July’s heat was unrelenting. Union leaders aren’t fighting it

Every month the Copernicus Climate Change Service (Europe’s Eye on the Earth), publishes its authoritative estimates of air and sea temperatures. Here is a summary of Copernicus’s July 2026 highlights:

• July 2026 was the joint-second warmest July globally, tied with July 2024.

• Western Europe experienced its warmest June–July period on record.

• Sea surface temperature over the extra-polar ocean was the highest on record for July, partly reflecting developing El Niño conditions in the equatorial Pacific.

• In July 2026, Arctic sea ice extent ranked sixth lowest for the month, with particularly low sea ice cover in the northern Barents Sea around Svalbard and Franz Josef Land.

• Antarctic sea ice extent ranked fifth lowest for July, with below-average sea ice cover in most ocean sectors except the Amundsen Sea.

While it is true that July 2023 was hotter, there is a rarely recognised contributory factor: solar irradiance, or solar output hitting the Earth. The sun has a solar cycle of 11 years, measured by sunspots. Sunspot activity increases as the cycle progresses, peaking in year five or six, before declining to a minimum in year 11. 2023/24 coincided with the solar maximum.

The difference in irradiance between the minimum and maximum is only 0.1%. That may not sound like much, but in a period when heat is trapped in the atmosphere and less is reflected, as is the case now, it raises temperatures by more than models predict. The fact that temperatures remain elevated even as sunspots reduce by half is ominous.

Looking at temperatures more locally, Reuters provides a valuable regional temperature map. It shows the London region to be more than 5.5°C hotter than the long-term average.

It is not only daytime temperatures that are draining and dangerous. Because of global warming, nights are taking longer to cool down. Chinese researchers have estimated that the hot period is now being extended by four hours into the evening. Temperatures are not falling significantly until midnight, extending the exposure of heat-soaked buildings and the people who live in them.

The reason for the rise in temperatures is capitalist, plain and simple. The international State of the Climate report covering 2025 is a must-read. It confirms the triumph of the fossil fuel industry and its lobbyists and climate deniers, paid and unpaid. The report highlights that the Earth’s greenhouse gas concentrations were the highest on record and that fossil fuel emissions in 2025 were also at a record high.

Not all is lost

This podcast demonstrates the advances that can be achieved when society prioritises helping rather than harming humanity. All these advances originate in China. They range from cooling materials to reflective materials to new methods of drawing heat from the air. Imagine a society applying these materials to every roof – coatings that reflect more than 99% of sunlight, helping compensate for the lost reflection caused by contracting sea ice and glacial ice, which have historically cooled the planet. But this requires getting rid of our ruling class and their reckless, selfish priorities.

The trade unions should be at the forefront of arguing for this change in the direction of production. But it isn’t happening – and the reasons are structural, not accidental. Unions that represent members in the fossil fuel and armaments industries, like Unite, the UK’s largest union, have set their face against change. At least their leaderships have; that is the trade union bureaucracy and its own, narrower interests.

The trade union movement emerged not only to defend workers, but to drive towards fundamental political and social change. As the movement grew, and with it the income from members’ dues, the leadership of these unions became more comfortable. Preserving their position – and their members’ dues income – became the goal, over and above the risks that any genuine struggle demands.

This has been going on for 150 years. Trade union leaders in Britain typically earn between three and five times the median wage, paid from dues and reserves. The bosses know how much union leaders value that income, which is why they devise legislation that threatens a union’s finances – legislation designed to blackmail such leaders and hobble their members.

It is entirely explicable, then, why union leaders whose members work in sectors that harm society won't express the needs of that society. Instead, they express the narrower needs of the members who pay their dues. That’s why there needs to be a fundamental struggle within the unions to replace these reactionary leaders with more progressive ones.

The podcast mentioned above shows how armament factories could be turned into useful ones. Similarly, the need to build electricity storage systems to fully harness renewable electricity could substitute for the building of oil rigs and tankers. No one needs to lose their job. Only the nature of the work needs to change.

The list of socially useful products is infinite, as opposed to the time remaining, which is finite. Panic is beginning to break out in parts of the ruling class, but their response will be sporadic and indecisive, held back by the needs of private property and the preservation of markets. Only the international working class – the victim of climate change – is free to tackle it and protect our planet.

July shows time is running out. The worst is yet to come.