Unprecedented danger will be the new normal if we don’t take urgent action to stop fossil fuel-driven climate change.
From Canada and the United States to Russia and even the Arctic, record-breaking heatwaves are putting lives, livelihoods, and communities at risk. The soaring temperatures not only pose individual health dangers, but they also put entire ecosystems and communities at increased risk of wildfires and failures of power grids.
Hundreds of deaths in British Columbia in Canada and Washington and Oregon in the United States have already been linked to the heatwave that began late in June, according to The New York Times.
Those vulnerable communities facing the most intense impacts of the climate crisis urgently need empathy and aid. At the same time, the entire global community needs to demand that fossil fuel companies and corporate polluters stop accelerating climate change with reckless, profit-hungry drilling and burning of coal, oil, and gas.
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What is happening?
In Canada, the record for the highest temperature ever seen in the country has been broken and then broken again. One of those record-breaking temperatures occurred in Lytton in the province of British Columbia. On Tuesday, the village experienced a historic temperature of 49.5°C / 121°F. A day later, it was evacuated due to a wildfire.
Parts of the United States are under the same heat dome as Canada. The temperature at Portland International Airport in Oregon reached 46.1°C / 115°F on 28 June. For context, the average high temperature at that airport during this time of year is approximately 22.8°C / 73 °F, according to forecasters.
In California, wildfires are again posing a threat to communities that are facing a drought that began before the heatwave.
The month of June also brought the hottest day on record in Moscow (34.8°C / 94.6°F) and Helsinki (31.7°C/ 89.1°F), according to NASA’s Earth observatory blog.
This is a climate emergency!
You can read the whole article HERE.
Source: Greenpeace
