Back in 2021, The Malta Independent wrote an editorial warning that the summer of the year – which was punctuated by three over 40 degree celsius heatwaves – was to be the coldest summer for the rest of our lives.

The heatwave which Malta and the rest of southern Europe has experienced for the past week and will continue to experience into the coming week is only proof of that quite scary prospect.

Climate change has come to the point that we can come to expect these – and other – weather extremes to be a far more common occurrence. 

Heatwaves have ravaged multiple countries, tourists had to be evacuated from Rhodes due to wildfires, but there have at the same time been astonishing weather extremes at the other end of the spectrum with flash floods and hail storms shocking northern Italy.

Malta has not been spared of the heat, and Malta never will be spared.  We need to contend with the effects of climate change and truly understand that our lives will be conditioned by whatever climate change decides to throw at us.

The evidence from the past week shows that the country is not exactly ready to contend with the effects that climate change will inevitably bring.

The spate of power cuts which left tens of thousands without electricity over the past week only supports this conclusion.  Thousands had to experience night-long power cuts with the longest of these cuts being report at over 20 and 30 hours.

It is not something you expect from an infrastructure of a first-world country, but it is the result of a lack of preparation for the effects that climate change – through these heatwaves – is bringing to our shores.

Lest we forget, that Malta is currently in a status of a climate emergency having declared this in 2019 – now four years ago.  However, despite this, one doesn’t get the feeling that the government has been proactive in combatting the effects of climate change.

For instance, this spate of power cuts was certainly avoidable, especially when one considers that there were similar issues related to electricity supply in previous summers.  Surely one can expect that the Maltese summer will indeed be quite hot, and therefore the infrastructure must be able to cope with that.

One may also pose the question: is Malta’s health infrastructure able to cope with the issues which an extreme heatwave may cause to the population?  The heat is silent, but certainly has the potential to kill.

The fact is that the government must prepare – and more important, enact – a strategy to deal with the various dimensions that climate change and all the associated issues that it will bring at the soonest so that the issues which are still to come can be dealt with in a proactive manner.

We need to look forward in order to deal with the inevitable.