AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW
Executive Director Laurie Laybourn warns that Europe’s summer of intense heat, fire, and drought proves the world has entered a new climate reality, exposing how government planning assumptions are being outstripped by escalating risks.
In an analysis for The Australian Financial Review examining severe furnace-like summer conditions across Europe—and how record heat and drought are impacting Britain’s landscape and agriculture-Laurie Laybourn, Executive Director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative (SCRI), provided expert commentary on the widening gap between climate impacts and government readiness. Laybourn highlighted that while escalating compound risks are expected by scientists, government planning assumptions are being tragically outstripped by reality, warning that a failure to invest in systemic resilience will brutally expose society to worsening climate shocks.
For experts, the northern summer of extreme heatwaves, prolonged dry spells and intense infernos are warnings of the damage from climate change come true.
“The heat, fire and drought in Europe are more evidence that the world has definitively entered a new climate reality,” said Laurie Laybourn, executive director of the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, a UK think tank.
“It’s no surprise to scientists, yet it has surprised governments, whose planning assumptions are being tragically outstripped by reality. This will only get worse, brutally exposing the failure of governments to invest in resilience. This summer should be a profound wake-up call.”
