Another summer has arrived, and Europe is once again baking.

Britain shattered its record for highest temperature ever registered last Tuesday amid a heat wave that seared swaths of Europe, as it registered a temperate of 40.2 degrees celsius – something which would usually be considered abnormal for the Mediterranean shores of Malta, let alone for a Great Britain known more for being rain-soaked than sun-drenched.

It was not just the UK: many European countries, ranging from France to Portugal to the Balkans, faced scorching heat, resulting in massive wildfires and leading to hundreds of heat-related deaths across the continent.

This is just one case of the ever growing extreme weather that climate change can – and will – cause.

Last February, a UN climate report stated that while climate change is already causing deadly extreme weather now, it is about to get so much worse.

It is likely going to make the world sicker, hungrier, poorer, gloomier and way more dangerous in the next 18 years with an “unavoidable” increase in risks, and beyond that – unless human-caused global warming isn’t limited to just another couple tenths of a degree – will be living on a planet struck regularly by deadly heat, fires, floods and drought in future decades will degrade in 127 ways, with some being “potentially irreversible.”

Malta will be one of the countries which suffers.  Already a hotbed (pun intended) for heatwaves, Malta’s climate will only get more and more unbearable – especially in summer months – as the globe warms up more.

It’s not just that: think of other weather extremes – look at what damage major floods can cause.  The rise in sea levels meanwhile makes the risk of a tsunami in the Mediterranean all the more prevalent.  Experts in fact have said that they have 100% certainty that a tsunami will occur in the Mediterranean within the next 30 years.

And yet, with all this in mind, what does Malta’s action to fight climate change look like?

Malta is supposedly in a state of climate emergency, having declared it in 2019 – although you’d be hard pressed to realise that given that very little, if anything at all – besides a bunch of buzzwords on sustainability and the green economy – has been done to reflect this state.

Instead, the country has continued to favour the taking up of more and more of the countryside (before then saying that €700 million will be spent to create urban green spaces, supposedly making up for the open spaces which the country’s defunct planning policies have allowed to be lost) and widening more and more roads to encourage people to continue to use their polluting means of transport.

Last October, then Environment Minister Aaron Farrugia claimed in a climate change conference held in Malta that the country would become a front leader in the fight against climate change while being assertive that other countries have to pull their weight too.

The same Aaron Farrugia today holds the role of Transport Minister and has – even proudly – said that he will continue to pursue “controversial” infrastructure projects, an ominous prospect given that infrastructural projects recently were only controversial because they served only to damage the country’s natural environment and act as short-term solutions for car-use.

Of course this isn’t a problem with Aaron Farrugia – he is merely toeing the government line: a government line which is full of buzzwords which it then finds difficult to back up.

The solutions for climate change are not going to come from our political class.  They are far too smitten with short-term, vote-winning thinking in order to think in the long-term as to how Malta can be affected by climate change in 20 years if no tangible action is taken.

The solutions and the actions have to come from the people.  An alliance set up this week called the Malta ESG Alliance by 13 major businesses with the aim of improving environmental practices is a welcome one – but in the grand scheme of things is only a drop in the proverbial ocean.

We as a collective – as a population – need to all recognise the small things we can do to reduce our carbon footprint.  One person doing one small thing will make little difference – but 400,000 people doing that one small thing will make an impact.

So let’s work together.  It’s our future and the future of our children which is at stake if we don’t.