The world is experiencing a dramatic heatwave. As the climate crisis warms the planet, heatwaves and other extreme weather events will become more common.

In the UK, temperatures have soared. While many people have taken advantage of the heat to relax outdoors, others have faced the threat of wildfires.

Hundreds of firefighters have battled fires in places like Saddleworth Moor near Manchester and Braichmelyn in North Wales and, locally, in the Kilpatrick Hills.

Even East London has been affected, not exactly an area renowned for wildfires, with more than 200 firefighters needed to tackle a blaze. Wildfires have even broken out inside the Arctic Circle in the far north of Sweden.

Across the world, rising temperatures have led to even more disastrous extreme weather events. From Pakistan to Canada, record breaking heatwaves have killed hundreds this year. In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, population 15 million, temperatures hit 44 degrees.

And it is not just heatwaves and wildfires. In Greenland, an entire coastal village has been evacuated because of a looming mega-iceberg caused by melting polar ice caps.

Heatwaves, droughts, and flooding are all symptoms of global warming. Human activity continues to pump greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, trapping more and more heat. As temperatures increase, weather becomes more extreme.

While we feel some of the effects in Scotland, it is largely the world’s poorest suffering the most.

Scientists have estimated that we may only have a few years left before climate change becomes irreversible. Melting permafrost will release more greenhouse gasses that are currently trapped underground, creating a feedback loop that we won’t be able to undo.Yet our economic system continues to reward climate-wrecking action, like drilling for and burning more oil and gas.

Banning plastic straws and turning the lights off won’t stop them and it lets those really responsible off the hook. When just a hundred companies are responsible for 71 per cent of global emissions, it’s clear we should be demanding system change. The burden must be on the multi-billion dollar corporations profiting from the planet’s destruction. Don’t let them pretend it’s just the rest of us to blame.