Europe Is Burning

The Daily

This episode of The Daily explores the devastating wildfires sweeping across France and Spain, exacerbated by record-breaking heatwaves linked to climate change. Reporter Chico Harlan explains

Key takeaways

France and Spain are experiencing their largest wildfires ever, with over 240,000 people evacuated in France alone.
Europe's infrastructure, including older buildings and limited air conditioning, makes it more vulnerable to extreme heat.

Main topics

Wildfires in France and Spain
Climate change and its impact on Europe

Notable quotes

"These are unprecedented times," said the French president.

Conclusion

This episode underscores the urgent need for climate adaptation in Eur

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) From the New York Times, I'm Zolankano-Yums, filling in his host. This is the Daily. Tonight, relentless walls of flame raging across Europe. Firefighters say, as David versus Goliath, a week after it started, they're still struggling. To contain massive wildfires burning out of control at France and Spain. This summer, wildfires have been raging across Europe, with France and Spain particularly hard hit. More than 360,000 residents in France. tourists have now been evacuated. It feels like we're in a war zone. The words of one woman living near Bordeaux as flames get ever closer. Hundreds of thousands of acres incinerated, villages destroyed, and entire communities upended by the fires. Police come and started to scream in the neighborhood. Like, you have to get out, get out. You have 20 minutes. Evacuate. Today, I talked to my colleague, Chico Harlan and Mark Landler, about why this fire season has been especially devastating for Europe. And how, when it comes to climate change, the continent is grappling with just how much it may need to adapt. It's Thursday, July 30th. Chico, welcome to the Daily. Thank you so much for having me. Of course. This is your first time on the show. It is. Well, I am glad to have you here. You're the global climate correspondent at the New York Times, and you're based in Europe. So help us make sense of these fires that are sweeping across France and Spain. What's your understanding of how both these countries get fires this big and destructive at the same time? Well, you're right. These fires are simultaneously unfolding as the largest ever in France and the largest in Spain. They're both unfolding on the outskirts of major cities, Madrid and Bordeaux, and there have been large-scale evacuations. And in order to really understand how you get two fires that are both historic, kind of have to go back. all the way to May when it wasn't even summer yet. Europe is bracing for its first major heat event of 2026. That was the first time that Western Europe was hit by a heat wave. And it is punishingly hot. People are scurrying for shade. I'm taking a shower up before bed. I'm sleeping with wet towels over me just to try to survive, honestly, and just try to sleep. And then came the big one, just a month later in late June. The Eiffel Tower closed early due to safety concerns, with temperatures in parts of France hitting 111 degrees. And if you just look at France for a second, in the span of three days, they set the hottest day in national history, back to back to back. These are unprecedented times, said the French president. And if that had just been a three-day thing, that alone would have been remarkable. But the unusually hot temperatures stayed. And then they let up for a few days, and then they came roaring back through July. This morning, the death toll keeps climbing due to the brutal heat wave gripping Western Europe. It was very lethal. A Spanish public institute says there were more than a thousand excess heat-related deaths this June. Some estimates say 10,000 extra deaths because of heat. Some have said 20,000. But what you can say for sure is that this was a highly deadly event across western Europe. Wow. Okay. So you're saying tens of thousands of people are dying in these heat waves. In the U.S., we often see a couple thousand people die annually. and that's awful, but what you're describing is striking here. Why is this toll so big? There's a couple reasons for that. One is Europe has buildings that are older and that were not built for this climate. They're built for colder temperatures, and they were built to retain heat. In Paris, these famous beautiful homes, apartments, are under zinc-tiled roofs, which basically are like ovens. Then, of course, there's the air conditioning factor, which is a big one. still a minority of Europeans have air conditioning. And then during heat waves, people who can will scramble for anything during a daytime. They'll go to a mall. They'll jump in a pool. But people who are elderly or have preexisting conditions can be stuck in apartments that just never cool down and stay hot in the night. And after days, their bodies fail. And that's how these deaths happen. God, so people are literally baking right now. And it's because of a lack of air conditioning and the architecture of buildings. I'm going to ask, and I understand this, the most American question, but I do think it's a question that's on the minds of many listeners. Why not use more air conditioning? I get there are environmental concerns, but explain this to me. This situation seems dire. Well, it just requires money and time. And in some cases, the design of the buildings makes installing air conditioning difficult. There's also widespread in France, especially a philosophical opposition to air conditioning. But you have to remember that the idea was, look, this intense discomfort is a couple nights a year. Like, we can deal with it when it gets bad. The rest of the year, there's no need for air conditioning. What's happened this summer is that these periods of discomfort, and now deadly discomfort, are lasting for weeks, not just a couple days and go away. Okay, so I just want to zoom out. Why is it so much hotter? Obviously, climate change, I assume, is a big part of this answer, but just explain what is making this heat wave so acute in these particular areas. Climate change is the global answer, but there is a more Europe-specific answer, too, which is how climate change is playing out there. A big part of the reason that Europe is warming faster is because of proximity to the Arctic. The Arctic is the fastest warming part of the whole planet. And why is that? It's because this place that had snow cover and ice, basically. basically was like a white reflecting sheet. And that whiteness is now being lost and gradually turning into more darker surfaces, dark waters, places where there's no longer ice or snow. And now, whereas the sun used to bounce back up, now that radiation heat is being absorbed into the waters. You can think of it like a t-shirt on a hot day. We wear a white t-shirt, it bounces back the heat. You wear a black t-shirt? You're extremely hot. Yes. Right. And right now, the Arctic is that black t-shirt. And that is causing these ripple effects. What it adds up to is that Europe has been warming by about 0.5 Celsius, which is almost a degree Fahrenheit per decade. That doesn't sound like a big number, but you spread that out and aggregated over a couple decades, and all of a sudden you have a climate that feels different than even what you remember 20 years ago. Okay, so let's talk about these fires. We've got this intense heat.