Not all of Russia is burning . It is way too big. But a lot of it is and that part is in Europe. It’s been 40 degrees in Moscow on many days for longer than seems possible and it’s been 35-37 degrees in Central Europe for weeks at a time. It turns out the German Bundesbahn is programmed to provide air conditioning in its fast (and expensive) CE trains when the temperature outside reaches 32 degrees, but to stop providing it when it reaches 35, which was assumed to be the maximum possible. The result was that hundreds of passengers were left boiling in superheated trains in the last weeks in which you could not open the windows, and some had to be flagged down before the situation of the passengers became critical. Even Stockholm was hot though few Swedes complained as they enjoyed their water-surrounded vacation spots more than usual.
But the tremendous storms that pushed regularly through Bavaria at dusk this summer never made it to eastern Europe and the question hanging in the air is if we are indeed seeing the future of a different Europe with drought, wild fires, suffocating smog and dangerous heat replacing the relatively moderate Central and Eastern European summers of the past. If that is the case – and lots of researchers think it is – it is simply incredible that the main polluters of the word – Canada, the U.S. China,India etc – are ignoring the problem and still building their energy futures on fossil fuels. The Obama government has stuck its head in the sand, the Harper government has the second largest oil reserves in the word and plans to use it despite the tremendous resources needed to transform it into fuel, and the cities of China and India already live in a permanently toxic soup. Only the European middle powers are making some real efforts at alternate energy sources – Germany, the Netherlands, Spain – but they don’t have a chance if the leaders of the big polluters don’t wake up and smell the smog before it’s too late.