...Why did they become so central to the media narrative of the heatwave? It is as if the fires offered the best means to present the heatwave as a disaster. After all, the media had portrayed the heatwave as such before the event – as did all those government bodies which classified the heatwave as a ‘national emergency’. More importantly, they wanted, almost unconsciously, to turn the heatwave into something other than it was – into a ‘warning sign’ of the catastrophe to come, a portent of the apocalypse, a terrifying, hellish glimpse into the future. As with every other ‘extreme’ weather event today, our political and media class were determined to present this week’s heatwave as part of our unfolding climate ‘catastrophe’. They wanted to turn it into yet another episode in the dominant metanarrative of our era.......
The myth of the climate crisis
Except that things are not inexorably getting worse. Not by any objective standards. And that is telling. It shows us that the catastrophism that is gripping parts of society is not driven by an actual, observable uptick in disaster. It is driven by something else – by a broader, doomladen cultural sensibility.
....There are good reasons for the fall in the number of fires in Greater London. Chimneys and chip pans, which were the source of many conflagrations, are not used to anything like the same extent today. And the rise in use of smoke alarms and sprinklers will also have reduced the risk of fire.What all this tells us is that the dreadful fires that consumed
several houses in Wennington and other properties elsewhere in the UK
were not part of an unmanageable, upwards trend. And they certainly were
not evidence of the unfolding climate catastrophe. Quite the opposite.
They bucked the trend. They were horrible but largely exceptional
events. "
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