This is now a key part of the story of heat across the continent and beyond. It’s remarkable – and a win for fossil fuel companies and climate change-denying vested interests – that it is rarely mentioned in daily news of heatwaves and other extreme weather events.

The missing link there is voter apathy, stupidity or both. How can assert that ? voters simply don’t care, or they’d be voting Green.

I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don’t know how to do that." -James Speth