Greece wildfire declared largest ever recorded in EU
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
310 sq miles = 198,400 acres
Of course, listing land area does not quantify the actual damage/impact, and Greece is a much smaller country. But for comparison:
California's largest wildfire: 1+ million acres
2020 California wildfires (total): 4.4 million acres
2023 Canadian wildfires (total): 37.6 million acres and counting
I get Greece is a tourist economy, but safety was a secondary factor this whole year despite it being on fire all Summer and they should have at least deterred more from coming into Greece given what was happening since June.
It's been crazy, last year it got to 40C in the UK and Germany was not far along after that huge flood that happened in '21 that wiped out an entire city and for someone from SoCal who is used to this kind of thing and seen it most of my Life even I was rather distressed of how things were panning out; mainland Europe is breaking records in temps this year and it's worrisome that we still have debates that ultimately end in 'well ESG is BS' therefore we have to scrap all legislation that pertains to curbing GHG emissions as a result.
Its the same thing that happened with Al Gore and his inconvenient truth campaign, he was a horrible ambassador for the message of Climate change and did it like most limousine liberals do, which made 'Global Warming' a haphazard way of framing what was occurring (some regions of the World got colder not warmer) with immense amounts of collusion and grift (carbon credits) but the crux of the matter was we were entering uncharted territory in the early 2000s that if true would have more drastic weather and displacement than anything we could realistically fathom as a result of unpredictable and more severe weather patterns.
Even France couldn't adhere to the Paris accord [0] after the Yellow Vest movement, which I fully support and have solidarity for given how mismanaged their economy is.
I don't think the affects of climate change can be avoided now, despite over a decade in environmental activism; the best that can be done is create systems that are both tolerant and resilient to combat these immense challenges. This could be a net boon economically, but to do so many outdated forms of fiscal policy and economic modes of operation have to go out the window; and this scares most people as there entire lives have been framed with the notion that the system was built on a solid foundation, which it never was.
Even as we speak something like Vinfast proves where we are at: everyone knows its BS, but is being touted as an amazing story where fiction and delusions of profits take precedence in what could otherwise be a step in the right direction by having more EV competitors in the Global market who invest in more EV based infrastructure to meet it's customer demands. Instead we get a pump and dump like Nikola and no one is surprised more grifting was the net result when Wall Street is involved.
Luckily, where I am at this year it has been more of an extended Spring, than Summer: its been raining nearly half the week most of the Summer with temps dropping into the 20C some days, and while I am sad that Summer isn't what it used to be, I'm way more thankful that drought and extreme heat are not making immense fires a possibility right now way more.
And to me it's gotten to the point that until we see even more intense versions of this among the most affluent people and places that directly affect their lives, things are likely to remain business as usual. I seriously hate that it's gotten to this, but no amount of carrot can fix this anymore.
0: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/paris-climate-agreement-france-...