With thermometers almost touching 50 degrees in summer. Heat How does the climate crisis affect us? (Debate) explores the effects of increasingly frequent mega heatwaves and the changes they cause to flora and fauna.
—You talk about the first snowfall you saw in Almería and how you hunted bats. Are you trying to empathize with those who also miss “the summers of yesteryear”?
—The first title of the book was “The landscape that will never return” and the truth is that it came from childhood memories. But I draw on memories and go to the data. Studies confirm these impressions that “summers are no longer like they used to be.” In the natural world there are manifestations that are very vivid, such as the lack of swallows and bats, at the same time of day, on the same dates, compared to 55 years ago. The impact of climate change on countless species is one of the most obvious phenomena.
—How does your background influence your account of climate change?
—When I was born there were no greenhouses yet, but there was a very arid heat, which fostered an ultra-dry Mediterranean vegetation. There were only prickly pears. But one day, they started digging wells and found the aquifers. Almería was a land of rheum and would still be if it weren’t for the greenhouses. Before there were 600-800 people living in poor conditions in farmhouses, this was a dry land, and now there are 350,000 people living there. The impact of greenhouse crops is curious. Almería is experiencing its own small cooling phenomenon due to the plastic that is reflecting the sun. In miniature, something similar is happening to the new tests on installing mirrors in space to reflect light.
—Some experts talk about “climate fatigue.” Are we tired of hearing that it’s hot because of global warming?
—I spoke to a philosopher and psychologist from Purdue University (USA), who gave me a very powerful argument: you will be the one to fight climate change, but the fruits of this will be received by the next generations. Those who will suffer the most from climate change are the next generations and it is not in the human condition to think about the future of others. That is when human beings turn their backs.
—You say that “it has been hot in Spain for 11,600 years.” Is this a natural process?
—Warming and cooling are periods that are part of the cyclical history of the planet. Every so often, there is an adaptation. The problem, what has changed, is the speed at which this increase in temperature occurs. The processes of a glacial and interglacial period lasted millennia and are even happening in decades. From tree rings to stalactites (fossil record indicators) tell you that the current weather is drier and warmer. Recently, they did a study on atmospheric humidity in the last 400 years through tree rings, because they capture well if there was more or less humidity in the period in which they grew. The result is that there has not been a drier one in the last four centuries. Other studies go back further to the last such dry period… but these also used to be regional. The current one is global. There has never been a more global warming phenomenon than the one we are experiencing.
—In your book, you illustrate this with the theme of heat waves.
—Heat waves also have their own Olympic motto: “stronger, higher.” This is a rather long chapter in the book, but, in short, it consists of putting heat waves on a slightly longer map. The AEMET has been collecting data since the 1960s. Based on these, we see that: the number of heat waves is increasing (especially from this century onwards and, especially, in the last 20 years), their geographical distribution is increasing (they occupy more provinces) and their intensity is increasing (both the maximum daily temperature and the daily average). In addition, they are overlapping. Less and less time passes between one and the other. There have been years with 50 days of heat waves. This creates conditions conducive to fires. The largest fires in this country in the last two decades have occurred at the end of a heat wave.
—It also focuses on an interesting point for the political framework: the economic cost of global warming.
—A research laboratory used credit card spending data during heat waves. They saw that, in the central hours of the day, hardly any spending occurred; both restaurants and fashion lost sales. The only sector that increased was pharmaceutical spending. That is suggestive. But the interesting thing is that tourism accounted for 13% of GDP in 2022. It is the most important economic sector. In the book, I want to show how climate change itself is not necessarily bad or negative, but we have to adapt. Temperatures are expected to be high on the Andalusian coast, threatening sun and beach tourism because, let’s be honest, nobody wants to go to Egypt in summer. Well, maybe in a few years Spain will be the new Egypt. But that is not bad if you know how to do things. There is a report from the European Commission that says that less sun and beach tourism may come to the south and inland in summer, but it may happen that it comes in April, October… deseasonalizing tourism is very good, just ask the Canaries!
—What advantages would it have?
—Essentially, it has three positive impacts. One: it puts an end to the temporary nature of employment, it creates it for the whole year and there would no longer be a need to reinforce it seasonally. Two: currently, infrastructures
Municipal parks are underused in winter and saturated in summer. If the arrival of tourists is spread out, they will be better managed. And three: the environmental impact is softened. It is not the same to concentrate visits to a national park in June and August than to have the mass distributed throughout the year. All this would be positive, if we knew how to de-seasonalize tourism, of course. On the other hand, the north of Spain can recover those times of the Belle Époque, when tourists were distributed throughout the Basque Country, Cantabria… Perhaps it is an opportunity to not make the same mistakes that we have made in the South and the East.
—Why is denialism increasing?
—There are two types of deniers. I was talking about this with the political scientist from the Carlos III University of Madrid, Lluís Orriols, for the book. He tells me that there is one that systematically goes against the grain. They are the flat-earthers, few in number, but if you take them up in a hot-air balloon they cannot see the curvature of the Earth even if it is right in front of them. It occurs in countries like the USA, but the most extreme is not present in Spain or is residual. And then there are those who are as harmed by climate change as by the measures to contain it. There is a rural sector that is very affected. Orriols is convinced that in the future there will be 20% of deniers, and they will be so with a certain basis. This type of denier suffers from what Orriols calls cognitive dissonance: the world changes and very quickly. Either you change with it, or your schemes will not fit with your landscape. Faced with this, you either change your way of thinking or you deny the information you receive.
—In 2023, there were more than 2,000 deaths attributable to excessive heat. Why do some people not believe that climate change kills?
—It is a complex phenomenon. 20,000 young people dying in a war is not the same as many ‘old people’ spread across the country during the summer. In cities, in developed countries, older people and people with pre-existing conditions die, they were already going to die but there is a knock-on effect. Death from heat stroke is one thing, death from overheating is not written on the certificate, but they are dying by the thousands. In Spain in 2003, 70,000 people died from a heat wave. There are differences of up to 8 degrees in districts of Madrid.
—Have we been wrong in reporting in a catastrophic way?
—You can’t talk about journalists in general, but it’s true that the other day I saw a headline that more or less announced the end of the world. I don’t understand it. There’s no need to exaggerate something that’s already going badly. The problem is that there’s a lot of information. That makes for a lot of noise, and when there’s a lot of noise, you don’t hear it. That’s the biggest drama for scientists. I’ve talked about it with dozens of them for this book and with hundreds in the past. And I’ll tell you one thing: they’re all honest. Yes, they have their more or less fallible models, but in the end they apply the scientific method and don’t go any further. The interpretation is up to the rest of us.
—What can we find in Heat to be a breath of fresh air?
—I already wrote about it in an article some time ago. It had a rather radical headline: “Go vegan, give up your car and have fewer children.” But, really and properly understood, these are three measures within our reach that have a great impact on reducing your emissions. Obviously, you don’t have to be vegan. That’s not what I was referring to. I am a carnivore, I like meat and rare, but I have reduced it to a few occasions, because the reduction has a very positive impact. Cars are a huge problem… In road traffic, we have to hurry up and follow the example. Norway is the main oil producer and, however, 93% of the vehicles bought by Norwegians in 2022 were electric. In Spain, only 5%. As for children… well, we have already done that work, so the Spanish cannot be blamed (laughs). We have a very low average of gigatons per capita compared to countries that have 50 on average, like Qatar. I would say that these three specific measures are what allow you to go to bed with a clear conscience.
Explaining what is happening with the climate in a positive way
Miguel Ángel Criado (Almería, 1968) has a degree in political science and sociology and is the co-founder of Materia. He is one of the journalists who has been writing about climate change for the longest time and admits that he himself is tired of hearing about global warming, which is why he believes that more emphasis should be placed on solutions: “There are success stories that need to be told. The lynx is a fantastic case. There are species adapting to the new climate era and humans are among them.”