30.07.2026

Not many smiles in Spain and France at the moment

Hell on Earth

Record temperatures, intense rainfall, terrifying whirlwinds and murderous wildfires - all are sure signs of a runaway climate crisis that can only get worse. The solution cannot lie in tinkering with capitalism. There has to be climate communism, argues Eddie Ford

France is now sweltering under this summer’s fourth heatwave that, at its peak, will hit 40°C or more, which in turn could flare up the wildfires that have already ravaged its south-west. Similar temperatures are expected in Spain.¹ So far about 375,000 people in both countries have been forced to leave their homes, as wildfires wreak havoc across southern Europe.

Some 2,000 firefighters in France are now working against the clock to contain the fires - a spokesperson for the national firefighters’ federation saying that “the fire is like David against Goliath”. Bordeaux’s mayor, ominously said that the city must prepare itself for “all eventualities.” Not, of course, total evacuation, but from nearby towns and perhaps even the suburbs. President Emmanuel Macron declared that the wildfires are “completely unprecedented” and the country faced the “toughest” situation since World War II. Not hyperbole.

Meanwhile, fires have burned “uncontrolled” to the west of Madrid. Socialist Workers Party prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, not only declared a disaster zone. He took the opportunity to take a swipe at rightwing regional governments: “Climate denial is the worst fuel for the fight against the climate emergency.”² Andalusia, Aragon and Extremadura, Castile and León, Murcia and Valencia, and Madrid itself, are run by the conservative People’s Party, sometimes in alliance with the far right Vox. Note, PP calls climate change ‘natural’, while Vox opposes anything that smacks of ‘green taxes’. Of course, while Sánchez talks the talk of climate socialism, when it comes to the walk all there is talk of a ‘national pact’ with the PP and Vox.

Nearly 4,000 tourists have been evacuated in France - a measure described as “precautionary” - affecting campsites, holiday villages, etc around the resort of Lacanau to the west of Bordeaux. One holidaymaker vividly recounts seeing an “apocalyptic” scene on the sand dunes, where “the sky just changed colour and the smoke was really intense”, with “ash falling from the clouds”. The beach was “littered with black soot, where the waves normally leave seaweed” which he found “oddly haunting and beautiful”, yet also “quite terrifying”.³

Underlying the terrifying quality, a French firefighter told an international news agency that the fire had formed a pyrocumulonimbus, or “pyroCB clouds” - a fire-generated thunderstorm that “creates its own wind, with whirlwinds, becoming erratic and uncontrollable”. In a nutshell, when the fire plume rises high enough, low atmospheric pressure causes its air to cool, and the moisture condenses and forms a cloud - and such clouds can generate lightning strikes and windy conditions. But, if a wildfire is sufficiently large and intense, the smoke plume it generates can form a pyroCB cloud, which can reach altitudes of six to nine miles and penetrate the stratosphere. In an unusually poetic form of words, Nasa calls them the “fire-breathing dragon of clouds”.

Australia started experiencing pyroCB clouds at the beginning of the century, and they formed during massive wildfires in California in 2022 - but, if confirmed, this would be the first time a pyroCB has been observed in France. An ominous sign of the rapid developing climate crisis.

Global phenomenon

Of course, wildfires are a global phenomenon. Hence thousands of lightning strikes triggered fresh wildfires in western Canada last week, leading to a series of evacuation orders in British Columbia - in what Mark Carney, the prime minister, called one of the country’s most intense seasons on record, with the authorities warning that drying and warming conditions could always cause the wildfires to grow.⁴

Many of them have still not been controlled. The federal government mobilised more than 5,300 firefighters and about 300 water bombers, helicopters and evacuation aircraft to battle the fires, and thousands of people, including some ‘first nation’ communities, have been evacuated this summer. Over 3.7 million hectares (7.29 million acres) of land have been burned this year, way above the 10-year ⁠average of about 2.55 million hectares - and Canada has undergone more active wildfires than it has for years. Showing the true interconnectivity of everything on this planet, the country’s forested areas account for 28% of the world’s boreal forests.

But, closer to home for many Weekly Worker readers, there have been wildfires in the Scottish Cairngorms national park, which have lasted for more than 10 days - with residents of Nethy Bridge having to be evacuated at one stage.⁵ Scottish first minister John Swinney asked the UK government for military aid, as more than 500 firefighters - alongside specialist wildfire appliances, all-terrain vehicles, helicopter water-bombing operations and partner agencies - tackled the fire.

There have also been wildfires in other parts of the country with “major incidents” declared in north Wales and Derbyshire - they have also, to one degree or another, affected Hampshire, Durham, West Sussex, East Sussex, Devon and Somerset.⁶ The UK, of course, is undergoing its fourth heatwave just like the European mainland, with temperatures climbing to the mid-30s Celsius on July 29 in the south-east and east of England - the UK Health Security Agency issuing amber heat health alerts.⁷ An ongoing lack of rain means hosepipe bans are in force for millions of households and dry vegetation has provided perfect fuel for wildfires to burn in a number of areas. The driest locations - including central, southern and eastern England - have seen little, if any, meaningful rainfall recently. According to the Met Office, rainfall in England this month is at 4.4mm - one of the lowest levels on record.

As is all too clear, the climatic drivers for wildfires have been made worse by the merger of fields to facilitate ‘prairie farming’. Paradoxically it is not only profit-maximising agricultural practices and scorching heat that has caused the fires. So has the increased rainfall seen earlier in the year. The more the rain, the more vegetation there is to feed the fires once they start. Obviously, both phenomena are associated with global heating.

So, nowadays, it is standard for a news organisation such as the BBC to get someone along who is a climate expert to explain that hotter and more extreme weather are set to become the norm. In fact, we can only expect this situation to get worse and worse.

Yet we have a political elite set on a path to destruction. We look at our new UK government that is committed to growth for the sake of growth, it being strongly suggested that Andy Burnham might give the green light to new drilling in the North Sea by approving the Jackdaw and Rosebank oilfields, which were initially accepted under the Conservatives, but put on hold by legal action. We also have a global hegemon that is constantly talking about ‘Drill, baby, drill’ under Donald Trump. There is too, though, China. Yes, it is true that there are massive investments in renewables - and this has resulted in a plateauing of CO₂ emissions since 2024. Nonetheless, despite being heralded as a “historic breakthrough” by the Morning Star’s Nick Matthews,⁸ China remains by far the world largest CO₂ emitter - roughly 12.3 to 13.1 billion metric tons annually. That is between 33% and 35% of the world’s total, and twice as much as the United States.

Delusional

We all know what is required, but equally we all know it is not going to happen. Climate scientists are saying that if we stop now - quite literally this very instant - by not adding to the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere and achieve net zero in 2026, not the hoped for 2050, we would still be dealing with unprecedented problems for many generations to come. The polar ice caps will continue to shrink, and the oceans will continue to rise - which of course will then have a negative feedback mechanism that releases yet more CO₂, and so on.

Last week we reviewed Bill McGuire’s, The fate of the world (he will incidentally be speaking at this year’s CU).⁹ McGuire presents a frightening claim, which you can take as an artistic turn of phrase, but one which is scientifically based - saying that if you look at what has happened since 1850, from the very start of industrial capitalism, this will affect the global climate for at least another million years - even if we stop doing what we are doing in the way of emitting more and more CO₂ right now.

In other words, the oft used analogy of the oil tanker actually minimises what is going on. We will still have the shrinkage of the ice sheets and the certainty that huge numbers of cities will be inundated: Miami, Shanghai, Bangkok, Alexandria and Ho Chi Minh being the first. There will be enormous numbers of people displaced. There will be massive disruption of agriculture too. Not just traditional peasant agriculture, but the industrial agriculture of East Anglia, central Europe, the Russian steppe and the American prairies. The danger is that such areas will turn to desert and along with that the world will see the dieback of the great forests - this will happen even if the working class is able to seize power.

But, of course, there is no prospect at the moment of the working class taking power anywhere, let alone on a global scale. Rather, what we have got is a pack of politicians and corporations that are locked into the destruction of civilisation, even though we know objectively that the only answer to the climate emergency lies with the world’s working class. Therefore Bill McGuire is wrong in saying that we have no choice other than to ‘adapt as individuals and small communities’ - talking, for example, about the centralised state shattering. That is a possible scenario which we communists can all too easily envisage - but that would go hand-in-hand with warlordism, general chaos and even reaching the point where the human population can no longer renew itself.

No, to avoid such a scenario, including the danger of extinction, the working class has to come to power if the world is to be slowly, generation after generation, managed back into health. That will require more than a revolution - ie, the overthrow of existing capitalism and its system of rival states. There will have to be climate communism too.