What Malta is experiencing this summer is a taste of the future, and it is a future that should alarm anyone who cares about the country's quality of life, economy and ability to cope with increasingly extreme weather.

On Saturday 18 July, Malta recorded 43.3°C, the highest temperature ever measured in July in the past 100 years. It was only 0.5°C short of the country's all-time record of 43.8°C, registered in August 1999. More worrying still, temperatures exceeded 42°C for three consecutive days for the first time on record, forcing the Meteorological Office to issue its highest-level red weather warning.

We are now in the middle of another prolonged spell of hot weather, not as bad as mid-July, but they are certainly stifling days that, the more time passes, the more they are becoming the norm.

We are accustomed to hot summers. What we are increasingly experiencing, however, is not simply summer heat, but longer periods of extreme temperatures, arriving with greater intensity and posing increasingly serious risks to health, infrastructure, agriculture, energy consumption and the economy.

The pattern is becoming difficult to ignore. Summers are getting hotter and longer, while winters are increasingly punctuated by violent storms and extreme weather. Only last January, Malta had to endure Storm Harry, with damaging winds and severe weather reminding us that climate change is not synonymous with heat alone. Extremes are becoming more extreme.

What is happening in Malta is part of a much larger picture.

Across Western Europe, temperatures during June and July this year have already broken the average temperature record previously set in 2022. Extreme heat has been accompanied by drought, devastating wildfires and new national temperature records. Scientists are warning of thousands of heat-related deaths.

Globally, 2026 is already the third-hottest year on record, behind only 2024 and 2025. And there is still time for it to climb higher. The combination of human-caused global warming and a strengthening El Niño means that 2026 could yet become the hottest year ever recorded.

The really frightening thought is that European forecasters believe the summer we are experiencing could eventually be remembered as one of the cooler summers of the next 30 years.

If that forecast is even broadly correct, what Malta is enduring today may become relatively mild by comparison.

And who is responsible for this?

Humanity, certainly. But responsibility cannot be distributed so conveniently that nobody is ultimately accountable. Political leaders must carry a disproportionate share of the blame.

For decades, politicians have known what climate change means. They have received reports, listened to scientists, attended conferences and signed agreements. Yet too often they have treated the issue as something to be discussed rather than something requiring urgent action.

Political arguments over the cost of climate measures, the interests of particular industries and the inconvenience of changing established practices have repeatedly delayed meaningful action. Governments have preferred announcements and targets to difficult decisions.

Malta is no exception.

We have allowed development to continue at an extraordinary pace while placing enormous pressure on roads, electricity infrastructure, water resources, open spaces and the natural environment. We have allowed traffic and pollution to worsen and have struggled to make the fundamental changes required in transport, energy and planning.

Then, when the thermometer reaches 43°C, we tell people to stay indoors, avoid the sun and drink plenty of water. We tell them to cool their homes, but many times they have no electricity to do so.

The authorities cannot control the weather. They can, however, determine how prepared Malta is for what is coming.

The time for belittling climate change, arguing about whose responsibility it is or pretending that incremental measures are sufficient has passed.

The climate is changing faster than many expected. The warnings have been there for years. The records are now breaking in front of us.

Malta should stop treating every extreme weather event as an unfortunate exception.

It is becoming the new normal.

And if this really is one of the cooler summers we will experience in the coming decades, the authorities had better start preparing for the hotter ones now.