Go beyond short-term fixes!

Winning cool-building adaptations and air conditioning where necessary is important for individual workers and protects the vital services that we depend upon. The lack of air conditioning in NHS workplaces in the heatwave week had a major impact on the NHS’s ability to function at a time of heightened demand for the service. London’s ambulance crews had their busiest day ever in the history of the service but they were txaking patients to overheated and overcrowded hospitals. Some nurses reported ward temperatures in excess of 38ºC. Machines and IT systems broke down.

But that is not all. Countries like the USA, and increasingly Australia, have “adapted” by near-universal air-conditioning of buildings and travel by air-conditioned car. That, however, increases the temperatures outside, and for those who miss out on air-conditioning.

Large scale (district, uni- or hospital- wide, etc.) systems of heat pumps and hot and cold reservoirs are much more effective for providing heating (including hot water) and cooling the year round than individualised air-conditioning. We need well-ventilated workplaces with HEPA air filtration to guard against Covid and other infections and in preparation for future pandemics and we need workplaces that can stay cool in extreme heat.

There are other impacts we can see coming down the line — many workplaces are built on floodplains and in decades to come we will have to reckon with coastal inundation. AMOC collapse, which is possible in the next few decades, will bring subzero winters to Britain for three to five months of the year. We need infrastructure that can withstand not only extreme heat but also extreme cold. In all these battles, which simultaneously impact hundreds millions of workers across industries and borders, we seek maximum working-class unity to build a movement that can tame the environmental chaos that capitalism has already unleashed.

And we need faster, not slower, or even abandoned, “net zero”. We need to stop the burning of fossil fuels in order to halt and reverse the chaos. Even a socialist revolution tomorrow now cannot stop large disruptions and heat waves for many years ahead. Without rapid green transition, enabled by democratically-controlled public ownership of the energy industries and the banks, the disruptions will be on a scale making the 22 June week heatwave look petty.