never designed for the climate we now live in?
The climate crisis is here, and the cost-of-living crisis is beginning to feel like the new normal. The choice now is whether we respond with evidence, courage and the action required to improve our lives — or with slogans, denial, populism and more of the same.
In Brighton and Hove, we choose action.
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