“The firewalls in Wales and the Cairngorms show that investing
in military hard power instead of climate mitigation and resilience does not make people safe.”
By Paul Atkin, Greener Jobs Alliance
To misquote JFK, Marco Rubio says that the US administration is “not afraid of climate change”. Let him go to Bordeaux.
Kemi Badenoch says “there are no prizes for coming first in the race to net zero”. Let her go to Bordeaux.
The British press says “it’s no hotter than 1976”. Let them go to Bordeaux!
The scenes from France and Spain should be a wake-up call. Flames 100 metres high, and whole plane loads of water evaporating in the heat before they hit them. Pyrocumulonimbus clouds seen in Europe for the first time. These are enormous storm clouds formed by the wildfires that break debris into the stratosphere and spread the fires further with lightning strikes up to 40 miles distant. 350,000 people evacuated from around Bordeaux, a city of a million people. The biggest evacuation in France since the Second World War. Thousands of excess deaths. Enormous costs, showing just how expensive it is to let climate change rip. Even before the fires, French nuclear power stations were being shut down because the water needed to cool them was too warm and German industrial production in the Ruhr was being hit because the Rhine was too low.
The reaction to it, hobbled by years of neo-liberal cuts to fire services – 12,000 fewer firefighters in the UK since 2010, says the FBU – and failure to invest in equipment that climate denial just assumed would never be needed. Now it is. And even more in the future. The firewalls in Wales and the Cairngorms show that investing in military hard power instead of climate mitigation and resilience does not make people safe. Quite the opposite.
In Spain, PM Pedro Sanchez is calling for a cross-party pact for action on climate. He has been rebuffed by the Right and Far Right, even as areas they run are burning around them. In France, President Macron calls the fires France’s greatest challenge since WW2, even as he blocs in parliament with the denialist Rassemblement Nationale against La France Insoumise, who are calling for a Sixth Republic to be founded “on a social and ecological basis”. In the UK, new PM Andy Burnham has so far been quiet on climate, and although his cabinet has Ed Miliband and Miatta Fahbulleh in it in key roles, the commanding heights of the Treasury are held by those who want to increase war spending above all else; and we still have people in the trade union movement who want additional drilling to throw more fuel onto the fires.
To focus debate on the need to redirect funding from war to safety, we have helped work on a motion for discussion in union bodies, campaigning groups and political parties, which can be seen here. We urge all our supporters to put this motion to your union, or party, or any group where you think this discussion needs taking through.
- This article was originally published by the Greener Jobs Alliance in their August 2026 newsletter.
- Paul Atkin is the editor of the Greener Jobs Alliance. You can follow them on Facebook and Twitter/X.
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