This week the Euro summer comes to an end – and so does a certain type of posting on Instagram.
Waiting at the bus stop in the grey winter dawn, a slanting rain soaking your trouser leg, you can warm yourself by scrolling your feed and seeing pictures of Australians enjoying a Euro summer. There it is again – azure Greek coves, plates of barbecued sardines, the yachts rented by the hour, and selfies on the balcony of some Paris Airbnb, drinking wine in the long, blue night.
But this year, just out of the frame but never far away, was the heat. You can’t easily photograph heat but it infused the season so monumentally that it might just have killed the Euro summer dream cold.
With extreme heat starting in late May, this summer broke temperature records in western Europe and made for an uncomfortable travel experience for hundreds of millions of tourists.
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Who dreams of having a Euro summer now when staying in an ancient, uncooled building in the Old Town is like trying to sleep in a wood-fired pizza oven? How aspirational and glamorous is it to spend your days in an air-conditioned shopping centre (if you can find one) because to try to see a cathedral or historic site is to risk heatstroke?
To travel to the usual European vacation spots in high season now is to endure. It’s to plan your travel so that you aren’t outside in the middle of the day. It’s to stay in places that have air conditioning – if you can find them – and pay a premium to try to stay cool.
It’s major monuments and attractions being closed because it’s too dangerous for them to remain open. (In June, Notre-Dame Cathedral restricted access to its towers, while the Eiffel Tower, which is normally open late, announced a 4pm closure, as did the Louvre.)
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It’s the cities sweltering, smelling of the middle ages – decomposing rubbish, sweat and hot bodies. It’s the feeling of being drained of energy, jet-lagged and damp, lying on a hard mattress in your shuttered hotel room, face close to the fan, as the thick air turns.
It’s a population driven mad by the weather, throwing themselves into the canals at 2am because the heat gets trapped in their apartments at night, making it impossible to cool down and sleep.
Travel is meant to be pleasurable. Holidays are supposed to be relaxing. But heat of this intensity and duration is incompatible with tourism. It becomes dangerous.
Take, for example, the new trees planted to provide shade in Rome’s Piazza Risorgimento, near St Peter’s Basilica. They were burnt to a crisp, according to CNN, and the benches in dark plastic and wood were searingly hot and unable to be used.
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Across Europe, critical infrastructure failed – with overheated signal systems, melting asphalt that affected tram tracks, and train rails buckling in the extreme heat.
As well as making things outside unbearable and dangerous, the weather creates its own confusion and disorientation in the body. When you have heatstroke, you need to sweat to cool down but your skin stays parched and dry. Your body craves fluid but you get confused and forget to drink.
At least 35,000 more people died than expected in Europe this summer due to back-to-back heatwaves, with heatstroke a culprit.
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It’s a strange aspect of human psychology that once summer passes we can remember it was hot, we can remember it was horrible, but the actual sensations of physical and mental distress we experienced fade. The body forgets, until next time. The brain stores the fact of heat but not the sensation.
But now is the time to prepare for next year, which could be even hotter.
Australia is imperfect when it comes to climate adaptation and often our approach has been reactionary, piecemeal and ad hoc. But we have experience with long and increasingly uncomfortable summers – and over the years some approaches have been useful.
Develop public education campaigns about the sun and its power. Erect shade cloths in schools and public places. Introduce sunhats as part of your childrens’ school uniforms in summer. Rethink work from home rules if workers don’t have access to air conditioning at home, or consider splitting the working day so workers without cooling are not working in the hottest parts of the day.
Make major investments in urban design that presume more extreme temperatures (large plazas like those seen all over Europe are not suitable for our changing climate, as stone absorbs and radiates heat ferociously). Install air conditioning or other cooling measures on public transport, in offices and public buildings. Plant more trees. Install water fountains across public spaces, indoor and outdoor. Have labour laws that protect workers who are on building sites or outdoors in extreme conditions, and make those conditions mandatory. Introduce a heat-warning system with legal obligations attached (ie school and outdoor work cancelled, outdoor events cancelled). Make it socially acceptable to wear shorts to the office.
And the other big change to consider? Australians could skip the annual Euro summer pilgrimage and enjoy the chill in the air at home.
