Britain’s Climate Change Future is Here - We’re Not Ready | Bonus Content

So, David, you've recently written a new book called The Response, and that focuses on Britain's new world of climate extremes.

And in that book, you talk about a moment in 2022 where London ran out of fire engines for the first time since the Blitz.

So can you talk us a little bit through what happened that day, why it happened and what the lessons people should be taking are around the vulnerability that we face here in the UK?

Britain basically discovered that really bad stuff happens when you hit 40 degrees, bad stuff that no one's ready for.

So among many impacts that day, when this record temperature was reached, was that a huge number of wildfires erupted in a great ring around London.

I mean, London's been bombed.

It's been burnt in the Great Fire, but on this particular day, it was encircled by dozens of very large fires that had kicked off on playing fields, on farmland, in parks.

The context was that not only was it 40 degrees, but it had been very dry for the preceding week, so it didn't take much.

to start grass fires, and when grass fires get going, they can advance at a good walking pace.

In other words, pretty fast.

And what no one was ready for amongst the public at any rate, was the fact that on top of worrying about how to keep elderly relatives or kids safe in this new extreme of heat, they had to be ready, which they weren't, for the prospect of something we're familiar with in California or Australia or Southern Europe, namely wildfires crossing this so-called rural-urban interface.

And the numbers are are completely bewildering.

I mean, within the London area, nearly 40 houses were burnt to the ground.

Across the whole of England, if you include West Yorkshire and Norfolk, a total of 70 houses were burnt by wildfire, which is actually the largest loss of housing in Britain to wildfire ever.

And the fire brigades were outnumbered.

The government and local authorities, they weren't ready for this.

No one was set up to deal with a multiple set of hazards on this scale.

Also, one of the big revelations, which wasn't understood on the day but later has become clearer and I really dug into, was that there was a critical shortage in at least one of the fires of water.

And water, of course, in the UK is in privatized hands.

And so the water companies, it turns out, don't have a legal obligation to provide a set amount of water for firefighting.

They have a general kind of obligation to try and support fire and rescue services.

So at the worst of the London fires, in a village called Wennington on the eastern edge of the city, that right from the start, the fire brigade found itself without enough water.

And I think, well, they said it hampered their ability to tackle the fires.

So on that one day, and there were many weaknesses that were exposed in national preparedness for extreme heat that day, but in this one regard of wildfires, you really see how the public weren't ready, the fire brigade weren't ready, local authorities, national government was set up with privatized water utilities.

No one was ready for a scenario that was predicted, but no one had experienced in a UK context before.