Recent unprecedented heatwaves in the UK may have killed thousands of people. Children are suffering in overheating schools. NHS trusts are straining under record-breaking demand. This all comes after climate extremes have even affected national security, with three of Britain’s five worst harvests coming since 2020, impairing food security.
This is what life looks like in the “adaptation gap”.
It’s the difference between the climate society is built for and the one that exists. For years, the government’s climate-risk advisers have warned of a yawningly wide gap. Yet the failure to close it has had little consequence for politicians.
There is evidence this is starting to change, but the political consequences are far from what we might have hoped for.
Spain gives an example. In October 2024, devastating floods hit the country’s Valencia region. Climate breakdown supercharged the disaster. But the climate-denying Vox party capitalised on the aftermath, using misinformation to weaponise anger at the way hundreds of people died in a disaster that many saw coming. While Spain is rightly praised for its investments in renewables, it has a poorer record on climate adaptation.
There’s evidence of this dynamic in the UK. For instance, persistent flooding in poorly adapted Wales has been followed by reports of a rise in Reform UK support. Reform’s lead spokesperson for Wales denied that the flooding was linked to climate breakdown and called such claims a “red herring”, preferring to focus on a failure to invest in flood defences.
So the politics of the adaptation gap is here, and it comes with political penalties. This is important for the incoming prime minister, Andy Burnham, because climate breakdown is playing out worse than many expected.
For example, in 2021, the chances of a 40C heatwave happening in the UK before 2040 were assessed at 0.02%. Yet the following year, it happened.
If the extreme temperatures we saw in 2022 worsen even slightly, we could be in for a far bigger shock: imagine if wildfires burned larger areas, while hospitals were stressed beyond coping, and then a train collision was caused by heat-stressed signalling.
Or it could come from the domino effect of climate impacts on food. The area of high-quality farmland in England and Wales is projected to collapse by 75% in the next two decades without adaptation, all while supply chains are disrupted by biodiversity collapse abroad, as a government security assessment recently warned.
In response, many politicians will argue for doubling down on decarbonisation. They will be right. The only way to become safe is for the world to eradicate fossil pollution. That means everyone – even countries contributing only 1% to global emissions, such as the UK.
But some will argue that it’s pointless talking about this intractable global challenge and we should focus only on protecting people suffering in the here and now. Yet if this argument were to prevail, and resources were used solely for adaptation rather than decarbonisation as well, there will be less climate action, which means more climate shocks and more opportunities to exploit the resulting anger.
That’s a doom loop. It’s called “derailment risk”: the threat that climate consequencesundermine climate action in a self-defeating spiral, derailing the world from a route to avoiding the worst.
The incoming government must get ahead of this dynamic. It starts by recognising that the politics of the adaptation gap will only escalate. Closing it should become a priority, not the afterthought it has long been.
That means retrofitting buildings for heat extremes – something Burnham did in Greater Manchester. It means changing the law to set a maximum limit of temperature for safe working, long a demand of the labour movement. The list goes on.
But to stop derailment, even deeper changes are needed, beyond what we might currently consider as “adaptation”.
For example, inflation is becoming a premier climate consequence, with extreme weather destroying crops and raising prices. In turn, inflation has been a factor in driving voters to extremist parties, often the same ones seeking to roll back climate action.
We should consider, for instance, debates over how the Bank of England responds to climate-driven price shocks as touching on adaptation. Raising interest rates in Britain doesn’t offer protection from crop failures abroad.
Instead, investing in regenerative farming in the UK can reduce exposure to climate-vulnerable global supply chains and, by helping restore nature, create greater climate resilience at home.
These are job-creating, economy-boosting investments, which can also reduce the cost of living and are critical evenfor national security. In a competitive, climate-changed world, countries that are better adapted will have the edge. Climate breakdown is the key dimension often missing from growing demands to make investments beyond just defence that make Britain more resilient.
Yet the premier co-benefit of adaptation is that it can simultaneously decarbonise, making us safer today and into the future: insulation can protect against extremes while reducing emissions; regenerative farming can do the same while bolstering food security. These overlaps must be better identified and prioritised, ensuring rightful demands for adaptation are not used as a foil to derail net zero.
But for that to work, adaptation must seem like common sense. That means prioritising the things that intuitively protect. For example, heat pumps, which are often framed as a decarbonisation measure, can operate like air conditioners and so cool in the summer while heating in the winter – a no-brainer to protect homes from extremes. What’s more, adaptation is about place – retrofitting the nearby school, cooling streets with trees – and so lends itself to local control and decision-making.
So, as Burnham takes the keys to No 10 in this combustible summer, his choice is simple: close the adaptation gap or fall into it.
