Why are people arguing about the heatwave and hosepipe bans?

Why argue over something so uncontroversial as a heatwave or a drought? That bit is easy to explain, writes Sunny Hundal

The drought has extended all across Europe (AP)

You may not have noticed – after all, you live in the real world – but a lot of people in the media have been in a ferocious argument about the heatwave.

It’s utterly ridiculous, but unsurprising. In July the Conservative MP John Hayes claimed people taking precautions during the heatwave were cowards. "This is not a brave new world but a cowardly new world where we live in a country where we are frightened of the heat. It is not surprising that in snowflake Britain, the snowflakes are melting. Thankfully, most of us are not snowflakes.”

Jeremy Clarkson wrote on Twitter, sarcastically: “It’s very hot in the south of France but so far as I know there’s no DefCon 8 level 3 killer death heatwave warning in place.” I mean, there was one, but that’s beside the point.

Weather forecasters have been getting trolled and abused on social media for pointing out the facts about the heatwave, while the Daily Mail ran an editorial saying: “Why can’t the Met Office just tell us the weather, instead of spreading alarm and scolding us with doom-laden lectures?”

And yes, you can bet it will repeat itself during this drought and hosepipe ban.

But why argue over something so uncontroversial? That bit is easy to explain. The harder part is to avoid these arguments entirely.

Heatwaves, droughts, hosepipe bans and other extreme weather events are all a symptom of a broader disease: the climate crisis. Scientists have said this for quite a while. But climate change is also largely seen as a left-wing cause, usually championed in language that appeals to other lefties (”justice”, “global south”, “colonial extraction”, etc).

Unsurprisingly, this annoys right-wingers, who assume the issue is being exaggerated to serve left-wing goals such as socialism. Therefore, they look for ways to dismiss it as scaremongering. And when right-wing thought leaders do this, they are much more likely to influence their followers than those on the left.

It can work both ways, of course. There are issues that lefties unfairly dismiss out of hand because they are championed by the right. For example, a lot of progressives still abhor nuclear power, even though it emits no carbon dioxide, because they see their political enemies, the Tories, champion it. So they look for excuses to dismiss it.

Sadly, this is human psychology in action. We are conditioned to be more open to ideas from our own tribe, and dismiss those from opposing tribes. This has been happening over millennia and while it has advantages – it preserves tribal cohesion – it clearly also makes us averse to new ideas.

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All this also makes conflict harder to avoid.

In our highly polarised media environment, it is easier and more popular to dismiss the other side as extremists, based on the actions of a few, than reach out to them.

Right-wingers aren’t suddenly going to become open to “climate justice” – though they may be more open to “clean energy innovation” to solve the same problem. Which suggests that perhaps changing the language around the climate crisis may reach more people.

But how do we talk about problems like droughts and heatwaves in more neutral terms? I don’t have an answer to that. In some ways, we are already past the point of no return. But if we keep fighting and arguing, we won’t solve our collective problems.