There's a phrase climate movements often repeat: this isn't the hottest summer in history, it's the mildest summer of the coming years. A seeming paradox that actually sums up the apparent inevitability of the ongoing climate collapse. If ever it were needed, the scorching summer of 2026 has confirmed the urgency of environmental struggles. Thinking that every year will be a little worse, and thinking that ultimately, as humans, we are a species capable of adapting to (almost) anything, are ultimately two sides of the same coin. In them, the "here and now" of every struggle is lost. Because if the climate struggle hasn't yet become so central, it's because, quite simply, it's a slow-motion, daily oppression that affects every aspect of our lives. You might say: it's capitalism. But it's a little more complex than that. Summer has become an increasingly less anticipated and increasingly feared season. On one side, the thermometer rises, the asphalt melts, the forests burn, hospitals fill up with people admitted for heatstroke. On the other, the summer ritual of information resumes: maps showing the hottest cities, the obsession with temperature records, reports on exhausted ventilators. And of course, the experts' advice, now even on social media: drink a lot, go out less, eat lightly. Then, in the fall, we'll forget everything. Let's reset every suffering, every data, every ailment. What's more, in recent years, a tendency has spread to try to stoically resist summer. Especially among the most aware people. Is it extremely hot? And yet we still indulge in aperitivos, organize festivals, etc. A sort of right to suffer has spread. We don't even take precautions, except to complain all the time about the abnormal heat, let alone imagine how we can conceive of climate collapse being stopped. Oh, it's summer, let's relax. In this heat? As if the heat-and its consequences, such as fires and drought-were an accident of nature and not the result of an economic order that decided, long ago, to turn the atmosphere into a landfill and the planet into a corporate balance sheet. Capitalism loves to describe the consequences and erase the causes. It's one of its greatest skills. Thus, climate collapse becomes "bad weather," "anomaly," "emergency." Never a production model. Never a specific political responsibility. Never an economic system built on the belief that infinite growth was possible within a finite world. Yet the numbers speak with a clarity that no press conference can any longer convey. According to the European service Copernicus, June 2026 was the warmest June ever recorded in Western Europe and the second warmest globally. Data from EuroMOMO, the European mortality observatory supported by the World Health Organization,They show over 10,000 excess deaths recorded during the heatwaves of late June (for much fewer in 2020, Europe shut down to stem the coronavirus pandemic). Meanwhile, heatwaves are no longer exceptions but are becoming the norm. A normality built on oil, gas, concrete, and unrestrained consumption. Sicily is one of the first to pay the price. In mid-July, Copernicus satellites recorded surface temperatures above 47 degrees Celsius on the slopes of Mount Etna, while in several inland areas, weather stations recorded air temperatures exceeding 46 degrees Celsius. These numbers are now flooding the news, as if they were inevitable. But there is nothing inevitable about them. It is not inevitable that cities are built like enormous concrete slabs that multiply heat. It is not inevitable that trees, fields, and wetlands have been destroyed to be replaced with shopping centers, parking lots, and warehouses. It's not inevitable that we continue to finance fossil fuels while making solemn speeches about the ecological transition. These are choices. Choices that have names, surnames, boards of directors, and governments that defend them. This is why climate breakdown isn't just a clear confirmation of the horrors of capitalism. It's something more, because it presupposes our ability to build a new, different world, one that doesn't seek compromises with capitalism. One example is enough. For decades, major energy companies have been aware of the effects of emissions, and for decades, investing in disinformation has been preferred to changing the production model. It was cheaper to buy consensus than to forgo dividends. Yet even today, there are those who prefer to engage in dialogue with these major energy companies. From power come problems, not solutions. Let's not forget that this same power has built a system to be immune to climate breakdown. And if their privilege begins to be eroded, never fear: they'll go colonize the moon and other planets, as billionaires like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have long advocated. Instead, those who pick tomatoes, erect scaffolding, deliver packages, or work in logistics warehouses continue to breathe scorching air for eight, ten, twelve hours. Every summer, ordinances are issued that limit work during the hottest hours. Every summer, they arrive late, are applied patchily, and are met with the same objection: stopping is costly. But to whom? Certainly not to those who risk a heart attack under the sun. Profit continues to demand only one thing: that production never stops. Not even when the temperature turns a construction site into an oven. Not even when a farm field becomes a trap. Not even when the climate crisis clearly demonstrates that the physical limits of the planet are incompatible with the greed of capital. Then there's Sicily,A perfect laboratory for Italy's contradictions. Where ever-rising temperatures amplify the effects of decades of speculation, neglect, and political choices geared more toward immediate consensus than environmental protection. And while the landscape changes, the market organizes itself. It sells air conditioners, it sells insurance, it sells technology. It even sells sustainability. A few individual gestures transformed into advertising campaigns won't save us. Electric cars, or expanses of solar panels, or aluminum water bottles instead of plastic ones won't be enough, not even if an economic model based on infinite accumulation continues to dominate. We need something else. We need communities that organize themselves again, territories that can defend themselves, workers who refuse to be sacrificed on the altar of productivity, and solidarity networks capable of removing fragments of life from the logic of the market. Because the climate crisis cannot be addressed solely with new technologies, but with new social relationships. And if the heat reminds us every day that the planet has a limit, the answer cannot be adapting to injustice: it must be building the collective strength to change it. Before climate collapse becomes yet another opportunity for profit for the few at the expense of the many. Is another climate possible, to paraphrase the most famous slogan of the Genoa season, 25 years after the death of Giulio Giuliani? The scorching summer that left us gasping for air, that ruined our sleep, that killed our loved ones, must wake us up. We must move from the fire of climate to the fire of rebellion. It's no longer time to be outraged by yet another record temperature. Indignation, by itself, evaporates as quickly as a puddle on August asphalt.The answer cannot be to adapt to injustice: it must be to build the collective strength to change it. Before climate breakdown becomes yet another opportunity for profit for the few at the expense of the many. Is another climate possible, to paraphrase the most famous slogan of the Genoa season, 25 years after the death of Giulio Giuliani? The scorching summer that left us gasping for air, that ruined our sleep, that killed loved ones, must wake us up. We must move from the fire of climate to the fire of rebellion. It's no longer time to be outraged by yet another record temperature. Indignation, by itself, evaporates as quickly as a puddle on August asphalt.The answer cannot be to adapt to injustice: it must be to build the collective strength to change it. Before climate breakdown becomes yet another opportunity for profit for the few at the expense of the many. Is another climate possible, to paraphrase the most famous slogan of the Genoa season, 25 years after the death of Giulio Giuliani? The scorching summer that left us gasping for air, that ruined our sleep, that killed loved ones, must wake us up. We must move from the fire of climate to the fire of rebellion. It's no longer time to be outraged by yet another record temperature. Indignation, by itself, evaporates as quickly as a puddle on August asphalt.
Andrea Turco
https://www.sicilialibertaria.it/2026/08/24/un-altro-clima-e-possibile/
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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