​W​hy are European leaders staying silent after our summer of climate shock?

The climate crisis means “we’re going to have to change everything – the way we live, the way we produce, the way we trade,” France’s veteran radical-left firebrand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, told the summer congress of his France Insoumise party last weekend. The term “climate change”, said Mélenchon – the most likely rival to Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential run-off, according to one poll this week – may sound “almost reassuring”, but its actual impact will feel like “landing on another planet whenever we leave home”. The speech is notable because despite the four heatwaves that have scorched Europe this summer, shattering temperature records, fanning unprecedented fires and causing thousands of excess deaths, few politicians want to talk about climate action.

Europe is the world’s fastest-warming continent, heating up twice as quickly as elsewhere. The consequences, as UN climate chief Simon Stiell puts it, are “reaching national emergency levels”. And yet major policy speeches by Europe’s political leaders addressing the climate crisis, making plain its causes, and laying out the changes that will be needed to live with it can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

French voters have faced “silence from some politicians and inadequate pronouncements or demagoguery from others”, said Le Monde in a stark editorial, warning that “decision-makers on both the right and the left are losing credibility”. People want “a political message that translates into action, and sheds light on the future”, it said. The gap between “citizens’ heightened awareness of the crisis and the lack of commitment from their elected officials to address it” will trigger mounting frustration and anger.

A mid-July Ipsos poll found environmental protection had jumped 12 points from June to become French voters’ fourth greatest concern, after what the pollster described as “a first real experience of what the hell of a significantly hotter world might look like”. In the UK too, Labour party activists worry that despite the ever more visible impacts of the climate crisis, there has been no major political push from the government on the issue, even as voters become increasingly convinced of the need for action. And while Friedrich Merz said this week action was needed to “curb climate change and adapt to the consequences” (though not at a cost to German industry), he’s been accused all summer of ducking the issue for fear of boosting the climate-sceptic, far-right AfD.

There are, of course, exceptions. Spain’s outspoken prime minister, Pedro Sánchez (pictured top), has long warned that “climate change kills”, and recently stressed: “It’s not enough to address the consequences; what we have to do is reduce its causes.” A French centre-left presidential contender, Raphäel Glucksmann, spoke this week of the need for an “ecological transformation” ending the use of fossil fuels, and pledged a 100-day “ecological revolution” if elected president (which looks extremely unlikely). But the silence from most mainstream politicians is deafening, says Jean Jouzel, a veteran French climatologist.

The political class in general, he says, “have simply not yet engaged with the reality of global heating. They have to tackle it head-on.” The root of the problem, Jouzel suggests, is that “politicians live in the short-term. Their horizon is avoiding any damage during their period in office.