I’ve spent the last two days bikepacking on the North York Moors. I was meant to be doing four, but this morning I jacked it in as I didn’t want to die an ironic death in this sweltering heat. I exaggerate (a little) for effect – I was well north of the extremely hot parts of the country, but I could still feel the effect of the high heat and humidity, and my hydration strategy was only proving partially successful. Add in a persistent front tyre leak (tubeless is great until it’s not) and the risk of the rest of the trip turning into ‘really not fun anymore’ was just a tad too high. It was great while it lasted.

Logically, you would have thought that a record-breaking heatwave would stimulate people’s resolve to tackle climate change, but sadly there are plenty trying to spin the heat into their anti-Net Zero narrative. “It was really hot in 1976 and we just got on with it” misremembers a significant number of commentators – we only remember it because of the disruption the heat caused, otherwise it would have been normal. And, in any case, the summer of 1976 is now the sixth hottest in the UK records, the other 5 all having occurred since 2000, the hottest being (at the time of writing) 2025.

Another meme, “Net zero is stopping us having air con”, reminds me of the guy who argued against a sugar tax “because we now have Ozempic”. But that ‘air con ban’ is just a myth anyway – there is absolutely no ban on air con in either new build or retrofit buildings. The planning rules encourage passive cooling measures (eg louvres) before active measures (air con) which seems perfectly sensible, but is grist to the mill of the climate culture warriors.

Whatever we do on carbon emissions, and no matter what the noise from people who should know better, we’re going to have to start adapting design and behaviour to these ever rising temperatures.