As Macron said in 2023: "Who could have predicted the climate crisis?"
The people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse
It's a prisoners dilemma. No country can risk de-growth or not develop because some countries either DGAF or actively want climate change to happen (Russia) and will gladly take advantage of anyone who lets their guard down.
The only way climate change stops is with a technological solution.
There is no "new normal", we are in a slope. As long as we emit CO2, the climate will get worse. Year after year. With effects like fires accelerating it, or the loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?) that will just result in more CO2 being released.
We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now, because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get worse, and worse, and worse. And save what we can. Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? Wait until your biggest worry is food.
I mean european forests are mostly monocultures created after we cut down everything natural we had. Maybe fire/warm resistent trees and forests will be planted. Its not like the fires are destroying 20000 years old ecosystems. Most of the forests were basically dead long before.
> Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene?
The thing is, the obsession with the AI race is making this problem so much worse. We're using up so much more energy and burning so much more fossil fuel as a direct result of AI mania.
We're so obsessed with becoming king of the ashes we're not even noticing we're burning the whole damn place down.
It's tragic, it's irresponsible and many here are at the very least complicit.
And aside the greenhouse effect, we're also using more power than we've ever used before, building 10Msqft boxes that ultimately turn electricity into heat. We could go all-solar and we'd still be warming our environment.
Isn't it primarily arson?
==
Europe is currently facing a dual crisis of arson-driven wildfires and coordinated sabotage operations. In the summer of 2026, extreme heatwaves have exacerbated wildfire seasons in France, Spain, and Italy, where authorities have linked many blazes to deliberate human ignition. French Interior Minister Sébastien Lecornu reported 162 arrests for suspected arson since early July, noting that 90% of forest fires in France are human-caused. Investigators in Italy’s Calabria region uncovered disturbing tactics, including the release of cats with flammable-soaked rags tied to their tails to spread fire.
Beyond accidental or opportunistic arson, Europe has experienced a wave of state-sponsored sabotage in 2024 and 2025, primarily attributed to Russian intelligence. These attacks involved incendiary devices in packages sent to logistics hubs like DHL in Germany, the UK, and Poland, as well as targeted fires at an IKEA in Vilnius and a warehouse in London. Authorities consider these acts of hybrid warfare aimed at disrupting critical infrastructure and testing delivery channels for larger attacks on the US and Canada.
Key developments in European arson include:
Wildfire Arson: France arrested 162 suspects since July 6, 2026, while Spain’s deadliest blaze in 40 years killed 13 people in Almería.
Calabrian Tactics: Italian officials found evidence of calculated arson using delayed ignition devices and animals to accelerate fire spread in southern Italy.
Sabotage Network: Russian agents have been linked to multiple arson attacks across England, Poland, Lithuania, and Germany, with several suspects convicted or charged for acts of terrorism and espionage.
Legal Fragmentation: The EU lacks a harmonized definition of arson or a centralized criminal database, forcing reliance on fragmented national investigations despite advanced satellite monitoring systems like Copernicus.
> loss of the Amazon (it's pretty much lost already, isn't it?)
Worth comparing Lula versus other Brazilian leader’s records on this. It looks like left-wing leaders are more likely to prioritise climate action because it’s a collective problem/resource
What ever happened to biomass energy? I'd rather burn wood in a controlled way that produces the best possible exhaust than have it burn uncontrolled. Encouraging biomass energy would create a market and economic incentives to manage forests.
"Being better at fighting fires, though, is not enough."
Yeah, it's nowhere near enough. We need to seriously revamp how we manage forests. They must be regularly cleaned, huge fire breaks between fenced areas and roads must be created and maintained. Prescribed burns on a regular schedule. Houses cannot be too close to the trees, no matter how pretty it looks. A huge clean radius must be maintained between houses and trees and between properties. All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere.
I see none of this happening at a proper scale in my country (Portugal). So of course every summer we se huge forest fires. Lives lost, ecosystems destroyed. Next year it happens again...
People keep reiterating this probably because Trump keeps reiterating but it just sounds ridiculous.
How do you clean forests? The debris is part of the forest, not all areas of a forest are easily accessible or feasible to transport debis out of there. A dead tree is actually an ecosystem of fungi and insects. Cleaning it may make it more fire prone as broken sticks and leaves shield the ground from the sun allowing the soil to hold on to moisture a little longer. There is plenty of room for nuance here.
I would need to listen to actual experts on this, the correct solution is probably something akin to resorting wetlands and beavers which act as fantastic self maintaining fire breaks.
However when you suggest things like this you see the actual issues pop up, local farmers protest and others using NIMBY laws to block so they get payouts.
> How do you clean forests? The debris is part of the forest, not all areas of a forest are easily accessible or feasible to transport debis out of there.
Cleaning is huge financial burden and has questionable outcome. Only extreme solution I can think of is fireblocks if situation gets worse which could worsen climate change by clearing trees. Divide forest in to grids, building roads wide enough to fire from spreading. Fill roads up with gravel or concrete to stop fires from spreading. Climate activists would never allow such plan to be implemented.
being good at fighting fires is part of the problem as that allows people to keep natural limited area fires from happen regularly and then eventually you get one huge fire.
People are truly having a climate change discussion fatigue. They hear all the time from politicians, celebrities, influencers, etc. that they should stop eating meat, should not drive non-electric vehicles, should not use AC, reduce consumption, and all other bullshit while the people preaching those have started wars that emit billions of tons of carbon, travel on their private planes to climate change summits, taking their private plane to ski in Aspen and throw lavish parties to celebrate birthdays, etc.
It's basically normal people should sacrifice their standards of livings and pay taxes to reduce carbon emission while the same rules doesn't apply for the other class of the society. Most people are living pay check to pay check and out of all the worries in their minds, climate change is the last thing they can afford to worry about.
So Economist is now stating Climate Change is an issue. Where was that magazine in the 80s and 90s. Oh, the were writing how fossil fuels are still a good investment and are still the future. And I expect they stated Trump was the better choice in 2020 and 2024.
So in 2026, this magazine (and others) are reporting how +2C will be far worse than +1.5C. How about reporting stopping at +2C is a pipe dream. We are heading straight to +3C and probably +4C.
Time to start reporting on how we need to stop using fossil fuels now, not later. But even doing that really will not stop us from reaching +2.5C due to inaction by world Gov. over the last 50 years.
Maybe I've missed it because I don't follow news on this much (apart from "it will get warmer/worse"), but what happens after that? Seems like I've been hearing "by 2100" for the last 20 years, but now that's only 74 years away. Some people alive today will live to see it. Will it just keep getting warmer or will it level off somewhat? Or is it not worth discussing because preceding events will already be such an overwhelming disaster?
Our software and AI capabilities have improved astronomically… but nature is still nature. Working with the physical world is still so hard. Humbling, in a way.
Don't worry we will end up spraying the atmosphere to buy more time, and the Earth will cool, and people will believe that the problem is solved and we can just go back to burning fossil fuels.
So the fighting will continue while we keep duct taping and band aiding the problem.
Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt.
Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it).
It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.
there are other factors at play like AMOC halting and breakdown of habitats that are codependent with other habitats. you dont get to pick and choose regions since earth is a huge interconnected system itself.
stop drinking the tech kool aid and start with degrowth.
Europe (and the world at large, really) can either wait for its demise, through increasingly oppressive climate hostile to human occupation and de-industrialization while the rest of the world continues on the current trajectory, or start getting its shit together and immediately commence climate engineering on a continental scale. Start with stratospheric aerosol injection, and mandate it not unlike "sustainable" aviation fuels on aircraft flying at the minimum altitude required to have any effect, as it should be possible [0], expedite research into other climate engineering efforts including space-based ones, promptly address the complete and utter reliance on fossil fuels and those profiting from it.. if climate change isn't something worth approaching as a war would be, then there's no point discussing it at all. Researchers and journals have been warning of crossing the point of no return and temperature targets for years now, you either submit to it and keep chasing emission reduction targets, or take action. The idea of simply "adapting to it getting worse" is suicidal, hard to sell to the public and depends on bureaucrats not getting kicked out.
I'm a firm believer that sooner or later we will be extinct by extreme heat and suffocation.
Two weeks ago here in Umbria, Italy the heat was extreme. It was 40°C without a breeze of air, it literally felt like braathing hot air. One morning while I was walking I couldn't believe the amount of dry leaves on the street, by pictures people would have guessed that it was autumn.
I have a really good tolerance to high temperatures but this time I got home very dizzy.
Hope is not too late to revert the current situation, but realistically year after year temperatures have been raising steadly.
This year Europe's fires are not the start. Few years ago we had very extended Australia fires, US/Canada fires, and other not so put in the spotlight fires in other countries around the world. At some point they diverged enough from normal to reach a scale that raised enough eyebrows.
And it is not just forest fires. Floods caused by extreme rainfalls, running out of letters in hurricane seasons, once in a century/millenia extreme weather events happening several times in a decade are increasingly noticeable, and they are just symptoms of bigger but harder to directly perceive global trends like that the global yearly average temperature increased a few tens of degrees or that the ocean is winning heat at a rate of 6 Hiroshima bombs per second.
In my country (EU) when large-scale land-use projects are approved —such as solar panel farms, mining operations, and buildings construction— fires break out and they burn everything in their path, tens of thousands of hectares. This -often- even happens the day after the project's approval (they are not scared). Time ago, laws that prevented construction on protected land after a fire were removed (included more sabotages on prevention that came after that. This along two different governments of supposedly opposite colors).
On television such fires were/are sold/brainwashed as climate change, rather than corruption and psychopaths.
I would recommend to keep an eye on this things, to investigate possible motivations, independently, fire by fire.
You can look up : Antonio Donato Nobre, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva and go from there.
The science is NOT settled, and people are still learning how all this works. They may all be crooks for all i know.
But as is mentionned in another comment, "(...)stop eating meat, stop driving non-electric vehicles, stop using AC, reduce consumption (...)" won't save us if indeed the massive hits to old-growth forest doom us anyhow.
Arguing for arguing’s sake gets old fast when there is nothing left to drink.
I was expecting to learn something new from this article, instead I got a bunch of numbers and a careful number of deaths from smoke 'by the end of the century' prediction.
What end of the century ? The way things are going, these cities (in Europe) are going to be unlivable by the end of this decade. They already are. And the fires..
Numbers, percentages, increases, excess, estimated.. We've constructed this abstract parallel universe in which we comfortably live in front of the screens.. and then wonder why the world around us is burning.
Climate change.. Such a comfortable word behind which we can all hide and dispel the responsibility for a life of copious comfort and pleasure.
It's the avocado toasts, the leather jackets, the 1-click-checkouts, the weekend flight to Barcelona, the CL=F price, the bonuses, the 'natural resources' there for us to use and exploit in infinite amounts..
The whole fucking system. That's why the world is burning.
Yeah, I'm guilty of all of the above too. And I have no solution. Just blowing out the smoke from those fires.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 10.2 ms ] threadThe people in charge a either clinically retarded or willingly ignoring the problem, either way we're fucked, the point of no return is behind us now, this is the new normal, and it'll only get worse
The oil companies in the 1970s for one:
* https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk0063
The only way climate change stops is with a technological solution.
We don't have to adapt to the situation as it is now, because it is pretty much the best scenario. We have to adapt to the fact that it will get worse, and worse, and worse. And save what we can. Worried about your country not dominating on the AI scene? Wait until your biggest worry is food.
The thing is, the obsession with the AI race is making this problem so much worse. We're using up so much more energy and burning so much more fossil fuel as a direct result of AI mania.
We're so obsessed with becoming king of the ashes we're not even noticing we're burning the whole damn place down.
It's tragic, it's irresponsible and many here are at the very least complicit.
Not even close. Look at satellite imaging.
Not only is the Amazon far from lost, the jungles in Africa/Borneo/PNG all look to be doing surprisingly okay.
And aside the greenhouse effect, we're also using more power than we've ever used before, building 10Msqft boxes that ultimately turn electricity into heat. We could go all-solar and we'd still be warming our environment.
Beyond accidental or opportunistic arson, Europe has experienced a wave of state-sponsored sabotage in 2024 and 2025, primarily attributed to Russian intelligence. These attacks involved incendiary devices in packages sent to logistics hubs like DHL in Germany, the UK, and Poland, as well as targeted fires at an IKEA in Vilnius and a warehouse in London. Authorities consider these acts of hybrid warfare aimed at disrupting critical infrastructure and testing delivery channels for larger attacks on the US and Canada.
Key developments in European arson include:
Wildfire Arson: France arrested 162 suspects since July 6, 2026, while Spain’s deadliest blaze in 40 years killed 13 people in Almería. Calabrian Tactics: Italian officials found evidence of calculated arson using delayed ignition devices and animals to accelerate fire spread in southern Italy. Sabotage Network: Russian agents have been linked to multiple arson attacks across England, Poland, Lithuania, and Germany, with several suspects convicted or charged for acts of terrorism and espionage. Legal Fragmentation: The EU lacks a harmonized definition of arson or a centralized criminal database, forcing reliance on fragmented national investigations despite advanced satellite monitoring systems like Copernicus.
Worth comparing Lula versus other Brazilian leader’s records on this. It looks like left-wing leaders are more likely to prioritise climate action because it’s a collective problem/resource
Yeah, it's nowhere near enough. We need to seriously revamp how we manage forests. They must be regularly cleaned, huge fire breaks between fenced areas and roads must be created and maintained. Prescribed burns on a regular schedule. Houses cannot be too close to the trees, no matter how pretty it looks. A huge clean radius must be maintained between houses and trees and between properties. All this work must be done in the winter and everything must be prepared for the summer. Every year. Everywhere.
I see none of this happening at a proper scale in my country (Portugal). So of course every summer we se huge forest fires. Lives lost, ecosystems destroyed. Next year it happens again...
It's only going to get worse.
People keep reiterating this probably because Trump keeps reiterating but it just sounds ridiculous.
How do you clean forests? The debris is part of the forest, not all areas of a forest are easily accessible or feasible to transport debis out of there. A dead tree is actually an ecosystem of fungi and insects. Cleaning it may make it more fire prone as broken sticks and leaves shield the ground from the sun allowing the soil to hold on to moisture a little longer. There is plenty of room for nuance here.
I would need to listen to actual experts on this, the correct solution is probably something akin to resorting wetlands and beavers which act as fantastic self maintaining fire breaks.
However when you suggest things like this you see the actual issues pop up, local farmers protest and others using NIMBY laws to block so they get payouts.
Cleaning is huge financial burden and has questionable outcome. Only extreme solution I can think of is fireblocks if situation gets worse which could worsen climate change by clearing trees. Divide forest in to grids, building roads wide enough to fire from spreading. Fill roads up with gravel or concrete to stop fires from spreading. Climate activists would never allow such plan to be implemented.
https://www.rts.ch/info/regions/fribourg/2026/article/secher...
Making your forests "fireproof" isn't going to save you from desertification.
It's basically normal people should sacrifice their standards of livings and pay taxes to reduce carbon emission while the same rules doesn't apply for the other class of the society. Most people are living pay check to pay check and out of all the worries in their minds, climate change is the last thing they can afford to worry about.
There's a point where "head in stand" becomes deliberately malicious.
So in 2026, this magazine (and others) are reporting how +2C will be far worse than +1.5C. How about reporting stopping at +2C is a pipe dream. We are heading straight to +3C and probably +4C.
Time to start reporting on how we need to stop using fossil fuels now, not later. But even doing that really will not stop us from reaching +2.5C due to inaction by world Gov. over the last 50 years.
Maybe I've missed it because I don't follow news on this much (apart from "it will get warmer/worse"), but what happens after that? Seems like I've been hearing "by 2100" for the last 20 years, but now that's only 74 years away. Some people alive today will live to see it. Will it just keep getting warmer or will it level off somewhat? Or is it not worth discussing because preceding events will already be such an overwhelming disaster?
So the fighting will continue while we keep duct taping and band aiding the problem.
Climate change will create winners and losers. Losers -- anyone on the equator or within the the tropic of cancer/capricorn. Winners -- those outside those regions or with enough $ to adapt.
Give me solar geoengineering, 2x increase in R&D spending on reducing fossil fuel usage, and funding for direct carbon capture (and a financial incentive to do it).
It's going to get worse before it gets better sadly.
stop drinking the tech kool aid and start with degrowth.
0. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/202...
Two weeks ago here in Umbria, Italy the heat was extreme. It was 40°C without a breeze of air, it literally felt like braathing hot air. One morning while I was walking I couldn't believe the amount of dry leaves on the street, by pictures people would have guessed that it was autumn.
I have a really good tolerance to high temperatures but this time I got home very dizzy.
Hope is not too late to revert the current situation, but realistically year after year temperatures have been raising steadly.
And it is not just forest fires. Floods caused by extreme rainfalls, running out of letters in hurricane seasons, once in a century/millenia extreme weather events happening several times in a decade are increasingly noticeable, and they are just symptoms of bigger but harder to directly perceive global trends like that the global yearly average temperature increased a few tens of degrees or that the ocean is winning heat at a rate of 6 Hiroshima bombs per second.
On television such fires were/are sold/brainwashed as climate change, rather than corruption and psychopaths.
I would recommend to keep an eye on this things, to investigate possible motivations, independently, fire by fire.
You can look up : Antonio Donato Nobre, Victor Gorshkov and Anastassia Makarieva and go from there.
The science is NOT settled, and people are still learning how all this works. They may all be crooks for all i know.
But as is mentionned in another comment, "(...)stop eating meat, stop driving non-electric vehicles, stop using AC, reduce consumption (...)" won't save us if indeed the massive hits to old-growth forest doom us anyhow.
Arguing for arguing’s sake gets old fast when there is nothing left to drink.
What end of the century ? The way things are going, these cities (in Europe) are going to be unlivable by the end of this decade. They already are. And the fires..
Numbers, percentages, increases, excess, estimated.. We've constructed this abstract parallel universe in which we comfortably live in front of the screens.. and then wonder why the world around us is burning.
Climate change.. Such a comfortable word behind which we can all hide and dispel the responsibility for a life of copious comfort and pleasure.
It's the avocado toasts, the leather jackets, the 1-click-checkouts, the weekend flight to Barcelona, the CL=F price, the bonuses, the 'natural resources' there for us to use and exploit in infinite amounts..
The whole fucking system. That's why the world is burning.
Yeah, I'm guilty of all of the above too. And I have no solution. Just blowing out the smoke from those fires.