This month I intended to talk about other topics but, unfortunately, I still have to focus on the impending climate change and its tangible effects.
As usual, also this year I attended the Reset Connect conference organised in London within the London Climate Action Week (LCAW) 2026 that planned to gather more than 75,000 people across more than 1,000 events over nine days. I heard very interesting comments and learned useful information on climate change and sustainability from excellent panels of experts.
This year the LCAW happened during a long and intense heatwave that hit Europe and the UK. In London temperatures went over 37’C and, paradoxically, one of the event on Heat Adaptation organised at the London School of Economics was cancelled just because of the extreme heat the city was experiencing.
The London public transport was reduced and trains were either cancelled or travelled at reduced speed to ensure safety (rails structure could be severely impacted by heat as there were not designed to cope with these extremely high temperatures). Schools and universities closed and lessons were either rescheduled or held online.
The worrying news is Europe is getting hotter faster than other continent as explained in the report recently published by Copernicus and available here.
As we know, this June heatwave affected the majority of European countries where many cities reached 35-40+ degrees Celsius. This situation laid the groundwork for extreme thunderstorms affecting those cities.
Air transport is being heavily affected by scattered and intense weather events that disrupt the majority of air services. Air traffic controls often impose restrictions to better manage the situation in several countries, therefore it is currently frequent to have scheduled flights delayed by 1 to 3 hours (at least) that seriously impact everybody’s plans travelling either on business or leisure.
The current situation makes hard to fly out and in within the day – as it was normal a few decades ago – with consequent increase of costs for companies that have to add dinners and a hotel nights to ensure their professionals can attend the booked meeting/conference.
Event worse situation is experienced when the flight scheduled is actually a feed to another flight, particularly intercontinental ones. Missing the second flight could generate a serious money loss and upset plans. As a matter of fact, airlines are not subject to any reimbursement/compensation when the disruption is caused by external causes (i.e. out of their control) such as bad weather conditions.
Last but not least, these intense, long and frequent heatwaves show another dramatic side effect: people’s health problems. The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it is plausible to link 1,300 excess deaths in Europe to these unbearable climate conditions.
I really hope that during this year’s COP31 (to be hosted in Antalya, Turkey, 9-20 November) countries executives and politicians will realise that some rational and concrete decisions must be taken, if we would like to continue inhabit this planet for some more years.
Stefano Mainero
EPN Consulting and EPN Consulting Research and Innovation Founder & CEO
Article written by human beings without any use of AI. EPN Consulting Ltd. copyright 2026
Previous EPN Consulting Newsletters are available here.