Environmental campaigner Sarah Allen writes for the Journal.

Exmouth Journal: Sarah Allen with her empty black bin. Ref exe 22 18TI 4419. Picture: Terry IfeSarah Allen with her empty black bin. Ref exe 22 18TI 4419. Picture: Terry Ife (Image: Archant)

With temperatures rocketing to a record-breaking 40.3C in the UK, we were lucky to be in the relative cool of East Devon last week.

Now if you were actually in Exmouth, I don’t think ‘cool’ would have been the way you described the weather! It was still hot and I’m sure some of you found it uncomfortable and struggled to sleep.

I know I was very grateful to be able to pick the kids up from school and jump straight into the sea.

Heatwaves do happen, I was born in 1976 and I often hear about that one which I blissfully can not remember as I was just focusing on being a baby! What’s different about this one, as I’m sure you know, is the fact that temperatures were record-breaking both here and across Europe and the Met Office issued it’s first ever red warning for exceptional heat.

A heatwave alone isn’t proof of global heating, they are isolated events that do happen.

However, the fact that we’ve been experiencing record-breaking temperature after record-breaking temperatures should be a warning sign to us all.

The last decade was the hottest on record and this one is proving hotter! We are living in the hottest period for 125,000 years (IPCC). This coupled with the scientific evidence that the average global temperature has increased by approximately 1.1C since pre-industrial levels and we are heading for a higher average global temperature than this in mere decades should very loudly sound the emergency siren.

The business as usual, fossil-burning, capitalist society we, and many other nations live in, is destabilising the entire planet. We simply can’t go on like this.

The results will be catastrophic, recent events are just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. What will follow, if we continue as we are, is: more frequent heatwaves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons with heat extremes more often reaching critical tolerance thresholds for agriculture and health. (IPCC).

Those dried up lawns will seem like an insignificant problem!

However, we could choose a de-carbonised, regenerative society.

The solutions are already here for rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

We are being failed by our current government who are also failing to protect future generations both here and across the world.