Wildfires are devastating Europe, with experts calling the blazes threatening Bordeaux and Madrid the most extreme ever seen in the continent. In the Gironde region around Bordeaux, tens of thousands of hectares have burned, creating an unpredictable 'thunderstorm of fire,' as the region's chief administrator described it. More than 200,000 people have been displaced in the largest peacetime evacuations in France's history. Only the bravery of firefighters, dozens of whom have been injured, is keeping the fires within mere kilometres of Bordeaux and its more than a million inhabitants.
Spain and Beyond: A Continent Ablaze
In Spain, multiple fires have merged on the outskirts of Madrid, creating 'the largest fire in Spain's history,' burning more than triple the hectares of an average July as yet another heatwave menaces the country. Scientists blame 'weather whiplash' due to the accelerating climate crisis for bringing the fires this close to the ancient streets and squares of Madrid and Bordeaux. As far south as Sicily and as far north as Norway, the story is much the same: a summer of almost unendurable heat has erupted into tempests of flame.
US Recalcitrance and Ecological Warfare
Across the Atlantic, thick smoke from fires across Canada's 270 million hectares of boreal forest obscured skies in US cities again. Some MAGA-affiliated politicians proposed sanctions on Canada instead of offering firefighting assistance. Alexander Hurst argues that the US, having emitted more than one-fifth of all historical emissions and remaining the highest per-capita major emitter alongside Saudi Arabia, is waging 'ecological warfare' under Donald Trump's second term, with policies like 'drill, baby, drill' pursuing increased fossil fuel use.
EU Must Act: Carbon Border Tax and Sanctions
Hurst contends that the EU should harness the power of its single market to force the US to change course. He proposes extending the EU's emissions trading system (ETS) carbon market to all sectors, beefing up the 'carbon border tax' to protect against retaliation, slapping tariffs on finished goods and services from the US that have easy substitutes, and placing export taxes on materials used in US-located production. The revenue could fund decarbonisation and adaptation globally.
'To safeguard its political and economic future, Europe needs to accept that the US's environmental war must be met with an economic response – coordinated with other actors, including China,' Hurst writes. He warns that racing Trump's America to the bottom on regulation is 'economic doom' in a future where nothing is insurable, crops fail en masse, and millions become climate refugees.
