Over the last few weeks millions of people all over the world, not least in Malta, have had to cope with extreme heat. Health authorities everywhere issued several warnings about the dangers that people, especially senior citizens, face. Heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in Europe. In 2023, the Maltese health authorities confirmed 21 direct deaths and up to 80 excess deaths tied to hyperthermia and dehydration during the prolonged heatwaves and power outages that summer.
This year, temperatures rose to new record highs in Europe ̶ Spain registered 46 degrees Celsius and Malta 43.3 degrees ̶ and surpassed 49 degrees in Australia. Temperatures are expected to remain elevated in August. That means people are increasingly being exposed to heat stress and its accompanying health concerns.
A growing body of research shows that our brains work differently when temperatures spike. Drivers become more irritable or aggressive, and most other people feel slower and less able to focus. There are also longer-term effects of exposure to heat to consider. Recent studies found that hotter weather may make the brain more vulnerable to air pollution, increasing the risk for dementia and Parkinson's disease.
"Our brains work best under certain optimal temperatures and environments," Burcin Ikiz, a neuroscientist and the director of the research group EcoNeuro, said at a recent panel at the National Academies. "Anything that deviates from that, even a couple of degrees centigrade or a different environment, can cause stress on our brains," she added.
Higher temperatures were found to correlate with lower test scores in various studies. One in which three million tests were taken by students from third to eighth grade, math test scores worsened on hot days. The effect was particularly pronounced at schools with higher poverty rates. The researchers speculated that the higher-poverty schools with the bigger drops may have had worse air-conditioning. Note that 81 schools in Malta still have no cooling equipment.
High temperatures are also closely related to higher accident rates at workplaces and upturns in violent crime. Researchers studying "reactive aggression" discovered that people playing video games in a hot room acted more spitefully than those in a cool room.
In the USA, an annual study put together by health institutes which track air quality and research, concluded that there was enough evidence to support a link between air pollution and neurodegeneration. Air pollution killed close to eight million people globally in 2023, they reported.
Exposure to particulate air pollution, known as PM 2.5, is connected with Alzheimer's disease and dementia in older adults, according to the authors of the study. It can also impair brain development in young people, increasing the risk of anxiety and depression. The report cited an estimate that one in four dementia deaths is attributable to air pollution.
Alzheimer's represents some 71% of dementia cases in Malta. I do not believe that it is a coincidence that, while 6,550 persons were registered to have dementia in 2018, the figure is expected to double by 2050.
Traumatic and stressful extreme weather events such as heatwaves may increase the risk of suicide, the British Government has asserted with "moderate confidence." Recent research suggests that a link may indeed exist. Researchers in the USA analysed over 7,500 suicide cases between 2000 and 2016, cross-referencing the approximate levels of heat stress, nitrogen dioxide, and fine particulate air pollution at the decedent's address. They say that for every 9°F increase in Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), the risk of suicide increased by 5%. The risk was especially amplified during the warmer periods of the year.
The average mean temperatures in Malta between March and June 2026 were between 0.8°C-1.3°C warmer than the same period in 2025. PM 2.5 concentration in 2025 was 1.8 times the WHO annual guideline, placing us 106th out of 143 countries. I couldn't find a comparable figure for the first half of 2026.
I can't say whether the higher temperatures and bad air quality contributed to any of the 12 suicides between March and June this year (up from six suicides during the same period last year), but they might have something to do with it. It is suggestive that, after China began aggressive efforts to reduce air pollution in 2013, suicide rates decreased.
People have every reason to be worried. Dying or committing suicide because of extreme heat and poor air quality is no laughing matter. I think the risk rates much higher than the lure of owning a modest boat. They would also be worried that the air-conditioners they bought because they have become affordable cannot be used to electricity outages.
At the individual level, the advice for extreme heat is straightforward: Try to stay cool. If air-conditioning isn't available, close the curtains, drink cold fluids, and avoid using the oven or stove. To remain protected against air pollution, stay indoors with the windows shut, keep an eye on the air quality index, and avoid outdoor exercise when advised.
Affordable babies. Malta's fertility rate collapse continues unabated. Marriage and fertility rates here and across much of the world have been declining for years, with no signs of reversing. In the late Sixties, when I was an adolescent, it was typical to get married in one's late teens or early 20s, to someone only of the opposite sex, and a majority of families had a male breadwinner with more legal rights than his wife. No more.
Just two days before he was killed, Charlie Kirk ̶ the founder of Turning Point USA, who was assassinated at an event at Utah Valley University in September last year ̶ spoke about falling marriage and fertility rates on Laura Ingraham's show on Fox News. Young women, he said, are prioritising "careerism and consumerism" at the expense of more meaningful pursuits. "Having children is more important than having a good career ... my kids matter more than how many social media followers I have," Kirk said.
Erica Kirk, his wife and now the chief executive of Turning Point U.S.A., recently said that, had her husband still been alive, he would also have said: "Have more kids than you can afford." The backlash to her statement on social media shows that her message is not landing well in the middle of America's grocery price emergency.
Americans of many different backgrounds have cited the cost of living as a reason they are delaying or foregoing parenthood. According to the USDA Food Price Outlook, since early 2022 Americans have had to pay around 20.5% more for food and drinks at home, with shrinkflation (smaller packaging for the same price) adding another $41 to a family's annual grocery costs. In Malta, they would have faced a 19.4% increase, excluding shrinkflation.
But a young marriage and early and more babies aren't what most people in the world want. Most Maltese think that the ideal age to get married is 28-32 ̶ that's compared to 20-24 in the early Seventies. Most people believe it's better to wait until they are more established and responsible. (Erica Kirk herself did not get married until she was in her 30s!).
Vice President JD Vance reveals a similar obsession with the falling birthrate in his new book, "Communion": Babies are mentioned 33 times. Vance decried the decline in religiosity and said it is to blame for the baby crisis. "Our abandonment of Christian culture has coincided with an apparent decline in our collective will to live," he writes.
It's not just JD Vance, and it's not just the US. Almost 30 percent of countries globally now have pronatalist policies - up from 10 percent in the 1970s, writes Prof Mary Corcoran of the Department of Sociology. Malta has just joined the crowd. So far, nobody in a position of power here has emulated Vance by ridiculing "childless cat ladies" or suggesting that parents should have more of a say in the democratic process than childless voters.
Encouraging families to have more babies doesn't have to involve a stubborn, unwanted return to a patriarchal, midcentury Christian idea of marriage. Of course, people of faith have every right to think and act otherwise. Genders, sexual norms, interpersonal dynamics, and acceptable numbers of partners allowed in marriage have all varied enormously over the ages, not just across cultures but also within them.
Stephanie Coontz, whose book "For Better or Worse" has just been published, has debunked the myths about traditional marriage. Coontz, who is a social analyst, family historian, writer, and a professor, notes that in the first five books of the Bible, the kind of marriage mentioned most often is polygyny, which is one man with many wives. She mentions societies where you could legally marry a ghost.
Since then, however, revolutionary changes have occurred in the roles of men and women. Over three centuries we have had industrialisation, urbanisation, the ditching of the idea that women's essential nature made them vulnerable and required them to be protected from society rather than for society to be protected from them, the inability of most families to sustain a modest yet stable life on just one salary, and changes in laws and norms that kept women trapped in marriages whether they wanted to be in them or not.
Compulsion should have no role in childbearing. There are no easy solutions. Throwing money at the problem by offering parents generous cash incentives to have children will not work in a vacuum. Parents need a system that offers much more.
Quote of the week. "The legal status of the juror is of a person who has been kidnapped by the state and is detained without trial for a period to be determined at the court's pleasure." - Professor of Law Dr Kevin Aquilina, commenting on the plight of jurors in the trial of Yurgen Fenech, in The Malta Independent.