The British state broadcaster suggests 2026 will replace 1976 as the “benchmark” for a hot summer. It could not be more wrong. We will look back on this year’s succession of heatwaves with unbearable nostalgia.
Marine heatwave conditions persist in the western Mediterranean, Aug. 14. (European Union / Copernicus Marine Service Data / Wikimedia Commons / Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2026)
By Jonathan Cook
Jonathan-Cook.net
A BBC headline asks: “What will you tell your grandchildren about the summer of ‘26?”
The British state broadcaster believes we will be talking about this summer for “years to come,” with 2026 supposedly replacing 1976 as the “benchmark” for an exceptionally hot and calamitous summer.
But the truth is, in a few years’ time, 2026 will not be remembered for its summer heat. In fact, unlike 1976, it will not be remembered at all.
But if, as the BBC imagines, I do talk to my grandchildren about 2026, what will I tell them?
I will tell them how, in those days, we did not have to shelter indoors, in air-conditioned rooms, all summer long. How there was a time before we lived like bats, emerging only as night fell.
I will tell them how almost no one died of heat stress. And that, back then, the mass-casualty climate “events” they see regularly on the news were only just beginning. That the scenes of a tidal wave of flood water sweeping away a huge building in Nepal looked unworldly to us then, like a Hollywood disaster movie.
I will tell them how food was plentiful before the crops started failing. How rationing was something we associated with wars. How fresh fruit and vegetables were affordable for ordinary people, not just the lab-grown slop that is now the mainstay of their diet.
I will tell them how, in those far-off days, the taps didn’t run dry for months on end. How we barely gave a thought to water, or how to access it. How we could have long showers whenever we wanted. Even baths, if we preferred. And we watered our gardens and washed our clothes regularly too.
Heat Wave at Beeston Castle, U.K., in 2026. ( Jeff Buck/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 2.0)
I will tell them how we didn’t have to live in constant fear of our homes being lost to (summer) wild fires or (winter) storms and floods. How these disasters were so rare that there were firms that would insure us against any loss.
I will tell them how, decades ago, homeless people were few in number, at least compared to the large number of unfortunates now living in tent cities — refugees from the waves of destruction.
I will tell my grandchildren how much I now miss the reliability of public services like healthcare and schools, which were left to crumble year after year as tax revenues declined and more and more public money had to be spent on mitigating the worst of the climate shocks.
I will tell them how I regret not having done more to raise the alarm, to persuade people that they could not afford to go on pretending there was no price to pay for drilling, fracking and burning so much of the stored energy beneath the Earth’s surface.
I will tell my grandchildren how their grandparents’ generation, my generation, lived in a collective delusion, fed by a God-complex that assumed humans could rise above the laws of nature, that the planet was ours to plunder, that there should be no limits on our ambition, on our greed.
I will tell them that the climate coverage in state-corporate media like the BBC deceived us into thinking a day of reckoning would never arrive.
Perhaps to underscore my point, I will dust off an old BBC article, published on the last day of August 2026, headlined: “What will you tell your grandchildren about the summer of ‘26?”
I will note that, even as the climate crisis deepened, even as scientists warned that planetary warming was accelerating, the BBC misled its huge audience into believing that 2026 would be a remarkable, exceptional, memorable year. That it would mark a highpoint of heat, rather than just another data-point on a relentless climb up the thermometer.
I will tell my grandchildren…
But wait. Maybe my children, like so many others, will decide that they don’t want to bring children into the hothouse world they themselves are facing.
In which case, my grandchildren won’t exist. And I will have no one tell about the summer of ‘26.
Jonathan Cook is an award-winning British journalist. He was based in Nazareth, Israel, for 20 years. He returned to the U.K. in 2021. He is the author of three books on the Israel-Palestine conflict: Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish State (2006), Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East(2008) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (2008). If you appreciate his articles, please consider offering your financial support.
This article is from the author’s blog, Jonathan Cook.net.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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Apparently it will be the winter of 2026 that will be memorable to many in the US that will be subject to flooding and erosion due to the unusually powerful El Niño condition in the tropical Pacific.
hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v4k0nbUU1s (start video at 34:00)
Home Selling Expert website reminds us of the consequences of prolonged periods of hot weather:
“As we have seen from the heatwaves in recent times, our climate is becoming more unpredictable. Prolonged periods of hot weather and drought may start to become a common occurrence which will have a knock-on effect on the number of subsidence issues and claims made.”
Incredibly, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the UK Conservative Party has decided to veto any Conservative from standing as a candidate at the next general election if they support serious action to combat global warming!
Corporate capture of all our institutions will be the death of life on this miraculous planet. How pathetic that so called civilized humans think they know better than the indigenous cultures they have systematically murdered en masse who had the wisdom to live in harmony with the natural world. Who are the real savages?
Your last question is perfect.
Have read some articles stating the powers that be are intentionally destroying nature so that the people will have no choice to live and work in their sterile naturually devoid environments.
Reason and rationality are not mutually inclusive. (In relation to innate animal instinct)
How has Homosapiens’ evolution rationally mastered its innate instincts?
If the basic foundational meaning of ‘civilized’ society means that all – supposedly the well-advanced intellect of Homosapiens, without exception – are treated by their fellow travelers with fairness and equal justice for all, then how can it be claimed, in 2026 – with the premeditated chaos, genocide, and purposeless destruction, continuously being witnessed throughout historical recordkeeping , and still currently taking place – that so-called ‘humanity’ has attained a more rational mindset than those of the so-called lower animal species “doing what comes innately natural”; in harmony with the natural environment, without necessity of reason or rationality in the very same natural environment that ‘civilization’ is literally burning it to the ground?
What is the one attribute that distinguishes ‘man’ from ‘animal kind’?
Back in the early 17th century – almost 400 years ago, an individual, Rene Descartes, thought he had an answer: “Cogito, Ergo Sum”. The phrase “I think, therefore I am” may mean that the very act of thinking proves existence, because one has to exist in order to have thoughts, it says not a thing about the lack of logical reasoning or rationality in man’s misbehavior, philosophically.
Well said.
In the same week that the BBC published it’s drivel, the United Nations published a grim outlook on the world’s future climate:
hxxps://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/overshoot-explained-5-things-understand-about-world-beyond-15degc
hxxps://www.unep.org/resources/limiting-overshoot-navigating-exceedance
02 SEPTEMBER 2026 REPORT
Limiting Overshoot – Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return
Authors: UNEP
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C remains a cornerstone of the Paris Agreement, yet under current policies and alternative near-term trajectories, exceedance of 1.5°C is now widely assessed as unavoidable.
They do their best to deliver this without alarmism, but really even the best case scenarios published there are a world in which many will suffer.
Meanwhile the BBC continues to champion the eurocolonial elites in their determination to destroy all global cooperation and fritter away precious money and time on needless wars of greed, agression and destruction.
Reading the real account of the world ahead, one realise that we actually cannot afford to continue to have court jesters like the BBC, deliberately and methodically obstructing public insight into what is actually going, and more importantly, what needs to be done instead of its circus of distraction.
“the BBC misled its huge audience into believing that 2026 would be a remarkable, exceptional, memorable year.”
the bbc, coerced by the uk government into misleading its huge, brainwashed, dumbed down audience that there is no “inconvenient truth”.
there. that’s more accurate.
And last week we had the UK Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Angela Eagle, urging the public to “stock up on food” in view of the forecasted ‘El Nino’ event, and must become “more resilient to climate change”. If only it were so simple eh!
Plant a garden and politically organize around public food gardens on public transportation routes.
“panic” buying ensues and stocks deplete. oil runs out and manufacture/transport ceases.
welcome to a “brave new world”.
Please don’t despair, Mr. Cook! Unless you know a way, there’s absolutely no point worrying about what we cannot change because at this point we apparently have no way to stop it – only theories and extreme measures involving global mass-depopulation and, anyone aware of the ‘Irony of Life’ will know that there’s a good chance that whatever we DO try in desperation, could very well do more harm than good when all we can do is experiment with ideas and hope we can actually successfully alter a planet’s weather on a global and most importantly, controllable scale, without even fully understanding the fundamental processes we’re working with, just like what we’re currently doing with trying arrogantly and blindly to create sentient AI.
I’m certain the last global population of humans that survived through our most recent Ice Age also thought their world had ended for good, like their ancestors before them when they went through the extreme warming event that precedes every Ice Age. It had, but Life still continued through to today regardless.
Alternatively, if we DO have means to control the weather* to such an extent we can stop it doing its thing in favour of our needs (ergo desires) then I’d find it impossible to believe that we didn’t immediately covet and weaponise those discoveries when they appeared like every single other item of profound importance and immediately employ them against our perceived enemies ‘before they do the same to us’.
*Has anyone anywhere even dared to check if the global cloud seeding efforts that began in the 1980’s had any adverse effects on the weather cycle? They certainly didn’t work how they were supposed to as here we are in a drought. If they did harm the global weather patterns, do you honestly believe they would point that out to us all?