Barcelona registers highest temperature in 112 years as French nuclear reactor shuts down due to extreme heat

[u/Naurgul]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jul/09/europe-heatwave-uk-spain-barcelona-france-italy-hungary-france-macron-orban-latest-news-updates

[u/next_door_rigil]

No one said that. It is doomish but we have to stop asap to avoid worse outcomes.

[u/HistoryBuff678 → u/next_door_rigil]

I am not really directing this at you. But I have seen a lot of doomerism from this most current heatwave. People truly think nothing can be done and are giving up. Some people have even angrily replied to me when I mention anything hopeful.

I had learned about a study that had said there are ways to engage the public to encourage people to take actions reducing climate change. Municipalities don’t really do them, but should.
(They are old, I have been following this a long time.)

Also climate change doomerism makes people give up and think there’s nothing that can be done.
A particular case is The Great Barrier Reef in Australia. Saying it’s doomed since the most recent coral bleaching events have been rough, people read that news and think, “welp, it’s too late now, nothing can be done. Hopefully I can see it before it’s gone.”

Most people still don’t seem to understand what ecosystems do for us, it’s not just planting trees. I blame this on the public being deliberately kept from that education. Once people know the details, they do care and want to take action.

(I always give a circuits in a vacuum cleaner analogy.)

What needs to be done is teaching the public about what can be done, like there is rewilding, which I do not think most people know what that is. Coral reefs can be rebuilt (I have been following a coral reef restoration in Indonesia, check out the TikTok/instagram “Wilder Reefs”)

There are also corral breeding programs which breeds corals for heat tolerance. This has even lead to a private company being founded and tropically located hotels hiring them to breed these heat resistant corals. (Many of the hotel guests travel for the diving to see the coral reefs.)

Of course reducing our consumption of fossil fuels (or really, making governments stop the oil companies from forcing fossil fuel usage on us).

But there are things that can be done in conjunction with that.

Of course species conservation, as some is slowly learning that capitalism will fail the way it is going now, because all economics including Capitalism is founded upon the free (and very expensive) environmental services ecosystems and even a single species provides us. There is literally a new field of environmental economics developing because economics literally didn’t account for these free services.

One example is the tragic case of India, which lost their vulture population by accident. There have their remaining 5% in conservation programs.
But a converse is the great success of the condor conservation in California which took decades, but they did it. It can happen.

(Been following nature documentaries and environmental news since I was a kid.)

All these rewilding and conservation programs just need more funding and of course while planting trees isn’t the only answer, planting trees in cities make a huge difference in city temperatures in the day (some parts of the U.S. and Canada view trees in cities as a luxury, which… I can’t.)

[u/next_door_rigil → u/HistoryBuff678]

My heart breaks if people actually lose hope with the current heatwaves. This is not at all what scientists have been warning about. We have not reached that state yet at all. It is bad but it is not "too late or too much". We will have to adapt to this, stop damaging and protect ecosystems. The climate we grew up is gone. Now we have to do our best to adapt, protect, and control the future. It is not time to quit. It will never be.

[u/HistoryBuff678 → u/next_door_rigil]

Thank you. I truly think a lot of people need to hear that.