The heat is on
Forrest fire in Rhodes-Korfu Islands hit the holiday destination tourist season, Greece, July 24th, 2023. Image: agilard/Shutterstock.com
Here in the UK, our news pages are filled with updates on the continuing fires across the Mediterranean and beyond.
Locals and holidaymakers have had to flee to safer areas for refuge due to the threat to life. As many as 40 people have already died, according to the BBC.
It might have left the Brits (me included) feeling grateful for our country’s cooler temperatures at the moment, but there’s always the threat of a future heatwave. I for one certainly won’t forget the forty-degree temperatures of summer 2022, and the news of a wildfire about 10 minutes’ drive from our Gravesend office, in Dartford last July. Wildfire wasn’t even a word you’d need to use in the UK until recently.
A team of climate scientists, the World Weather Attribution group, have commented that this month’s intense heatwave in Southern Europe, North America and China would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change. That’s a hard but necessary pill to swallow.
As an industry, metal packaging needs to remain strong and at the forefront of sustainable production and education. Otherwise we’re just adding to a much bigger problem. Let’s also keep on at policymakers to induce measures toward real, quantifiable change in reducing harm on the environment.
We can’t just wait at the sidelines for these things to settle down, because scientific evidence tells us that they won’t.
I hope all our readers are staying as safe as possible during this time.
- Alex Rivers (she/her), CanTech International editor
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