Heatwaves, Accountability & Profit
The deadly problem staring us in the face.
Britain and Europe have just experienced one of the worst heatwaves in living memory, with temperatures climbing over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). However, unlike the last record-breaking single heatwave from the ’70s, this was no anomaly; it was the result of a stark upwards trend. The summer of 2024 was the hottest ever recorded until 2025 smashed that record, and now 2026 is set to possibly top that too. This is why scientists have found that this recent heatwave was impossible without man-made climate change. We also know that this heatwave has killed well over a thousand peopleand dealt serious damage to infrastructure, economies, and society. But hold on, we know who is responsible for, and profits hugely from, climate change: fossil fuel companies. In a just world, they would be made to pay for the damage their goods cause. But that isn’t happening. Why? Truth be told, there are a lot of reasons. This is a complex topic. But there is one glaringly obvious reason — taking accountability would destroy them. Let me explain.
But first, how much damage does climate change-induced extreme weather cause? Well, there are a few different ways of calculating that.
The charity Christian Aid found that the ten worst climate-related disasters of 2025 caused more than $120 billion in insurance losses. That is a dramatic figure, but it doesn’t reflect all the damages. Much of the developed world hasn’t been accounted for, nor have down-the-line losses or economic damage. It doesn’t even take into account all the lives lost, as much of the world’s population doesn’t have life insurance. As such, while this is a shockingly high figure, it is very much an underestimation.
This is where the study of weather attribution comes in. This process looks at extreme weather events, like heatwaves, hurricanes, floods, and snowstorms, and uses tools like computer simulations to figure out if man-made climate change caused the event or how much worse the event was because of climate change. Weather attribution studies are incredibly detailed and time-consuming, as they use a truly staggering amount of data and analysis to arrive at defensible conclusions. But, once you have completed this study, you can then attempt another which looks at how much damage these extreme weather events caused and establishes how much of this damage was due to man-made climate change.
Studies like these take a long time to complete, but their results are shocking.
A study published in Nature assessed the climate-change-attributed costs caused by 185 global extreme weather events from 2000 to 2019. Over that period, the total figure was $2.86 trillion, with climate change causing an average annual damage of $143 billion. But the annual cost was highly variable, with 2001 being the lowest at just $23.9 billion and 2008 being the highest at $620 billion.
However, these researchers also stated that their results are likely far lower than the actual costs, as they lack critical data. For example, over that time period, they do not have any data on extreme weather deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. Indeed, a lead researcher on this paper stated that “our headline number of $140bn is a significant understatement.”
