Europe 'fiddling while Rome burns', climate opinion warns

An opinion piece published this week by Project Syndicate argues that European governments, including Italy, are still not taking sufficient long-term measures to adapt to climate change despite repeated heatwave disasters. The column by environmental analyst Giulio Boccaletti criticises what it describes as Europe's reactive approach, focusing on emergency planning while ignoring the need for a fundamental overhaul of infrastructure, energy systems, and major economic sectors.

Boccaletti points to Rome’s recent announcement of a new heat plan as an example of the pattern. The plan includes early warning systems, green spaces and investments in grid resilience, but the author argues that two decades of such planning have proven insufficient. Italy's capital, he notes, introduced a heat health warning system in 2002, in time for the 2003 heat wave that killed 70,000 people across Europe, including more than 1,000 in Rome. Yet when an even more severe heat wave struck in 2022, another 60,000 Europeans died.

“Focusing only on emergency planning, disaster response, and recovery after each climate catastrophe is no longer enough in Europe,” Boccaletti writes. He calls for policymakers to start mapping Europe’s long-term future, arguing that the current approach amounts to “fiddling while Rome burns.”

The article argues that heat waves are becoming more frequent, prolonged and intense, exacerbating other risks such as wildfires. It cites the June 2026 heat wave that created conditions for the fires now sweeping across France and Spain, which have forced tens of thousands of evacuations and prompted European Union civil protection requests.

The opinion piece comes as Italy braces for a fourth heat wave of the summer, with red alerts expected in several cities and temperatures forecast to reach 41 degrees Celsius. Boccaletti concludes that recent structural responses such as school closures and outdoor labour regulations have had some positive effect but remain far behind the curve, and that the climate crisis requires a shift from seasonal contingency to permanent structural priority.