Austrians are used to August temperatures in the mid 20s. This week, the thermometer breached 41 degrees. Climate breakdown is here: the geological ground on which humanity sits. Europe’s summer image has shifted from holidaymakers enjoying ice cream to firefighters holding back walls of flame from nuclear power stations.

Across Europe, the heat has emptied rivers, hurried harvests and throttled power stations. The Danube has fallen to record lows — just four inches on the Budapest gauge this week — forcing fuel barges farther downstream to carry just 30 to 40 per cent of normal loads. Repeated heatwaves cut short the grain-filling season, bringing the harvest forward and reducing projected yields. In France, rivers grew too warm to cool eight reactors, cutting nuclear output by 6.3 gigawatts. Fires have consumed more than 90,000 hectares in France and 200,000 in Spain. Drought has been declared in half of England, where the wholesale price of tomatoes is up by more than 60%, lettuce by 90% and potatoes by more than 40%. August has only just begun.

The disruption reaches far beyond Europe. El Niño is strengthening rapidly in the Pacific. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gives it an 81 per cent chance of becoming “very strong” — its highest category — between October and December. The World Food Programme estimates this El Niño could push at least 49 million more people into acute food insecurity by the end of next year. Cereal prices are already 6.9 per cent above last year, according to Food and Agriculture Organization figures released today.

We cannot bring the old climate back. But we are not helpless. Humanity already knows how to produce energy without burning coal, oil and gas. China has built wind and solar power on a scale without precedent. Its emissions remain below the high reached in early 2024, and coal supplied less than half its electricity in the first six months of this year. The state set targets, directed credit and organised factories, grids and supply chains, investing $625 billion in clean energy in 2024. Emissions intensity fell 12 per cent from 2020 to 2025, still short of the planned 18 per cent. China has built the machinery of transition; it is only beginning to turn it against fossil power.

No other country combines China’s economic scale with the same capacity to direct investment. Left to the market, each new energy source has been laid over those before it. Coal survived oil. Oil survived gas. Renewables have risen alongside fossil consumption. In 1865, English economist William Stanley Jevons saw that greater efficiency could lower costs, open new uses and increase total demand. Without a decision to close mines and wells, cheap clean power feeds new production while fossil fuels keep burning.

Profit pulls the other way. When the US-Israeli war on Iran sent oil prices soaring, eight major oil companies made $93 billion in three months. BP more than doubled its quarterly profit while retreating from low-carbon investment; Shell sold its European onshore renewables business this week. The market does not close a profitable oilfield because a solar panel is cheaper. It keeps both.

At the centre of this order, with its carrier groups and export terminals, stands the United States. It produced more oil in 2025 than any country in history and supplied more than a quarter of global LNG exports. But American fossil power extends far beyond its own wells. In January, US forces kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and Washington took control of Venezuelan oil sales and revenues and redirected cargoes towards US refineries. In the Gulf, the US-Israeli war on Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which around a fifth of the world’s oil and LNG normally passes. The Fifth Fleet could not keep it open. Washington arms Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, sanctions Russian and Iranian oil, and binds Europe to American gas.

On the United States’ doorstep, Colombia began organising an exit. In April, 57 governments met in Santa Marta, Colombia — a coal-exporting port — for the first international conference dedicated to leaving fossil fuels behind, convened by President Gustavo Petro. They set out to write plans for national phase-out, remove subsidies for fossil fuels and confront the debts that force poorer countries to keep exporting coal, oil and gas.

Two months later, Donald Trump endorsed Abelardo de la Espriella and warned that Colombia’s relationship with the United States depended on his victory in the presidential election. De la Espriella won by 250,000 votes. Today he takes office. He plans to revive fracking and expand coal exports; his incoming environment minister calls Santa Marta an “absolute waste of time and money.” Next year, the conference moves to Tuvalu. Colombia opened the road. After Washington backed the man promising to reverse course, it is preparing to turn back.

The old climate is gone. It is not coming back. But we are still here. We will go on raising children, growing food, building homes and finding joy on a hotter, less stable planet. The fight is to place those ordinary hopes within reach of everyone. Empire and Capital have brought us deep into danger. They must not be allowed to organise how we live through it.

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