The UK is generally cursed as a chilly, drizzly and dull-skied little island. As a result, when the sun comes out, Brits – and I think I can speak for the nation here – tend to lose our minds. English men take their tops off in heat that wouldn’t convince an Italian to shed his gilet. The booze fridges in Tesco are raided by noisy crowds boasting lobster-pink shoulders. Sweaty chaos rocks pub gardens up and down the country. Even if you don’t go fully feral at the height of summer, you probably grew up understanding that hot, sunny days were a rarity in the UK, and therefore something to be celebrated.

But in 2023, it’s hard to look at heatwaves – like the one that has prompted the UK Health Security Agency and the Met Office to issue a yellow alert for six parts of England this weekend – without feeling a steady thrum of anxiety. Personally, hot-hot-hot temperatures have always made me nervous: my skin is Twilight vampire-pale, which means bright sunshine carries an inherent sense of danger. But the dread I experience now during hot weather has nothing to do with my lifelong fear of sunburn. Instead, it’s caused by the relentless signs of the climate crisis around the world: smoke from Canadian wildfires choking New York in “record-breaking apocalyptic smog” (pictured below); fatal flooding in countries including Somalia, Pakistan and Italy; new warnings this week that greenhouse gas emissions have reached an all-time high, threatening to push the world into “unprecedented” levels of global heating.

As I write this, the air I breathe isn’t thick with orange smog; floodwater isn’t sweeping through the streets in my corner of south London. The temperature remains at a pleasant 25ºC, the silver birch tree outside my window swaying gently in a warm breeze. But I can no longer look at beautiful days like this and think: this is nice. Instead, I think: what on earth is coming next?

“I remember being really excited about a few days of 25ºC heat as a child in the early 2000s, and wishing we had longer to enjoy it. Now I know what 40ºC feels like, I do get a little spike of anxiety when I see a heatwave forecast – even if I’m looking forward to a day out in the sun,” says Ellen Lees, a 27-year-old organiser with climate justice organisation GND Rising.

Last summer saw record-breaking temperatures in the UK hit 40.3ºC, with negative outcomes ranging from more than 2,800 excess deaths among the over-65s in England to a crash in British butterfly populations. Analysis by scientists has found that climate breakdown made that heatwave 10 times more likely. In part, Lees attributes her heatwave nerves to the fact that we know what high temperatures “mean in context now – the long-term pattern and what it means for vulnerable people here at home, and people in other parts of the world dealing with drought, fires, hurricanes and floods”.

Climate psychologist Megan Kennedy-Woodward, who grew up in the US before moving to the UK, observes mildly that English people “really enjoy the sight of sun”. However, many people who reach out to her organisation Climate Psychologists – which offers coaching, consultation and therapy around psychological and emotional issues related to climate change – “express frustration, anger, grief [and] anxiety over unseasonable weather”, she says. Research suggests these emotions are far from unusual: the 2022 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated with very high confidence that climate change is adversely affecting mental health, while around three in four adults in Great Britain (74%) report feeling very or somewhat worried about climate change.

Kennedy-Woodward, who has co-authored two books on taking action for the environment – Turn The Tide On Climate Anxiety and the forthcoming You Are Unstoppable – believes it’s important to talk about our feelings of climate anxiety. We’re not being killjoys if we find ourselves struggling to celebrate a UK heatwave, she says: “The reality is that heatwaves are causing massive destruction around the world. And actually, a really good way to reduce climate anxiety is by talking about it – it spreads awareness, opens up conversations and helps us connect with others.” 

Increasing anxiety around climate change can also be positive if it spurs us into action, Kennedy-Woodward continues. Thinking about how you can support nature in your immediate community is one way to combat climate grief and fear, she suggests. “Getting outside and enjoying nature, which is often what we find ourselves doing on sunny days, [is not] a bad thing,” she says. “We should still be really connecting and appreciating and enjoying nature, [while] also understanding the responsibility of guardianship over that nature.”

Kennedy-Woodward suggests getting involved in grassroots organisations working on conservation in your local area or helping to promote more green spaces in your neighbourhood. Overall, the more we normalise talking about our climate anxiety, the more likely people are to take and support big-picture actions, she says: “We need to pull away from focusing on the individual and look at more community actions and systemic change.”

Lees agrees. “The thing that has helped me is taking action together,” she says. “There’s lots you can do alone – like making different lifestyle choices – but I’ve found this makes me feel more isolated and overwhelmed. But coming together with others who are also scared, and just as determined to do something about it, is really, really powerful.

“Dread doesn’t have to be despair – you can choose to act.”

Images: Getty