Western Europe’s Worst Heat Wave on Record

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I was left feeling I could never again complain about the weather being too cold after having suffered the unprecedented heat wave here in late June 2021, described by meteorologists as a ‘stalling dome’ of high heat, that resulted in 619 confirmed heat-related deaths.

According to AI Overview (on June 25, 2026): “The late June 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave was caused by an atmospheric ‘heat dome’—a persistent, high-pressure ridge that trapped hot air over the region like a lid. This stalling system shattered regional temperature records, with Lytton, B.C. reaching an all-time Canadian high of 49.6 C.”

And I didn’t have a proper air conditioner back then; I only had a weaker system of temperature moderation known as evaporative cooling.

Then most of the province, including southwestern B.C., suffered an unprecedently cold bunch of days the following January, which was described by meteorologists as a ‘stalling dome’ of freezing cold.

I doubt those extremes were just coincidental; rather, they are basically due to climate change via human-caused global warming via morbidly massive amounts of fossil fuel consumption ever since the Industrial Revolution. 

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Earth Day and Fossil Fuel Friendly Politicians

Although every day of the year needs to be an ‘Earth Day’, there instead is a continuance of polluting with an almost cavalier business-as-usual attitude.

Obstacles to environmental progress were formidable pre-pandemic; however, Covid-19’s impact not only stalled most projects being undertaken, it added greatly to the already busy landfills and burning centers with disposed masks and other non-degradable biohazard-protective single-use materials.

In an interview with the online National Observer (posted Feb.12, 2019), Noam Chomsky noted that while the mainstream news-media, including The New York Times, do publish stories about man-made global warming, “It’s as if … there’s a kind of a tunnel vision — the science reporters are occasionally saying ‘look, this is a catastrophe,’ but then the regular [non-environmental pro-fossil fuel] coverage simply disregards it.”

Also, I recall reading a particularly disturbing editorial printed by a local newspaper (The Surrey Now-Leader), headlined “Earth Day in need of a facelift”. It opined that “some people would argue that [the day of environmental action] … is an anachronism,” that it should instead be a day of recognizing what we’ve societally accomplished. “And while it [has] served us well, in 2017, do we really need Earth Day anymore?”

Varied lengths of the same editorial, unfortunately, was also run by some sister newspapers, all then owned by a news-media mogul who also aspired to own his own oil refinery.

Until reading this, I had never heard anyone, let alone a mainstream news outlet, suggest we’re doing so well as to render Earth Day an unnecessary “anachronism”.

Considering the sorry state of the planet’s natural environment, I still find it one of the most absurd and irresponsible acts of editorial journalism I’ve witnessed in my 38 years of news consumption.

Then, over eight years later (on October 7, 2025), a story was posted by that same newspaper (The Surrey Now-Leader) that placed quotation marks around the words “fossil fuel”, as though the phraseology is no longer objective or accurate. For me at least, that’s unprecedented in mainstream journalism. Perhaps the fossil fuel industry now insists upon news media, as well as fossil fuel friendly politicians, always using the euphemism “energy” over the implicitly unflattering “fossil fuel”.

Frank Sterle Jr.
White Rock, B.C., Canada

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 3 July 2026