The account indicates a first in the annals of scheduling: a panel on surviving extreme heat, cancelled because of extreme heat. The event, titled “Extreme Heat: Improving governance and strengthening action around the world,” was to convene on Wednesday of London Climate Action Week at the Shaw Library of the London School of Economics, put together by the Grantham Research Institute alongside the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance. Officials said the UK Met Office had issued a rare Red Weather Warning covering Greater London and central England, with forecasts of up to 40°C (104°F) that would shatter all-time June records, and a crowded Victorian hall without air conditioning was judged a health hazard.
The co-organisers were blunt. “The event venue, like most buildings in London, does not have any cooling mechanisms in place,” the alliance announced, adding: “We cannot risk the wellbeing of speakers or guests by subjecting everyone to very unpleasant indoor conditions in addition to hot journeys to the venue.”
According to state and international reports, the week earned the warning. Parts of the UK reached 36.4°C, breaking the 35.6°C mark set in 1976; the Met Office called it “unprecedented for June” and “another marker on how climate change is shifting the dial on temperature extremes in the UK.” Nights refused to fall below 20°C (68°F), a high-pressure lid parked over Western Europe kept compressing the air, and the consequences ran from school closures across southern England to reduced rail speeds, postponed hospital appointments and an influx of heat-stroke patients. At a separate event that Tuesday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pronounced “London is cooking,” a world “hooked on hydrocarbons” showing its symptoms.
A South Asian student writing afterward supplied the regional history this story needs. Raseen Mohsina Shah, in London for an internship, noted the half-laughing question Britons ask, “You must be used to this, right?”, and her answer, in effect, was that nobody is: in a country whose buildings were designed for centuries to trap heat, she struggled like everyone else. The difference is cushioning, and South Asia has little. Pakistan’s 2022 floods affected more than 33 million people in a country responsible for under one percent of worldwide carbon emissions; the subcontinent as a whole emits just eight percent, while Himalayan glaciers melt and coastal Bangladesh absorbs rising seas.
Measured against that ledger, a cancelled seminar is a small irony. But it is also the point arrived at street level: heat governance is no longer a topic London can discuss comfortably indoors. The panel’s subject matter, officials might note, conducted the session anyway.
Sources
- When the UK heatwave cancelled a heat talk: A South Asian view on climate change – Institute of Development Studies
- Heat adaptation event cancelled as heatwave grips London
