When you hear of records being broken, it usually conjures up images of super-human feats: 100-metre sprints in 9.58 seconds, or 74 hot dogs eaten in under 10 minutes. The kind of inspirational moments that redefine the limits of humankind.
Last month saw a new set of records being smashed. Ones of a far less uplifting nature. This was the hottest June ever recorded on earth. France, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein, Andorra, Poland, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic experienced all-time temperature highs for the month.
“This isn’t a blip. Most of these records have been repeatedly broken in recent, preceding years”
A record-breaking 150 paragliders ascended to the top of Mont Blanc, due to the alarmingly high summit temps. Val d’Isere reached an unprecedented high for the month of 31C at 1850m.
This isn’t a blip. Most of these records have been broken repeatedly in recent, preceding years. I’m roasting man, where’d winter go?
A couple of weeks back, we met up with Amiee, Dom, Becky and James, who recently became volunteers – or Winter Guardians – with the UK chapter of Protect Our Winters. They’d all spent winter seasons in the mountains across the Northern hemisphere and become aware of POW’s profile gaining support in the US. When they returned home, they saw the increasing number of climate activists within the UK’s snowsports industry and wanted to get involved. After reaching out to POW UK they were all signed up to the team pretty soon after.
We were invited to come along and join them for ‘The Time Is Now’ march, organised by the Climate Coalition, outside the UK Houses of Parliament. People and organisations from across the country were lining the banks of the Thames, where’d they’d have the chance to meet their MPs and give them all a proverbial kick up the arse and tell them to stop destroying Mother Nature. The government had recently committed to reducing its net carbon emissions down to zero by 2050.
However, ‘committed’ means to the government what ‘shitting your pants’ means to a fart – full of intention, but disastrously executed. We were here to tell them that we weren’t cleaning up the mess this time. And that we wanted the target reached by 2045.
“‘Committed’ means to the government what ‘shitting your pants’ means to a fart – full of intention, but disastrously executed”
Like some bizarre fusion between The Flinstones and The Passion of the Christ, the actual arrival of the MPs was a wholly uncomfortable experience. They were brought out, along the riverbank, in tuk-tuks, trundling past the masses of protestors, until they arrived at their designated constituency zone. There, they’d have meet, greet and, in some cases, answer for their sins (read: voting record on climate issues) to joe public.
