Britain Was Not Built for This

A partir de ahí, la mortalidad empieza a subir.

Beyond that, mortality starts climbing.

En Sevilla, el umbral es mucho más alto, quizás 36 o 37, porque la población y la arquitectura han evolucionado durante siglos para gestionar esas temperaturas.

In Seville, the threshold is much higher, perhaps 36 or 37, because the population and the architecture have evolved over centuries to manage those temperatures.

The architecture point is one I keep coming back to.

When I was in Seville, I stayed in this old house in the Triana neighborhood, thick walls, a central courtyard, and the interior was genuinely cool even when it was 38 outside.

That's not an accident.

No, claro que no.

No, of course not.

El patio andaluz, las calles estrechas que dan sombra, los colores blancos que reflejan la luz del sol...

The Andalusian courtyard, the narrow streets that provide shade, the white colors that reflect sunlight...

todo eso es tecnología climática que se desarrolló durante siglos.

all of that is climate technology developed over centuries.

Los árabes la trajeron al sur de España hace más de mil años.

The Arabs brought it to southern Spain more than a thousand years ago.

Es sabiduría acumulada que los británicos no tienen porque nunca la han necesitado.

It's accumulated wisdom that the British don't have because they've never needed it.

Hasta ahora.

Until now.

And there's no retrofitting a Victorian terrace in Manchester to have a courtyard.

That's not a quick fix.

That's a generational problem.

Precisamente.

Precisely.

Y mientras tanto, lo que se hace es instalar aire acondicionado, que tiene su propia ironía: consume una enorme cantidad de energía, contribuye al calentamiento global y expulsa calor al exterior, lo que eleva aún más la temperatura en las ciudades.

And in the meantime, what people do is install air conditioning, which has its own irony: it consumes enormous amounts of energy, contributes to global warming, and expels heat to the outside, which raises urban temperatures even further.

Es un círculo vicioso perfectamente diseñado.

It's a perfectly designed vicious cycle.

The urban heat island effect.

Cities are already five to ten degrees warmer than surrounding countryside, and every AC unit is making that worse.

London, Birmingham, Leeds, they weren't designed for this feedback loop.

Y hay otro factor que me preocupa mucho desde el punto de vista de salud pública: la soledad.

And there's another factor that concerns me greatly from a public health perspective: loneliness.

En el Reino Unido, antes de la pandemia ya había una crisis de soledad reconocida al máximo nivel político.

In the UK, even before the pandemic there was a loneliness crisis recognized at the highest political level.

Tenían un ministerio de la soledad, Fletcher.

They had a ministry for loneliness, Fletcher.

Un ministerio entero dedicado a que la gente no estuviera sola.

An entire ministry dedicated to making sure people weren't alone.

Right, Jo Cox started that conversation before she was killed.

And then Theresa May actually created the ministerial role.

Which, look, I have complicated feelings about the idea that you can bureaucratize your way out of social isolation, but the underlying problem they were identifying was real.

Real y mortal, en sentido literal.

Real and lethal, in the literal sense.

Porque los que mueren en las olas de calor no son los que tienen familia cerca, o vecinos que les vigilen, o amigos que llamen.

Because those who die in heatwaves aren't the ones with family nearby, or neighbors who check on them, or friends who call.

Son los que llevan días sin hablar con nadie.

They're the ones who've gone days without speaking to anyone.

Y el norte de Europa, con su cultura de privacidad e independencia, crea condiciones perfectas para esa vulnerabilidad.

And northern Europe, with its culture of privacy and independence, creates perfect conditions for that vulnerability.

You know, there's a Spanish concept I've heard you use before, and I can never quite find the English equivalent.

Something about...

neighbors being involved in each other's lives not as nosiness but as a form of care.

Hombre, en España, si tu vecino no aparece en tres días, llaman a su puerta.

In Spain, if your neighbor hasn't been seen for three days, people knock on their door.

Eso no es entrometerse, es vivir en comunidad.

That's not being nosy, that's living in community.

Y en los barrios tradicionales de Madrid o Sevilla o Valencia, esa red informal salva vidas.

And in the traditional neighborhoods of Madrid or Seville or Valencia, that informal network saves lives.

No es un programa gubernamental, es simplemente cultura.

It's not a government program, it's just culture.

El problema es que esa cultura también está desapareciendo en España conforme nos urbanizamos más.

The problem is that culture is also disappearing in Spain as we become more urbanized.

That's a thread worth pulling.

Because what you're describing is a public health intervention that costs nothing and requires no legislation.

It's just...

proximity and attention.

And we've been systematically designing it out of our cities for sixty years.

Hablemos del incendio en Derbyshire, porque eso tiene también implicaciones de salud que van más allá del fuego en sí.

Let's talk about the Derbyshire fire, because that also has health implications that go beyond the fire itself.

El humo de los incendios de turberas es especialmente tóxico.

Peat moorland smoke is particularly toxic.

Las turberas almacenan materia orgánica acumulada durante miles de años, y cuando arden, liberan partículas finas que penetran profundamente en los pulmones.

Peatlands store organic matter accumulated over thousands of years, and when they burn, they release fine particles that penetrate deeply into the lungs.

No es como el humo de un incendio forestal normal.

It's not like smoke from a normal forest fire.

I didn't know that distinction.

So the moorland fires carry a different chemical load than, say, a pine forest fire in California?

Muy diferente.

Very different.

Las turberas son, básicamente, carbono comprimido.

Peatlands are, essentially, compressed carbon.

Cuando se queman, además de dióxido de carbono, liberan monóxido de carbono, metano, compuestos orgánicos volátiles.

When they burn, in addition to carbon dioxide they release carbon monoxide, methane, volatile organic compounds.

Para alguien con asma o enfermedad pulmonar crónica, eso puede ser una emergencia médica aunque el incendio esté a varios kilómetros de distancia.

For someone with asthma or chronic lung disease, that can be a medical emergency even if the fire is several kilometers away.

And Britain has high rates of respiratory disease.

It's one of the worst in Europe for asthma prevalence.

So you're combining a population with compromised lungs, a heatwave, and peat smoke in the air, all at once.

Y hay una ironía histórica ahí que no podemos ignorar.

And there's a historical irony there we can't ignore.

Las turberas del Peak District fueron dañadas durante la Revolución Industrial, con la contaminación del aire de Manchester y Sheffield.

The peatlands of the Peak District were damaged during the Industrial Revolution, by air pollution from Manchester and Sheffield.

Pasaron décadas recuperándose.

They spent decades recovering.

Y ahora, cuando por fin estaban en buen estado ecológico, el calentamiento climático, que también es producto de quemar combustibles, las está destruyendo de nuevo.

And now, when they were finally in good ecological condition, climate warming, which is also a product of burning fuels, is destroying them again.

Full circle.

The same industrial economy that made Britain wealthy enough to build all those Victorian terraces with no ventilation also set the conditions for them becoming death traps in the summer.

Oye, y hablemos del NHS un momento, porque me parece fundamental.

Let me bring up the NHS for a moment, because I think it's fundamental.

El Sistema Nacional de Salud británico está diseñado para gestionar crisis de invierno: gripes, hipotermia, accidentes de carretera con hielo.

The British National Health Service is designed to manage winter crises: flu, hypothermia, icy road accidents.

Las olas de calor sobrecargan el sistema de una manera para la que históricamente no estaba preparado.

Heatwaves overload the system in a way it has historically not been prepared for.

Las urgencias se llenan de deshidratación, golpes de calor, insuficiencia renal aguda.

Emergency rooms fill with dehydration, heat stroke, acute kidney failure.

There's data on this from 2022 that's pretty stark.

The UK Health Security Agency estimated around 3,000 excess deaths during that summer's heatwaves.

And the NHS was already under strain before the temperatures hit.

It's not like they had capacity sitting in reserve.

Y el problema estructural es este: las muertes por calor no aparecen en los titulares de la misma manera que, por ejemplo, un accidente de avión.

And the structural problem is this: heat deaths don't appear in headlines the same way as, for example, a plane crash.

No hay un momento, no hay imágenes, no hay drama concentrado.

There's no single moment, no images, no concentrated drama.

Son miles de personas que simplemente dejan de existir, dispersas por todo el país, durante semanas.

They're thousands of people who simply cease to exist, scattered across the country, over weeks.

Eso hace muy difícil que la sociedad procese el peligro y exija soluciones.

That makes it very difficult for society to process the danger and demand solutions.

The invisibility of slow-moving catastrophe.

I've written about this in other contexts.

Climate change, famine, pandemic fatigue.

Humans are wired to respond to the immediate and visible, and these diffuse emergencies slip past our attention until the numbers are already devastating.

¿Y qué hay de las implicaciones a largo plazo?

And what about the long-term implications?

Porque lo de Santon Downham no es una anomalía ya.

Because what happened in Santon Downham isn't an anomaly anymore.

Es parte de una tendencia clara.

It's part of a clear trend.

Los modelos climáticos llevan años prediciendo que los veranos en el norte de Europa se parecerán cada vez más a los del Mediterráneo.

Climate models have been predicting for years that summers in northern Europe will increasingly resemble Mediterranean summers.

Y la pregunta es: ¿están dispuestas las sociedades del norte a hacer las inversiones necesarias para adaptarse, o van a esperar a que la crisis sea imposible de ignorar?

And the question is: are northern societies willing to make the investments needed to adapt, or will they wait until the crisis is impossible to ignore?

My honest read is that governments in northern Europe are still treating this as a weather story rather than an infrastructure and public health story.

And those require completely different responses.

One you wait out, the other you build for.

En España tenemos un Plan Nacional de Actuaciones Preventivas ante los Efectos del Calor.

In Spain we have a National Action Plan for Preventing the Effects of Heat.

Lo pusimos en marcha después de 2003.

We launched it after 2003.

Funciona.

It works.

Ha reducido la mortalidad de forma significativa en los veranos más duros de las últimas dos décadas.

It has significantly reduced mortality in the harshest summers of the last two decades.

No es perfecto, pero existe y se aplica.

It's not perfect, but it exists and it's applied.

El Reino Unido tiene algo parecido, pero más reciente y todavía sin la misma madurez.

The UK has something similar, but more recent and not yet as mature.

There's something almost poignant about Spain being the country that has to tell Britain how to survive summer.

I say that with full respect.

Mira, llevamos siglos exportando cosas útiles.

We've spent centuries exporting useful things.

El jamón, la siesta, la arquitectura con patios...

Ham, the siesta, courtyard architecture...

Todo ignorado.

All ignored.

Cuando por fin el mundo nos escuche sobre el calor, me alegro de que sea por algo tan práctico como no morir de un golpe de calor.

When the world finally listens to us about heat, I'm glad it's for something as practical as not dying of heatstroke.

The siesta rebranded as a climate adaptation strategy.

I'd write that essay.

Actually, I might write that essay.

Escríbelo.

Write it.

Pero antes de que te pongas a escribir, quiero que notes algo que dije antes, porque creo que es útil para los oyentes.

But before you start writing, I want you to notice something I said earlier, because I think it's useful for listeners.

Usé la expresión 'no es entrometerse, es vivir en comunidad'.

I used the expression 'it's not being nosy, it's living in community'.

Hay un verbo ahí que me parece importante: entrometerse.

There's a verb in there that I think is important: entrometerse.

Entrometerse.

To meddle, to poke your nose in.

Though I notice it's got 'meter' in there, like 'meter' as in to put or insert something.

So literally, to put yourself in the middle of something?

Casi.

Almost.

'Entre' más 'meter'.

'Entre' plus 'meter'.

Meterse entre algo.

To put yourself between something.

Y el prefijo 'entre' da la idea de insertarse en un espacio que está entre otras cosas.

And the prefix 'entre' gives the idea of inserting yourself into a space that is between other things.

Meterse donde no te llaman, en sentido negativo.

To stick your nose in where you're not asked, in the negative sense.

Pero lo fascinante es que la misma acción, exactamente la misma, puede ser entrometerse o puede ser cuidar, según el contexto cultural.

But what's fascinating is that the same action, exactly the same one, can be entrometerse or it can be caring, depending on cultural context.

El acto es idéntico.

The act is identical.

El juicio moral es opuesto.

The moral judgment is opposite.

That's a genuinely interesting distinction.

English has 'interfere' which is almost always negative, and 'intervene' which can be positive.

But neither of them captures the neighborly checking-in that Spanish seems to have space for without making it sound intrusive.

Y fíjate que en español podemos decir 'entrometerse' con tono negativo, pero también podemos decir simplemente 'preocuparse por alguien' o 'estar pendiente de alguien', que son formas de describir exactamente la misma conducta sin el juicio negativo.

And notice that in Spanish we can say 'entrometerse' with a negative tone, but we can also simply say 'preocuparse por alguien' or 'estar pendiente de alguien', which are ways of describing exactly the same behavior without the negative judgment.

El idioma te da las herramientas para decidir cómo quieres interpretar el gesto.

The language gives you the tools to decide how you want to interpret the gesture.

Estar pendiente de alguien.

To be watchful over someone, to keep someone in mind.

That's the one I'm going to take away from today.

Because honestly, in the context of what we've been talking about, being pendiente de your neighbor might literally save their life this summer.

Literalmente.

Literally.

Y no cuesta nada.

And it costs nothing.

Ese es el programa de salud pública más barato del mundo: llamar a la puerta del vecino.

That's the cheapest public health program in the world: knocking on your neighbor's door.

Aunque Fletcher, si vas a hacerlo en España y quieres explicarle por qué estás allí, asegúrate de decir que estás 'avergonzado' si te equivocas de piso, no 'embarazado'.

Although Fletcher, if you're going to do it in Spain and you want to explain why you're there, make sure to say you're 'avergonzado' if you knock on the wrong door, not 'embarazado'.

Eight years and you're still holding that over me.

I'm going to be very pregnant at your funeral, Octavio.