Original subtitles

Summers in my childhood were often dismal, grey, dreary, endless.

But 1976 was different.

That summer, the beaches were heaving.

Ice cream sellers were cashing in.

I'd never known anything like it.

What have you been doing? Have you been sitting out in the sun? In the park,

every day.

A peak temperature of almost 36 degrees was recorded and in some

places it didn't rain for 45 days.

Save or suffer, it's up to you.

In 1976, ten-year-old me thought it was a freak summer, but not any more.

1976 was an extreme one-off summer. What we are seeing now is more frequent, more

intense and longer-lasting heatwaves.

Over the last 50 years, our summers have become hotter and our winters wetter.

We're designed for a climate of the 20th century that we don't live in any

longer. So it's going to change all aspects of our lives.

World leaders are meeting again to discuss action on climate change.

The UK government says it's looking to balance green policies with the cost of

energy bills.

With the cost of living biting, affordability is my overriding

objective. So that comes above climate change? Well, so I see clean power as

one of our routes to delivering affordability.

But some scientists warn there's no time to lose in tackling climate change.

If I'm honest, I try not to think about the future.

The climate today is the least extreme we will experience in our lifetime.

We're not prepared.

A look at your weather for Suffolk now, and very hot for us today.

Highs of around 35 degrees Celsius.

I mean, how often do we have this kind of weather?

And it's, you know, when was the last time it rained?

And it's not just, it's not your normal heat, is it?

It's serious heat.

Adam Sate has been coming to Dunwich Heath on holiday for 40 years, staying

at the same caravan park as he did with his grandfather.

Early evening in late July, he and his partner Louise were just finishing

dinner.

It started really small.

All of a sudden, I look out the window to see this plume of smoke.

I knew it wasn't, like, a barbecue or anything, so I was worried, so I kept an

eye on it.

And then from there, it just started getting worse and worse.

The fire started close to Adam's caravan park and began to tear through the bone

-dry heath.

The remote location and narrow country lanes made it difficult to get it under

control.

Is that another one? I think they're struggling to get water to it. I think

that's why they keep going backwards and forwards.

We knew there was a problem, like a big problem.

I was like, I'm panicking.

Oh, no, I might have to leave the caravan.

I was quite sure of that.

It had become a panic, but all of a sudden, over half an hour, like we can

feel now, the wind, and it just happened. And he said, we need to go

now.

As Adam and Louise fled the campsite... the fire was spreading quickly.

It travels, and it travels fast, especially with the wind being on the

coast.

This is serious.

This is really, really serious.

As firefighters from across the UK joined the battle to control the fire,

more than 300 acres were ablaze.

With the winds well in the firefighters are doing their best, but there's only

so much they can do

Local

homes and campsites were evacuated an emergency meeting was held at the

village hall

Just to add to that, so we're still in an active firefighting stage at this

point in time. So currently we have 12 fire engines on scene, a range of

specialist equipment, officers and other assets to tackle this fire.

At its height, 120 firefighters battled the blaze on Dunwich Heath.

A helicopter was hired in.

Yeah, because the road goes to the right, and that's where we bulldoze

straight through.

weeks for the wildfire to be extinguished

it's estimated it could take up to

25 years for the area to recover behind me used to be a beautiful

landscape full of ferns gorse and heather is a site of

special scientific interest and it is now absolutely devastated

We are looking at around 150 hectares of damage.

Adam's caravan park survived, but he worries about what lies ahead.

To lose Dunwich Heath, it would be criminal.

You know, it needs us to all chip together, all come together and start

regenerating what we've lost.

Is this the end or is this just the beginning for these kind of things

happening here?

Between January and August, there were more than 1300 wildfires in England

alone.

Across the UK, fires burned an area the size of 35,000 football

pitches.

The grid that you can see is 200 metres by 200 metres.

We believe the fire started roughly here. This is the ignition point.

Dr Tom Smith studies the relationship between climate change and wildfires.

He studied fires around the world, including here in the

UK.

Why have we had so many wildfires this summer?

Well this summer we've had this kind of unique combination of extreme heat for

prolonged periods of time, combined with drought in many places, two months

without significant rain. What that does is it primes the vegetation for burning,

it makes more of it available to burn.

And what that drives is extreme fire weather. So when the fuel is available

to burn and you have the extreme heat, when that combines together, it leads to

fast-moving fires, fires with large flames. That makes them very difficult

to suppress.

I mean, climate change is increasing the likelihood of there being an extreme

fire weather day.

It's not just the natural landscape under threat.

The 13th of August was the hottest day of the year in the UK. A temperature of

38 degrees was recorded.

That day, 19 homes were destroyed in Stourbridge in the Midlands when a fire

broke out in a neighbouring field.

I do think we need to be concerned about this increasing trend for fires in

vegetation on the outskirts of built-up areas transitioning into an urban fire.

We've now seen it multiple times over recent years, including this year, 2026.

So what you're saying is that we're more likely to get that jump of a fire from

kind of vegetation, grassland, shrubland, woodland, whatever, into our

homes? I think we have crossed that threshold already.

2026 has been an extraordinary summer and I think what we realise is that what

climate scientists have been saying and warning about for many decades has

become real for everybody in the UK this summer. This is not a far-off problem

that our children and grandchildren only have to worry about.

It is here, now, today.

We are experiencing those consequences now.

Morning, girls. Can you bring your bottles in and actually put them on your

desk? More than 1,000 schools had to shut at some point this summer during

the heatwaves.

Right, you all right? Everyone ready?

OK, so your science book should be open.

At the Bowen Primary School in north London, the children are learning about

climate change.

When I joined them, the temperature was already more than 27 degrees.

Loads of hands up, lots more questions. Who should we go for now?

Which countries are most affected by extreme weather?

All countries in the world are affected one way or another.

We used to say Britain's really lucky because it's not that affected.

But, I mean, look at the weather we've been getting. We've had two record

-breaking heatwaves in the last two months.

Justin's going to come and have a look at your posters for AP.

He needs to be sitting down now.

Oh, let's have a look at this.

Back in the 1970s, when I was at primary school, I didn't have any lessons on

climate change.

Oh, it's brilliant.

Climate change is a long-term shift in the average temperature and the weather

pattern, OK?

As the children are discovering, average global temperatures today are 1.4

degrees hotter than 150 years ago.

Doesn't seem a lot. It is a lot, isn't it?

Because it is causing the Earth to heat up.

Many climate scientists say as the Earth heats up, it makes it more likely we'll

experience heat waves more frequently.

But if it's frequently too hot, that means we're having an issue with climate

change, OK? Does everyone understand that? By the time the lesson ends, the

temperature in the classroom is more than 30 degrees.

Oof! Yeah?

God, it's hot in there, isn't it? It's really hot in there, actually, yeah. How

often does it get to these kind of temperatures?

Every day while the heat's like this. It's been like this every day since the

heat started.

Every day? In the afternoon, particularly, they complain of

headaches. And that's common?

Yeah, quite a few of them. Because that's a real physical symptom, isn't

it?

Headaches and being sick.

I want them to be safe and I want the environment to be safe for them.

And I know it's too hot in the classroom.

So what's behind the increase in average global temperatures?

Since the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century, the world has been burning

more and more fossil fuels.

First coal, then oil and gas.

The world ramped up extraction of fossil fuels in the second half of the 20th

century.

Since the 1970s we've continued to use fossil fuels to generate heat and

electricity The UK first started pumping gas and oil ashore from the North

Sea in the late 60s and 70s It

was the oil man who discovered natural gas in the North Sea It

has been called the best bit of British luck of the century.

For decades, cars, homes and power stations

have relied on burning fossil fuels.

And burning that coal and oil and gas has increased the levels of carbon

dioxide in the atmosphere, which is why global temperatures have risen so much

over that time.

Professor Hawkins made this graphic to show how, over more than 150 years, our

world has been getting warmer.

It's called climate stripes.

The climate stripes are a simple, stark visual of our warming world.

176 stripes running from 1850 on the left to 2025 on the right.

The blue colours represent colder years.

and the red colors are warmer years and with single glance at this image you can

see the rapid warming especially over the last 50 years in the

uk the top 10 warmest years have occurred in the last two decades

and this year's summer was the hottest since records began so

2026 would have been a really almost impossible event in a pre-industrial

climate because of climate change it's now one in nine year event the

temperatures that we've seen in the summer of 2026 it's an extraordinary

change to our weather in late june the met office issued a

red extreme heat warning signaling a risk to life

hi there I've been a meteorologist for almost 20 years, and this week, it's one

of the most exceptional weeks of weather I've seen in my career. A red extreme

heat warning in force for Wednesday, Thursday, amber for Monday to Thursday.

20 years ago, global warming was something that we knew about as

meteorologists and climate scientists, but not really something that people

were feeling the impacts of in the real world, and that seems to have changed in

recent years.

We can expect population-wide adverse health impacts, not just for vulnerable

people, but for the fit and healthy.

These heat spikes that we're seeing more and more frequent are very real and

having devastating impacts as well.

But when you start seeing heat waves with temperatures into the mid or high

30s, that's when it has much more serious consequences.

It's no longer fun.

So what's the address of the emergency, please?

Health service has become overwhelmed.

People can't cool down in their homes overnight.

Is he having any difficulty breathing?

So I'm organising that help for you now, so stay on the line. I'll tell you

exactly what to do next. Back in that red amber heat alert that we had, we

experienced our busiest day ever on record. So as well as record-breaking

temperatures here in the southwest, we had record-breaking number of 999 calls.

4,000 incidents in one day.

And when did he fall?

We were taking calls every 15 to 16 seconds. A new 999 call was coming into

our control centres for a whole range of conditions.

We were literally back to back with calls on our board up there. We just

didn't have enough staff.

And does he have any... During the May and June heat waves this summer, heat

contributed to the deaths of more than 2,800 people.

That's 1,300 more heat-related deaths than the entire summer of the previous

year.

After a brief respite following the June heatwave the heat was back in July

Charlotte and Connor are going to help a man who has asthma and a chronic lung

disorder.

Do you feel a bit better now?

Good.

Right, let's have a little listen then.

Nice deep breaths in for me, OK?

As with many people, Andrew's condition is made worse by the heat.

So we've given Andrew his own sub-butamol air-driven nebuliser.

If it wasn't so hot, he probably wouldn't have needed us. We very often

have input in Andrew's care, and it very often is heat-related, isn't it?

Take care, Andrew.

You take care, my lovely.

And I think with summer's getting hotter, I think we're going to see more

problems that we're not used to, just a bit like winter pressures, where we're

going to see more heat-related illnesses.

more heat related sort of complications of things

when

we think about climate

change here in britain we tend to think about these these hot dry summers we get

now but that's really just the beginning of our story because our winters are

changing just as fast they're they're slipping further and further away from

the ones we used to know. So this isn't just about a hotter Britain.

This is about a country being reshaped season by season.

When I was a kid, I played in the snow with my sisters.

It felt like there were more snowmen around back then.

In the 1970s, winters were around one degree colder than they are today.

the weather will turn colder, and the sleet and snow working its way further

south, not getting to the far south, until quite late in the night. That's

it. See you later.

It didn't feel like it at the time, but winters in the 70s were also drier.

One of the other aspects of climate change is that as the atmosphere gets

warmer, it can hold more water, so when it rains, there's more rain to fall out.

Howling gales and rain have always been part of life in the UK. But since the

1970s, our winter storms have changed.

We are certainly seeing more intense short-duration rainfall.

Winter rainfall has increased over the last 50 years or so in the UK.

My group at Newcastle University has done research on this.

And what we find is that the increase in winter rainfall across the UK is

inextricably linked and attributable to global warming.

And since 1980 is about 3 million extra Olympic sized swimming pools

of water each year.

Last winter.

parts of England saw 40 consecutive days of rain.

Cornwall recorded its wettest January on record.

The southwest was left reeling after a series of violent storms.

One that really stood out was Storm Goretti, and this one particularly

affected Cornwall, Isles of Scilly.

When we get storms these days the most significant thing we're noticing and

what we can expect in the future is that they contain more rain than they ever

did before.

We're sort of entering this new age of climate whiplash where we get very dry

hot summers followed by very wet warm winters and we oscillate between drought

and heat waves and fires and then these flood conditions.

Whether you were wading through floods or suffering in a heatwave, 2026 was the

year it was hard to miss our changing climate.

What to do about it is a challenge the world has been wrestling with for

decades.

World leaders meeting in France thought they had the answer.

Global leaders gather in Paris for the COP21 global summit. Now, the last

summit ended in failure. Let's hope that things may now be different.

11 years ago, Paris hosted COP, the UN's global climate summit.

The aim at this crucial summit is to produce the first global agreement to

cut the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.

Along with the EU, 194 nations signed an agreement to tackle carbon emissions.

A deal is sealed. Agreement on a climate change pact.

Michael Liebreich is an energy analyst and renewables investor.

It was really a...

a defining moment because the world did come together and it decided to keep the

temperature increase from historic levels before the Industrial Revolution

to well below two degrees.

It meant countries would need to drastically reduce their carbon

emissions to stop adding...

to the overall amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in the second

half of this century.

The target became known as net zero.

After the Paris Agreement, climate action had cross-party support in the

UK.

At this point, net zero becomes an absolute consensus in the governing

class and increasingly among the public. Nobody said we're not going to deal with

climate change.

We have chosen which path we want to take and now we are waiting for the

others to follow our example.

Politicians couldn't do enough to be seen to be green and onside with climate

activists.

Greta Thunberg, she becomes almost a figure like Gandhi or Mandela.

We children are doing this for you to put your differences aside and start

acting as you would in a crisis.

She is sort of fated by figures on the left and right.

And your voice, still calm and clear, is like the voice of our conscience.

In the decade after the Paris Agreement, the UK raised more than £376 billion

in energy taxes.

Some of that money helped advance the transition from fossil fuels.

By 2015, the year of the Paris Agreement, there was 25% renewable

electricity, now it's over 50%. If you include nuclear, we're well over 60%

clean. So it's important to give credit where it's due, which is that we have

made an absolutely enormous amount of progress.

Support for green policies was tested.

after russia launched its full-scale invasion of ukraine in 2022

before the conflict in ukraine began the price of oil

was around 90 dollars a barrel today it went above 130 dollars a barrel

the

war sent a shock wave through the global energy market as the supply of gas from

Russia was disrupted.

It appears gas has been cheap, plentiful.

Suddenly, with Ukraine, that changes completely.

Prices in the UK go crazy.

Then another war, this time in Iran, sent prices shooting up again.

The price of oil has hit a four-year high, and the governor of the Bank of

England has warned of a significant energy price shock because of the Iran

war.

And it was a shock to households when energy bills arrived.

Typical costs have gone from around £1,100 a year in 2021 to around

£1,700 a year today.

A jump of 58%. Despite rising energy bills, one poll from last

autumn suggests 60% of Brits still back net zero.

But when asked which is a greater priority, reducing carbon emissions or

reducing the cost of living, 21% of those surveyed chose reducing carbon

emissions. 68% opted for the cost of living.

People do support net zero, but as soon as they start feeling personal pain, as

soon as their heating bills, their gas bills, start going up and up and up and

up, they start to think that's the absolute priority.

And people start to realise, hang on, a lot of energy bills is not just gas

prices, which are driving them up, but also these policy costs that have been

added over the years.

According to one estimate, a typical household last autumn was paying more

than £250 a year.

towards those policy costs, some of which help fund the transition to

renewable energy.

Looking for ways to lower energy bills, some parties have been rethinking their

green policies.

Having made it law to reach net zero by 2050, the Conservatives now want to

scrap the target.

Net zero by 2050 is impossible.

I don't say that with pleasure.

I want a better future and a better environment for our children, but we

have to get real.

The Conservatives do think that climate change is real. They do think we need to

decarbonise, but they don't think that net zero 2050 is the way to do it.

Reform is more critical and says net zero is damaging the UK.

We will scrap ridiculous...

harmful wasteful net zero policies we will start producing our own oil and gas

reform's position is that this is net stupid zero that this whole

idea is a bad one that this is just a way of putting up pylons of taking

people's cars away of telling people how to live their lives making them pay more

tax imposing a socialist agenda on the country

The Labour government has made easing the cost of living a priority.

It's moved some green costs from energy bills onto general taxation and blocked

any new ones from being added.

In the North Sea, 150 miles east of Aberdeen, Jackdaw.

And it's approved drilling at the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea,

where a licence had already been granted.

With production due to begin within weeks.

The Jackdaw decision will boost our energy security, protect British jobs,

add three billion to our economy and heat homes across the country starting

this winter.

The government is also considering whether to allow drilling

at a second North Sea site, the Rosebank oil and gas field.

The idea of any more drilling for fossil fuels has not gone down well with some

scientists.

The physics is very simple.

Every bit of fossil fuel that is extracted and burnt increases the level

of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The only way we can stabilise global

temperatures and stop climate change becoming even worse is by getting to net

zero emissions.

And that is something we need to strive for with all our power.

Miata van Bullen is the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

You've just approved a new gas field, haven't you? And climate scientists are

telling us they think the additional emissions from that are going to drive

more climate change.

Well, let me talk you through the decision on Jack Dorr.

Look, the first thing is, in a world where we are seeing an energy crisis,

where the conflict in the Middle East is impacting here at home, homegrown energy

is really important. And there is a premium on that. And in the end, we

recognise that as we make the transition to net zero, which we must, we're going

to need oil and gas in our mix.

So the choice for Jackdaw is, are you choosing to supply some of that demand

with homegrown gas or are we importing it from abroad?

And the worst case scenario is that you're importing it from the US with all

the emissions that entails. So on climate grounds as well, it felt like a

common sense decision.

Although back in 2022, before you were an MP, you said, and I quote, it is

irresponsible and short-sighted to fund new fossil fuels. And you explicitly

said... we cannot have any more new oil and gas fields. So what's changed in

your analysis? Well, no, it's consistent.

So I do believe... Is it? Well, it is, because this is about new licences.

And my statement there was about new licences. And you'll know that in our

manifesto, we are committed to legislating to ban new licences. We will

be doing that.

What is the priority for this department with you as the Secretary of State?

So, look...

With the cost of living biting, affordability is my overriding

objective. So that comes above climate change?

Well, so I see clean power as one of our routes to delivering affordability. But

I'm coming into this role at a time when the consensus on climate action is under

pressure. And part of the reason it's under pressure is that people are

struggling on affordability and bills, and people want to blame net zero for

that. Now, I don't believe that's the case, but I'm very clear that part of

the way in which we build and maintain public consent is that we've got to show

that this transition, which we have to do on climate grounds, is good for

people's pockets, but it's also good for their communities.

Politicians are weighing two enormous bills.

The cost of living...

and the cost of climate change.

But climate scientists are warning that our weather isn't waiting for them to

decide.

The pressure's on to start adapting to what's already coming down the road.

This is Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire.

sitting on low-lying land next to the River Thiem.

It used to flood around once a decade.

But since 2020, it has flooded eight times.

It was like a muddy brown tsunami, a torrent of water pouring into the centre

of Tembury Wells.

This time-lapse shows how the wall holding it back couldn't cope after 24

hours of nearly relentless rain.

Tenbury Wells needs new walls, embankments and floodgates to protect

the town.

But in places it was waist deep. It was waist deep? Yeah.

Leslie Bruton is Kenbury Wells' town clerk.

She's spent years calling for better flood defences.

We've done everything we can to try and support the town and push and push

and push for those flood defences to be in place.

Five years ago, the Environment Agency gave the go-ahead. But last year, as

costs hit £30 million, the government pulled the plug.

Everyone just feels like it's never going to happen.

They feel let down by the government and what will happen to Tenbury when we

flood again.

After the plan fell through, a smaller £1.8 million scheme was rolled out by

the Environment Agency to help around 200 high-risk properties.

It's also brought in the Floodmobile, an information centre...

to help local people.

We've got things like flood resistant air bricks.

These have got little flat valves on the inside so when the water levels rise the

valves flow themselves closed and open themselves back up again when the water

levels recede.

Now we can install one-way flat valves with little quick toilet bums.

These are things that are just little airbags that get put into the bend of

the toilet but then get inflated by a bicycle pump.

This is the pump rooms built in 1862 part of the town spa

It's one of three historic public buildings

now at risk here in 2020 they were all damaged by flooding

Leslie organized the repairs

How much was the insurance bill?

Our claim was just under £1 million.

£1 million just for those three buildings?

Yes. Wow.

Luckily, the insurance company were very supportive. We've got contractors in

place and we managed to save the buildings.

But when it was time to renew the building's flood insurance, the insurers

backed out.

They'd advised the town that to get flood cover, there'd need to be better

defences. The council says... It was left high and dry.

Our insurers wouldn't offer us insurance. So they just said no? No,

they just refused point blank. So I went out to several brokers and one finally

came back to me with a quotation, which was £170,000 per annum. So it was just

totally unaffordable.

Some local businesses have been struggling to get flood insurance too.

I popped in for a swift half at the Bridge Inn.

You're going through all major insurance companies.

None of them want to touch it. I get why they won't do it, because they feel the

risk is too high.

Every postcode in this town, it's probably, in the town centre, is the

same. I mean, nobody... In Team Street, nobody will be able to get flood

insurance.

I mean, essentially, much of the town is pretty much uninsurable. It is, yeah.

I mean, how does that affect the town?

It's quite depressing because there's lots of small independent shops and

there's a lot of people saying if it happens again, I'm either packing in or

I'm going to another town where it doesn't happen. If the climate change

carries on and basically we keep getting this year in, year out, then it'll

probably become a ghost town.

Tenbury Wells is one of many places that's trying to work out how to adapt

to the UK's changing climate.

Baroness Brown chairs what's called the Adaptation Committee. It's part of an

independent body that advises the government on climate change.

At the moment in England alone we have 6.3 million properties at risk of

flooding. In Scotland there's another 400,000.

In Wales it's about a quarter of a million and another 50,000 or so in

Northern Ireland. So that's 7 million properties already at risk of flooding.

Ten years ago, the government introduced a scheme to help some homeowners get

insurance in flood-prone areas.

But it doesn't cover public buildings or commercial premises.

We urgently need a solution on the insurance side. People need to know what

the situation in Tenbury Wells is going to be for the next 20 years. Is that

something they can live with or...

Or is it not?

With Tenbury Wells too costly to insure and too expensive to defend, Lesley

fears what may happen next.

Extremely upset, angry.

It's people's homes, businesses, our children's future.

It's so upsetting.

Yeah. We feel like we're the first town to be abandoned

due to climate change.

According to the Climate Change Committee, Tembury Wells is not the only

town at risk.

I think we will have to accept, as flooding continues to get worse, that

there will be some places that we cannot protect.

We as a government, we're putting record investment into flood defences, £10

billion, and we've got to build it out. But your plan for the country excludes

Tenbury Wells.

Can you see why they're upset?

You're saying... Look, we will take it on a case-by-case basis, and what I

would say with every community is that we're a government that is serious about

adaptation. We have to be.

This change is here and it's happening. The responsibility of government is to

protect our communities, and if we do not do that, they will not forgive us,

and they are right not to forgive us.

Lots of the UK's buildings are caught in a climate trap.

Unable to stop floodwaters gushing in or heat getting out.

Back at this North London primary school, they're trying to work out what

they can do about the heat.

Is that better?

Right, shall I draw the blinds? Is that sun coming on your back?

Put it down a little bit more like that.

Yeah, is that better?

The school was built in 1936.

The average July temperature in that year in this part of the UK was five

degrees lower than today.

This is quite an old building. How heat adapted is this? How good is this in hot

weather? Well, this was built in the 30s, I think, that sort of time. And

obviously, I think schools were built to keep heat in rather than keep cool.

As you can see, there are a lot of windows.

And you can see that the windows do not open that much. So it's getting that

breeze through is the problem in this particular school.

And it's not just schools.

Many public buildings are likely to need expensive upgrades.

The Climate Change Committee estimates the cost for the healthcare sector

alone... will be £114 million a year.

We have the buildings that were built for a completely different climate.

So we've got to think about how do we adapt a primarily existing and

old building stock.

We should use...

All the methods we can. We should use shading, we should use trees, we should

use through ventilation and fans where we can.

But for many of our buildings, we are going to have to use more air

conditioning.

It's not only the UK's buildings that are struggling to keep pace with the

extreme weather.

Fields and farms, and the people who work in them, are being tested too.

So this is the most significant challenge that we face.

And that's when the soil just is so dry that it just blows away.

We've had three out of the last five years, 2022, 2025 and 2026, have led to

significant periods of drought.

Andrew Blenkiron runs the Elverdon estate in East Anglia.

It's one of the largest farms in Britain, growing cereals, onions and

potatoes, supplying several major supermarkets.

The market is probably big for baking potatoes. It's become more and more

popular. This July, England recorded just 10% of its long-term average

rainfall for the month. It was the driest July since records began nearly

200 years ago.

Some years, it's easy to see a 50% reduction in yield, and that's because

we don't have the ability, we don't have the resource to put water onto those

cereal crops. So hold on a second, you're losing like half your crops a

year. Yeah, well, indeed, in this year, 2026, we've seen a 70% reduction in our

spring barley yield associated with the extreme dry period. The questions are

starting to be asked as to whether we should actually be growing cereals at

all on this very dry land.

Faced with falling yields for some of his crops, Andrew's taken drastic

action. Oh, hold on a second. I mean, it's huge.

It is. It's massive.

I mean, it's a big reservoir, isn't it? It is. It's bigger than I was expecting.

I mean, that is... How big is it?

Its capacity is, when full, 500,000 cubic metres.

The water in the reservoir, one of three at the farm, comes from both rainfall

and a licence to take water from local rivers when conditions allow.

It cost more than £3 million and was partly funded by the government.

And I guess in a way, this is you as a farmer saying, climate change means I

can't rely on the natural water supply anymore.

That's the biggest issue, of course. The big challenge is we need to be able to

guarantee supply of water from the moment we plant our crops till the

moment we harvest them.

Today, water levels in public reservoirs across the southeast and southwest of

England remain exceptionally low.

Eight water companies still have hosepipe bans in place.

It's not the first time the UK's faced a water crisis.

This country is now in one of the worst periods of drought since records began

200 years ago Back in 1976 water rationing was introduced in parts

of the country The Water Authority are screwing up the taps even tighter now

because water is still being used too fast

will be interrupted between the hours of 12 noon and 7pm.

There were widespread crop failures.

Without rain, the potato crop is down by 50%. The potatoes are small, many have

gone to seed.

In the mid-1970s, the government was already looking to improve water

supplies.

Between 1976 and 1991, 15 major public reservoirs were

opened.

It was the start of I think the UK really thinking about investment in

water management and They invested quite a bit of money into water infrastructure

The last

public reservoir built in the UK opened in 1992

more are now planned

But will it be enough?

There are nine reservoirs that are proposed at the moment, but

those nine reservoirs are only going to provide 670 million litres

of extra water.

The Climate Change Committee says that the shortfall of public water supply

will be around 5 billion litres per day by 2050.

We urgently need the programme to build more reservoirs. We need to be looking

at how do we help farmers store water on their farms.

We need to be linking our water systems together across the country.

And we need to address leaks.

Do not adjust your sets. Hello. It's Thursday 22nd June 2056

and it has been another exceptionally hot day across the United Kingdom.

If the summers of 1976 and 2026 felt extreme, what can we

expect in the years to come?

The Met Office has tried to work it out.

The events of this summer have really prompted us to imagine what a summer

might look like in 2056, because these are the events that really bring home

what a changing climate might look like.

As in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Northern England, reaching the mid to

high 30s. The rest of England, as well as Wales...

likely to reach 40 celsius or higher this isn't a forecast as in telling

people exactly what the weather will be like in june 2056 that of course is

impossible but what it did was it took our weather model the model that we use

to predict the weather every day and it changed the global climate to two and a

half degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels so a plausible level of global

warming if not much human action is taken in the decades to come.

And it was astonishing what it showed.

The most intense heat is expected from Bristol through the M4 corridor and

north towards Birmingham, with the risk of 45 degrees Celsius.

By 2050, if we don't take the actions we're recommending, on a hot summer, we

could see our hospitals overwhelmed.

We could be seeing 10,000 heat-related deaths.

We could see our fire and rescue services overwhelmed.

We could be seeing eight or nine million homes.

That's 25% of homes at risk of flooding.

The estimates in the UK are already that climate change is costing us up to

60 billion per annum.

By 2050...

The estimate is it could be costing us up to 5% of GDP, which is up to 260

billion per annum.

These risks are real and we do have to prepare for them.

We need a much stronger national conversation.

Some experts including professor Haley Fowler have come together to press for

urgent action on climate change They filmed a series of talks in the style of

a national government emergency briefing and they want the government to

broadcast one for real TV presenter and climate campaigner Chris Packham

introduced the event In November of last year I joined some of the UK's

top scientists as they held a national emergency briefing right opposite

Westminster. I don't think the full brutal truth is being told and presented

in the right way in broader media, which is why we stepped in with a national

emergency briefing.

We are facing a national emergency, not only because the climate is changing,

but because the living systems that regulate that climate are breaking down.

It's sobering when you realise that this is the least extreme climate you will

experience in your lifetime.

I'll let that sink in.

At the moment, it appears that our politicians are shying away from dealing

with these things because they might perceive them as a difficult issue.

Well, there's nothing more difficult than your house burning down or the

drought meaning that there's no food in the supermarkets.

Some people look at what you're saying and say, look, you're trying to frighten

people because, you know, you're anxious about this. But are you scaremongering?

No, we're telling people the truth and there's a very distinct difference.

And that's the truth as we know it from the science that we've published to

understand it.

Transition is the best way of doing it. We don't want it overnight, but we do

need a rapid transition away from fossil fuels.

But how fast should this transition be?

One scientist at the emergency briefing said we need revolutionary rates of

change.

But some are alarmed.

by the prospect of a very rapid transition.

So the wonderful people behind the national emergency briefing, how much

resource would they like to allocate to defence, for instance?

They don't have to answer that because they've got a single thing they campaign

on, but we've got to solve multiple problems at the same time. If we take

these very radical cuts in emissions before we've got solutions, then it

means a massive reduction in economic activity.

In the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, the government says it's

balancing the speed of the green transition with the demand to cut energy

bills. At the last election, the government said it would get to what it

calls clean energy by 2030.

It can only do that if £70 billion is spent on Britain's electricity grid.

Now, the government set itself a...

high standards by which to be judged it said the uk would hit clean energy so 95

plus of the electricity in the country would be generated from renewable

sources by 2030 is that a target that you're going to meet well look I think

the purpose of a target... You know, I was there when... I was in the

department when we set it, and there was lots of scepticism when we came into

government and we said, clean power by 2030, and what it's done is created

massive momentum.

Well, I've got to say, that sounds a little bit to me like a very clever no.

We're not going to make it. We set ourselves a high target. We're not going

to make it. That's the truth, isn't it? Well, it's a stretch target and we're

going to run at it. You're going to run... You don't think you're going to

make it? Well, we're going to run at it. I mean, isn't the real question, the

real thing you should be answering for voters and for energy users is you

should be telling them, look, we can't afford to meet our green target that we

set ourselves at the next election.

Prices have gone up and we simply can't afford to meet it. Well, no, so

listen... I don't think we can afford not to make progress on clean power, but

we've got to make sure that we're doing that alongside the imperative of driving

down bills.

With the financial worries of voters ringing in their ears, the Prime

Minister and the Energy Secretary have said they'll both be at the COP climate

meeting in Turkey.

Since 2015, these annual summits... have failed to stop carbon emissions reaching

record highs, although the rate of growth has slowed dramatically.

The multilateral process, which requires unanimity amongst all parties,

especially when there are vested interests from countries which are

reliant on fossil fuels, it is making this process painfully slow.

So the transition won't be heralded by this rapid crushing of fossil fuel use,

however much we might want it.

It won't happen.

It will be growth of the clean solutions, and it just takes a long time

until they start to actually displace fossil fuels.

That'll take a few more years, but I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that

it will happen.

The UK's weather has got more extreme in the last 50 years, but it's tough right

now for political leaders.

here in the UK or around the world to prioritise climate change policies. Yet

what happens to our weather in the next 50 years depends in part on the

decisions they make today.

For some climate scientists, this year's extreme weather is a reminder that time

may be running out.

Yeah, I find it very hard to put this into words.

It is really quite scary.

We need to act now for our children and our grandchildren's sake.

If we fail them, they will not thank us for what we have done.