Heatwaves are becoming the norm. This is what Britain will look like in the year 2052 | Bill McGuire
IIf the temperature seems uncomfortable today, let me take you to the last day of July 2052, the rising sun’s rays reveal a city still sweltering in the residual heat of the day before. From the sky, London looks like a colossal refugee camp. The streets, gardens and parks are full of tents and DIY shelters, in which the city’s residents spent another uncomfortable night, far from the heat traps that their houses and apartments have become. After six days of temperatures peaking at around 40°C, a new heat wave is on the way.
Half-hearted attempts to improve the insulation of the country’s housing stock petered out and failed decades ago, and most homes still have few barriers against infiltrating heat. Almost all of the country’s electricity now comes from renewables, which has driven down costs, but the relentless onslaught of extreme weather has caused a deepening economic depression across the world. Many now have air conditioning, but cannot afford to run it.
Early risers yawn and stretch while queuing at water hydrants for water. A succession of dry winters and a spring drought have led to water rationing across southeast England, adding to the woes of those waking from another sticky, broken sleep. Ironically, it rains a lot now and every day ends with a lightning storm and torrential rain. However, most of this water flows directly into storm drains which can no longer cope, causing surface flooding in the lowest parts of the capital, but not ending the shortage of drinking water.
Growing crowds gather around public grocery stores that offer basic necessities at affordable prices. Failed domestic harvests over the previous two years and massive reductions in food imports, as other countries hit by extreme weather hold on to what they have, have led to rationing of bread and other essentials. Supermarkets still exist, but they struggle to keep prices low and therefore cater almost exclusively to the wealthy.
The electricity is out again, as it has been intermittently since the start of the heatwave. The problem is not generation but transmission; extreme temperatures cause cables to sag and break and cause transformers to overheat. House doors are opened to let in the relatively cool night air, even if the temperature has not dropped below 29°C. Trailing cables lead to televisions that some have moved outside to watch, when the power is on, and to laptops on which office workers stranded at home by widespread transportation problems are crouched. The combination of heat and prolonged power outages has wreaked havoc on rail and metro networks, while damage to road surfaces and faulty traffic lights mean driving to work is a lottery.
All hospitals are overwhelmed by the unrelenting heat and humidity which is taking its toll on the vulnerable, the elderly and the very young, and the final death toll across the country, once the heat subsides, will likely be in the tens of thousands.
The picture I paint here is one that few people today envision as a future reality, but it has every chance of coming to life if we continue to err, unprepared, into a climatically challenging future. We just experienced the hottest May day on record, paving the way for even more intense summer heat that would not be possible without global warming. Temperatures exceeded 40C for the first time in the UK during the scorching summer of 2022, leading to the premature deaths of more than 3,000 people. Network Rail issued a “do not travel” warning at the height of the heat, while thousands of homes in the north of the country lost power. Parts of London only avoided power outages because the National Grid paid record amounts for electricity imported from Belgium.
Now imagine that this level of heat lasts for a week or more. After accelerating over the past decade, the global average temperature is currently rising at a rate that is expected to increase by 1°C every 28 years, meaning the planet will be 2°C warmer than pre-industrial times by mid-century. Given this level of heating, temperatures close to 43°C will be possible by 2050, so achieving my scenario is perfectly feasible. In fact, even under current climatic conditions, three or four consecutive days above 40°C can occur.
As the UK Climate Change Committee highlighted last week in its latest report to government, our country is not built to withstand such heat and its pervasive ramifications. More than nine in ten homes are not insulated well enough to keep heat out, while by 2050 a daily water supply deficit of 5 billion liters is predicted. The UK’s three worst harvests all took place between 2020 and 2025, contributing to the loss of grain equivalent to a year’s worth of bread. We currently import 40% of our food, but as other countries’ crops are also increasingly affected by extreme weather conditions, we will no longer be able to count on this sustainability. India, the world’s second largest producer, recently banned all sugar exports for four months. Such a “we own what we have” policy will only become more prevalent as climate breakdown takes an increasing toll on global agriculture.
But all is not won. We can’t prevent what’s coming, but there’s a lot we can do to help us cope better. At the top of any to-do list is the critical importance of properly insulating all of our housing stock, so that homes can become refuges from the heat rather than potential death traps. At the same time, large-scale deployment of generously subsidized rooftop solar, combined with battery storage, will go a long way toward making homes at least partly grid-independent and able to run air conditioning during heat peaks, even when the power goes out. Personal harvesting of precipitation, already significant in Germany and other countries, will also help to make up the projected water deficit. While there is a need for a serious rethink of the country’s food strategy as a whole, encouraging and incentivizing as many people as possible to grow their own fruit and vegetables at home can also help ease the burden of inevitable shortages.
While such measures will help mitigate the worst, our efforts will be overshadowed by the impact of a failing climate on the global economy and its consequences for the UK – with a number of analyzes predicting significant reductions in global GDP by mid-century. Inevitably, this will result in increased hardship for many British citizens, compromising their ability to cope with the new conditions. At the same time, a seriously weakened national economy will leave the government with less money to build the resilience the country needs to succeed in an increasingly hotter world.
Knowing that we continue to release CO2 equivalent to the weight of 800,000 Titanic each year, and fossil fuel companies are actively planning to expand their operations, it is virtually impossible for emissions reductions to occur quickly enough to reduce the rate at which our planet is warming. As a result, the UK’s mid-century heat is now above 40C. So we must admit that life in the 2050s will be very different from today and act now. The sooner we recognize this and begin – as a nation – to prepare and adapt accordingly, the better able we will be to address these enormous challenges to our daily lives.
